I recently got a little note from Matt Maloney, co-founder of GrubHub.com, telling me that they were debuting their free restaurant delivery search engine in San Francisco, after some mad success in Chicago. As Matt puts it,
“We offer the only search to find all of the restaurants that deliver to you. Type in your address, we show you all of the menus & coupons for every restaurant that delivers to you. You can order online or by phone, it’s all free.”
Not that I’m swayed by sister sites that share a wonderful syllable in common, but I figured their site was worth mentioning since there has been many a tired evening when the GrubGirls and GrubBoys have sat around, too tired to cook or drive, wondering which lovely Grub joints actually delivered. (Note – we’ve accepted that our mid-range places are as cheap as you can get for delivery…)
The site claims to be able to look at my address and figure out which restaurants have me in their delivery radius. Hmmm. This will be worth testing out, since when I typed in my address (near Western Addition), several pizza joints South of Market popped up. Do restaurants actually think of their delivery radiuses as an objectively measurable circle? Or do they go more by intuition and safety…no deliveries pass that train track, for example. I would think that the intuition would be hard to geocode into their app, but what do I know. Needless to say, we will attempt to use this service the next time another lazy weeknight hits us, and you’ll get to read about our experiences.
What I do like so far is that the site actually remembered my address and city in their search bar (believe me, other sites in the menu business have not all been that user friendly). Stay tuned…and good luck, Matt!
Actually we contacted each delivery restaurant and found out their exact delivery areas – street by street. You’re exactly right that most will deliver farther into nice areas and cut short the more sketchy places. Its a tough job but I hope you enjoy it.
Wow, now that’s dedication! Thanks for the inside scoop. With more rain in the forecast, this is going to come in handy soon!
I used them but I like eat24hours better.