Online Takeout Delivery is Back

prostoalex writes "It's like watching e-Dreams and re-living the Kozmo.com experience, only this time it's for real, the New York Times says. SeamlessWeb is here (or rather, in New York, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and southern Connecticut) to take your take-out orders and deliver the food. All is done via their Web site so no need to look for that takeout menu: "SeamlessWeb charges restaurants a commission of 5 percent to 15 percent, while the business pays a 2.5 percent fee for each transaction. The process for consumers will work much the same, except they will be charged no service fee.""

Comments

Nice ad for this company, but old news

[pctainto]

I've been using CampusFood.com to make my takeout (or pick-up) deliveries for quite some time. Great service. I don't think that online delivery services ever left the internet -- this story is just a shameless plug for some new startup.

Slashdot gets fooled again

[turambar386]

Another blatent advertisement gets posted as a story. Yawn.

Whatever - not Kozmo at all

[porcupine8]

Campusfood.com already offers this kind of service, in a lot more places than just big cities.

Kozmo offered video rentals online, with free delivery - as well as things like snack foods, CDs, convenience items, video games, etc. It was impulse-buying to the max. I was so sad to see Kozmo die. This is nothing like Kozmo, it's like all the other online ordering systems for restaraunts out there.

Meh. Call me when Kozmo REALLY comes back.

Finally, they figure out the Dominoes model!

[birge]

It took them long enough, but they finally realized that if you hide the cost of the second business (delivery) in the prices from the first business (food) people can be fooled into thinking they are getting free delivery.

Or, another way of looking at this is that urban prices are so inflated that one can piggyback entire businesses inside the margins. I suppose when a sandwich costs $15, you've got a lot of room to play with your delivery model.

Re:Hopefully it's smarter this time

[TrippTDF]

There were a lot of good ideas that came out of the dotcom era, and I think a lot of them will see the light of day again, just not on the same level as before. People today are much more accustomed to using the internet, and there are more people on it than 5 years ago. I think now is the time to start working on some of those dot-bomb ideas... This, in part, is why Google is doing as well as it is.

Re:Looking forward to this:

[Locke2005]

Right you are! There is no delivery fee! There is just a substantial discount for picking the pizza up yourself! And the television networks never turn the audio volume up for the commercials! They do, however, turn the volume down for the regular programming!

Ok, here's another one: why are people really happy when they receive big income tax refunds, knowing full well that they've lost a year's worth of potential interest on their money that they could have had if they had filled out their W-4 differently? Look, the government isn't giving you money -- they are giving you your own money back after drawing interest on it! Ok, I'll stop ranting now...