I thought I would support local, and order a salad and a pizza from a spot in my neigbourhood tonight. Temp is a little below freezing.
I visit the website and it says, call this number to place a take-out order. I don’t want to wait for them to bake a pizza after I walk in and place the order tonight.
This is a place where I have been a walk -in, take
-out customer.
I call.
The person who answers tells me he cannot take orders over the phone.
He tells me to use UberEats to order.
I mention I want to pick it up myself.
He tells me I should still place the order through UberEats.
I mention their site says to call their number, but okay, I guess I will place the order through UberEats
(At which point, he could have said, let me take that order, but he didn’t )
…
I don’t want to use UberEats, so he lost a sale and I’m still hungry.
I would follow up with them and let them know you chose not to order from them. It would be helpful for them to know that directing regular customers to another ordering platform is costing them business.
I am kinda surprised at this, honestly. While I certainly expect this from a chain of any size where there are corporate efficiencies to be had, virtually every local place on our take-out list has, when asked, explicitly said they absolutely prefer phoned in pickup orders. They don’t have to pay the awful commissions the delivery apps take, and they have fewer order issues and complaints of cold food.
