Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

DoorDash is knocking

...and with no minimum delivery

Ramen from Underbelly packed into a recyclable plastic bowl — broth is packed separately so everything retains its texture
Ramen from Underbelly packed into a recyclable plastic bowl — broth is packed separately so everything retains its texture

For our latest foray into restaurant home delivery services, I checked out a new app that hit town with a strong marketing push the past couple of months. DoorDash enters what’s become a crowded market with the same basic premise: enlist a slew of local restaurants to offer delivery services, put their menus online for convenient ordering, and hire a platoon of drivers to do the work.

DoorDash offers a strong mix of restaurants, allowing you to order to your mood, be it sushi, Mediterranean, high-end comfort food, or something meaty and cheesy from your favorite pub. The only problem is, if you don’t have a specific mood, browsing the restaurants proves tougher than it should be.

Sponsored
Sponsored
DoorDash’s tile presentation slows you down.

As with most of these delivery apps, you enter your home address and then view a list of restaurants servicing your area, in this case with an estimate of how long the delivery will take (usually 45 minutes to an hour). The designers of DoorDash have decided to present the restaurants in a tiled format — their names are listed alphabetically, in rows of four, meaning a lot of scanning and scrolling the screen.

To make matters worse, there’s no other way to sort. Once you click to view a restaurant, you can see the delivery fee and order seamlessly through an online menu. But if you decide not to order at this point then you must return to the results screen, which reloads and sends you back to the top of the list. You then have to scroll down again.

I tried DoorDash a couple of times, ordering some personal favorites — fried chicken from Tender Greens Downtown and ramen from Underbelly North Park. In both cases the order came quickly, the driver was friendly enough to deserve a tip on top of the delivery fee, and the food stayed warm and tasted great.

The high cost of delivery is always a consideration, but one benefit of DoorDash is no minimum order. So while another favorite of mine, Tajima Ramen, may be ordered through DoorDash for a $6.99 fee, competitor Bring It To Me wll do it for $4.99 with a minimum $15 order. So if I’m ordering a ten dollar ramen for myself I’d use DoorDash, but if my roommate’s involved we’d easily hit the $15 cutoff and save a couple bucks on delivery.

The app usually offers a discount to first-time users, so you may be able to try it first for little more than you’d pay to visit the restaurant in person.

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Could Supplemental Security Income house the homeless?

A board and care resident proposes a possible solution
Ramen from Underbelly packed into a recyclable plastic bowl — broth is packed separately so everything retains its texture
Ramen from Underbelly packed into a recyclable plastic bowl — broth is packed separately so everything retains its texture

For our latest foray into restaurant home delivery services, I checked out a new app that hit town with a strong marketing push the past couple of months. DoorDash enters what’s become a crowded market with the same basic premise: enlist a slew of local restaurants to offer delivery services, put their menus online for convenient ordering, and hire a platoon of drivers to do the work.

DoorDash offers a strong mix of restaurants, allowing you to order to your mood, be it sushi, Mediterranean, high-end comfort food, or something meaty and cheesy from your favorite pub. The only problem is, if you don’t have a specific mood, browsing the restaurants proves tougher than it should be.

Sponsored
Sponsored
DoorDash’s tile presentation slows you down.

As with most of these delivery apps, you enter your home address and then view a list of restaurants servicing your area, in this case with an estimate of how long the delivery will take (usually 45 minutes to an hour). The designers of DoorDash have decided to present the restaurants in a tiled format — their names are listed alphabetically, in rows of four, meaning a lot of scanning and scrolling the screen.

To make matters worse, there’s no other way to sort. Once you click to view a restaurant, you can see the delivery fee and order seamlessly through an online menu. But if you decide not to order at this point then you must return to the results screen, which reloads and sends you back to the top of the list. You then have to scroll down again.

I tried DoorDash a couple of times, ordering some personal favorites — fried chicken from Tender Greens Downtown and ramen from Underbelly North Park. In both cases the order came quickly, the driver was friendly enough to deserve a tip on top of the delivery fee, and the food stayed warm and tasted great.

The high cost of delivery is always a consideration, but one benefit of DoorDash is no minimum order. So while another favorite of mine, Tajima Ramen, may be ordered through DoorDash for a $6.99 fee, competitor Bring It To Me wll do it for $4.99 with a minimum $15 order. So if I’m ordering a ten dollar ramen for myself I’d use DoorDash, but if my roommate’s involved we’d easily hit the $15 cutoff and save a couple bucks on delivery.

The app usually offers a discount to first-time users, so you may be able to try it first for little more than you’d pay to visit the restaurant in person.

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Second largest yellowfin tuna caught by rod and reel

Excel does it again
Next Article

Poway’s schools, faced with money squeeze, fined for voter mailing

$105 million bond required payback of nearly 10 times that amount
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader