TWELVE
Living Off Bytes
BY SHARON CLEARY
April 17, 2000
This was the challenge: Survive for a work-week eating only things that were provided by the Internet’s growing crop of food-delivery services.
Well, all right: I changed the rules so that we were talking only about lunch and dinner—the early morning is no time to be wrestling with technology. I resolved that whatever happened, I would stick to my guns and live off the Internet (or, as a matter of survival, my own hastily made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches).
Call me a pessimist, but I figured that, half the time, whatever I ordered wouldn’t arrive or would suffer some awful mishap en route. I was wrong. As it turned out, I not only ate well, but also wound up eating my words. I learned that a smorgasbord of options—available from online grocers and meal-delivery services—await hungry Web surfers such as myself.
Setup was simple: For each site, I filled out an online delivery form—name, address, work and home phone numbers—and then specified a delivery time and a payment method. The services offered different delivery speeds—and some required a two-hour window that left you stuck at home on the lookout—but all of the services delivered within the promised time period. The one semi-exception was a courier with Food.com Inc., who arrived 15 minutes early for a 6:30 p.m. appointment. I wasn’t there to accept the delivery, but he waited until I arrived home at the agreed-upon time, so no harm was done. As for prices, they varied as well—but most were competitive with my local store.
I took notes of what I ate each day, how I liked it, and the Web outfits that served as my supply lines.
This is a diary of my adventure.
Day 1
Monday, Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day)
What I ate
One large navel orange
One slice of blueberry crumb cake
12 leaves of butter lettuce
Two servings vegetable-filled ravioli with roasted tomato sauce
Numerous cups of coffee
Two glasses from a bottle of Villa Antinori Chianti Classico
Almost a whole bag of salt & vinegar potato chips (5 oz.!)
—ORDERED FROM WEBVAN.COM
Online grocer Webvan.com, owned by Webvan Group, Inc., Foster City, Calif., plans very carefully. Route-planning software provides each delivery-van driver a mapped schedule, with deliveries scheduled for every 10 to 30 minutes. Webvan.com has a warehouse in Oakland, Calif., where color-coded plastic containers with order-specific bar codes travel from room to room on conveyor belts, picking up groceries from different categories along the way. It’s very impressive, and so was dinner.
I placed my order on Friday for delivery Monday afternoon between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. That day, I rushed home from work to meet the Webvan courier: Frankly, I was less than thrilled by the prospect of a whole hour spent waiting for someone I wasn’t sure would appear. So I was flabbergasted when Webvan’s refrigerated van arrived at 5:35 p.m. David, the delivery man, unloaded the groceries on my kitchen table from a covered plastic container.
Taste Test
The oranges were great—when a friend and I broke them open, their scent filled the room. (I was also happy that sturdy dividers prevented the oranges from crushing the chips.) The butter lettuce was very fresh, and I couldn’t help nibbling the blueberry crumb cake before dinner. The wine wasn’t bad either: At the risk of sounding pretentious, it had a toasty-oak taste. (It probably would have worked better with a meat dish. I served it with the ravioli, but Webvan can’t be blamed for that.) The prepared ravioli meal also turned out well—all I had to do was loosen the tops on the plastic containers and heat on high for three minutes in the microwave. Mangiamo! Instant Valentine’s Day dinner. My only complaint was that the dish was a bit bland—not quite up to the pungent seasoning of Naples, Italy.
Day 2
Tuesday, Feb. 15
What I ate
Two blintzes with sour cream and raspberry sauce
One serving of vegetarian black-bean chili
One serving boneless chicken breast entree
—ORDERED FROM KOSHERMEAL.COM
Fresh-squeezed orange juice (64 oz.)
One bag of potato chips (5 oz.)
Two bowls of Breyer’s mint chocolate chip ice cream
—ORDERED FROM PEAPOD.COM
Koshermeal.com, a subsidiary of hotel caterer Royal Palate Foods Inc., Inglewood, Calif., accepts next-day orders for complete breakfasts, lunches and dinners from clients who follow kosher laws. The online retailer attracts business travelers who aren’t sure that they will be able to find a kosher dinner or don’t want to worry about finding one at their destination. Also, Koshermeal is increasingly popular with non-Jewish customers who simply want a good meal.
Shipping is pricey: Koshermeal sends everything via FedEx. For packages under 60 pounds, shipment costs $27 for deliveries from Monday through Friday, and $40 for a Saturday delivery. (There are no deliveries on Sundays; the company is closed on Saturday for the Sabbath.) Because shipment costs don’t vary with order volume, an organized eater could order an entire week at one shot, paying a single shipping charge—as long as it weighed less then 60 pounds. I placed my order at 12:30 p.m. on Friday. Half an hour later, I received a message on my home e-mail account, through which I processed all my orders. An apologetic note signed by the company’s chief executive officer, Bill Pinkerson, said that I had missed the overnight shipping deadline by about 30 minutes and that Koshermeal wouldn’t be able to process my order for delivery the next day. He did tell me the name and phone number of a San Francisco kosher restaurant that would be able to handle an order from me on short notice. I arranged for delivery of a full day’s worth of meals for Tuesday of the following week.
The meals were shipped in a plastic-foam container filled with dry ice, with instructions for reheating the food and kosher certification included with each individually wrapped meal. As with the other deliveries, the food was stamped as having been “inspected for wholesomeness by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” A separate note with the chicken entree said it was “double-sealed so the food will remain kosher if it is heated in a nonkosher microwave oven.” This operation doesn’t fool around.
My other supplier, Skokie, Ill., online grocer Peapod Inc., is an 11-year-old company founded by brothers Andrew and Thomas Parkinson. Originally customers phoned in or faxed orders, but with the Internet’s arrival, Peapod was revamped for the Web. Until recently, Peapod faced little competition—but in the past two years Webvan; HomeGrocer.com Inc., Kirkland, Wash.; and NetGrocer.com Inc., North Brunswick, N.J.; have entered the field, prompting Peapod to speed up its expansion plans. In February, the company obtained $120 million in financing from a group of five private investors to help along the company’s growth plans.
I placed my order on Sunday, signing up for the first available delivery time—between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Tuesday. The groceries arrived at 6:30 p.m. The courier brought the goods directly into my kitchen, and removed them from a partitioned plastic container similar to Webvan’s (or vice versa).
Taste Test
Koshermeal.com’s version of blintzes in raspberry sauce reminded me why breakfast is my favorite meal. The chili, while not as good as my best friend’s mother’s, drew jealous looks from my lunch mate. The chicken also sparked nostalgia—it tasted just like the chicken served in my elementary-school cafeteria. (I really do mean that in a good way.)
As for Peapod and its critical role in supplying my snacks: The fresh-squeezed Odwalla-brand orange juice was fresh and incredibly pulpy. Happily, the chips arrived whole. And how can you go wrong with ice cream?
Day 3
Wednesday, Feb. 16
What I ate
One coconut soda
One pineapple soda
Saffron rice
Olive oil
Extra-fancy long-grain rice
Organic sea salt saffron
—ORDERED FROM ETHNICGROCER.COM
One slice bruschetta (toasted Italian bread smothered in a mixture of tomatoes, onions, garlic and olives, soaked in balsamic-vinegar)
One serving veal scaloppine
One cannoli
—ORDERED THROUGH FOOD.COM AND PREPARED BY NORTH BEACH RESTAURANT FIGARO
I found EthnicGrocer.com Inc., a specialized online retailer, by accident. I had searched for “online grocers” using the AltaVista search engine, and EthnicGrocer was toward the bottom of the list. The name piqued my interest, seeming to promise more than a run-of-the-mill grocery experience. The Chicago company, backed by venture-capital firms Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital, launched late last fall. EthnicGrocer.com ships anywhere in the 48 contiguous states. It offers detailed recipes from the cuisines of 15 countries, including Vietnam and Turkey, and supplies the groceries needed.
Food.com, which delivered my dinner, began in Seattle as Cyberslice in 1996, selling pizzas online. In early 1999, the company moved to San Francisco and changed its name. It has signed up about 13,000 restaurants to date, and gets a 5% commission from each order placed.
Food.com’s ordering system prompts users to type in their ZIP Code and immediately generates a list of restaurants that deliver in that area. Customers then place an online order, and a computerized voice system from Food.com forwards the order over the phone to the restaurant. At 5 p.m., I placed an order from Figaro, a tasty Italian place in the heart of North Beach. I scheduled delivery for 6:30 p.m. Cannoli, bruschetta, ravioli and veal scaloppine with porcini mushrooms arrived at 6:15.
Taste Test
For lunch, I followed EthnicGrocer’s recipe for the Spanish dish arroz con azafran (saffron rice) and was pleasantly surprised when an inviting aroma rose from the pot.
As for the dinner that Food.com brought from Figaro restaurant: Great cannoli. My brother said the bruschetta was good (and I’ll have to take his word for it, since he ate all of it when I left the table to answer the phone). The veal was chewy, alas, and the mushrooms were tasteless. But Food.com just helps with online orders and not in the kitchen, so I couldn’t hold it against them.
Day 4
Thursday, Feb. 17
What I ate
Three bowls of Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats
One-half bag of Tostitos white crispy rounds
Three cups of coffee
Vast amounts of unscented Tide (for late-night laundry)
—ORDERED FROM NETGROCER.COM
One naan (an Indian flat bread)
One hearty portion of saag paneer (an Indian spinach-and-cheese dish)
One portion of lamb curry
Two vegetable samosas (curry-spiced potatoes and vegetables in a pastry shell)
Lots of mango chutney
—ORDERED VIA WAITER.COM FROM LOCAL SAN FRANCISCO RESTAURANT TANDOORI MAHAL
Waiter.com Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., was founded in 1995 and bills itself as the first food-ordering service on the Internet. The company’s president and chief executive officer, Craig Cohen, recognized a need for the service when he was designing chips (the kind that go in computers) at Sun Microsystems Inc. Mr. Cohen, a vegetarian, was tired of having his phone orders mixed up and figured he’d have better luck writing out his orders. So he tried to fax an order to a local sandwich shop, only to find the restaurant wouldn’t take such orders from customers. Nonetheless, an idea was born: Today, Waiter.com posts menus for about 1,300 restaurants around the U.S.
As for NetGrocer: The online retailer sells non-perishable groceries—think dry cereal and paper towels—and ships them via FedEx for delivery within five business days. I placed my order on a Saturday and the package arrived Thursday—fast shipment not being crucial with dry goods. By the fourth day of my experiment, though, I was used to nearly instant gratification, so the wait seemed interminable.
Taste Test
I missed lunch on Thursday; to make up for it, I ordered a spicy Indian dinner through Waiter.com from a restaurant called Tandoori Mahal. The vegetable samosas were some of the best I ever tasted, and the leftover saag paneer still hit the spot the next day. So much for dinner.
As for breakfast and snacks: NetGrocer passed the crushable-chip test—the tortilla chips I ordered were wrapped in a protective layer of bubble wrap. But my Mini-Wheats didn’t get special treatment and suffered the consequences—most of the cereal had been ground into little bits.
Day 5
Friday, Feb.18
What I ate
One large pizza topped with tomatoes, mushrooms and sausage
One large, very cold glass of root beer
—ORDERED VIA FOOD.COM FROM LOCAL PIZZA JOINT EXTREME PIZZA
Half-pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream
(Along with videocassette rental of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film Brazil)
—ORDERED FROM KOZMO. COM
Kozmo.com Inc. delivers urban essentials to slackers in many cities across the U.S. The New York company started delivering videotapes in 1997 and has expanded its offerings to magazines, compact disks, video games and snacks as its popularity has grown. Kozmo.com even delivers aspirin and cough syrup for cold sufferers stuck at home. Couriers deliver products to your door within an hour of your order; what’s more, Kozmo.com will also pick up your video once you’ve watched it, and has video dropoffs located in countless small businesses such as pizza joints and cafes. Kozmo.com’s representative arrived at my door just as Food.com’s representative was leaving. The courier handed me the ice cream and the movie at my door and promptly disappeared down the building’s stairwell to make another delivery.
Taste Test
On my last day, I cheated. I missed the skater-chic counter staff at the froufrou cafe downstairs from our office. I also missed what I never thought I’d miss—the early-morning competition among java-junkie office workers for the best place on line. (I’m a New Yorker—when it comes to aggression, I have a natural advantage over San Franciscans.) For lunch, I was coerced into eating a McDonald’s hamburger (with large fries) by a co-worker who shares my occasional craving for trashy food. Delicious. But I got back with the Internet-shopping program by placing orders for that night.
The pizza was good—a friend who had been brought up on Chicago deep-dish pizza liked the crispy crust. I was partial to the tanginess of the tomato sauce. As for the ice cream, it was really rich—one dose was enough to sate any chocolate addiction. The movie Brazil also had a lot of flavor, but in a different, unsettling, way.
I placed the pizza order early that day with Food.com and specified a delivery window between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. At 4:43 p.m. a Food.com representative—a real, live person—called to confirm my order. (That didn’t happen the first time I ordered from Food.com, but the company says its customer-service department tries to do it whenever volume is light enough to permit.) The pizza arrived promptly at 8 p.m., and the pizza box was still hot.
The Conclusion
Despite my initial doubts, I learned that the Internet allows you to eat well without making you work too hard. Plenty of online retailers promise timely and tasty food at a comparably reasonable price—and, well, they deliver.
But does my week of good experiences suggest online food delivery will be a hit? George Dahlman, a food analyst with US Bancorp Piper Jaffray Inc., Minneapolis, anticipates solid growth from the industry. Mr. Dahlman says that annual grocery sales are in the neighborhood of $500 billion and that if online grocers can get just 5% of that, the industry will take in a whopping $25 billion. He’s less bullish about the viability of restaurant-food delivery, though, calling that “a much more limited [market] space.”
Overall, he believes, the success of food sales online depends on finding the right demographics. “The key will be how you can take something that’s five blocks or one mile down the road and find out how much it is worth to [consumers] to have it in [their] home,” Mr. Dahlman says.
As for me, on Friday evening I retreated into my apartment with pizza, root beer, ice cream and my movie and found myself utterly content that I had no need to leave for the rest of the weekend. As long as my digital-subscriber line keeps working, I’ll never go hungry again.
Ms. Cleary is a staff reporter for WSJ.com in San Francisco.