Friday, March 12, 2010

Zuppler - Like CampusFood Minus the Campus

Nothing is more primitive and frustrating than having to use the phone to order food. I mean, c'mon - really. As such, one of the technologies on the changed-my-life list is campusfood.com, a site that allows you to order food online from restaurants in close proximity to your college campus. For me, that is all well and good during the day, but what about when I go home, and am no longer on campus? Should I be relegated to using my larynx to order food? Not anymore. Now, thanks to Zuppler.com, I can order food from restaurants in my neighborhood - in the suburbs! - online. Take that, human contact!

There are a couple of things that I found attractive about Zuppler.com: 1) that it includes restaurants throughout the suburbs of Philadelphia (i.e. you don't have to be in Center City to use it), and 2) the site design was very professional - dare I say, better than campusfood. Each restaurant has its menu loaded into Zuppler, and you can easily add items to your cart by clicking on them and selected toppings/options where applicable. The entire ordering process took like 3 minutes (not counting my own indecisiveness).

The thing that I found a little scary, using the site for the first time, was whether my order would actually arrive. I pictured local restaurants without much IT infrastructure trying to handle a new order vector. I believe that William Congreve once wrote, "Hell hath no fury like a hungry Italian," or something like that - and I was worried I would be put in this position. Not that case. Someone from the site called me nearly immediately to let me know that my order was in (I know, human contact, but that's ok). My food arrived shortly after. And, I since I had added in the the tip online, they just handed me the food (didn't need to sign or anything).

Overall, it was a great experience, and I plan to use the site frequently. You should definitely check it out if you live in the Philadelphia or New York area.