The technology of to-go
A deeper look at delivery app overload from a restaurant’s point of view
A Google search for “Atlanta food delivery” gives you an idea of how jam-packed the race is to deliver restaurant food right to your door. Results pop up touting GrubHub, Zifty, UberEATS, Yelp’s EAT24, Postmates, Amazon Prime Now, DoorDash, and several others you’ve probably never heard of. This confusing pack of competing services can be overwhelming for the person at home who just wants to order dinner. Can you imagine what the restaurants themselves have to navigate to work with all of these services?
One indicator that maybe the Atlanta delivery scene has become too crowded is that Caviar, the hyped delivery service from tech darling Square, recently exited the market after just a year and a half. Their representative said the exit was “to focus our efforts in further growing and expanding our other regions,” but you can bet the sheer number of competitors trying to deliver dinner to Atlanta doors had something to do with the departure.
No value assignedWhen I started surveying Atlanta delivery services to see which types of restaurants were represented, the name Café Agora popped up more than any other restaurant on the various lists of restaurants available. UberEats? Check. GrubHub? Check. Zifty, DoorDash, Postmates… check, check, check. If there’s another restaurant using as many delivery services, I didn’t find it. So why has Café Agora so thoroughly embraced the to-go app trend?
I stop by Café Agora’s Midtown location on a Thursday, right in between lunch and dinner, to talk to manager Bayram Coskun. Within minutes, drivers from Zifty and DoorDash walk in, rush up to the counter, and let Coskun know they’re there to pick up orders. In the brief moments between the drivers’ arrivals and departures, I ask Coskun how each of the services is different from his perspective behind the counter. He says that for him, they’re all basically the same, though some are a little better than others. UberEATS delivers the most orders by far, according to Coskun. And Zifty, he tells me, is the only one whose drivers consistently check the bags he hands over to make sure everything is right. Sure enough, as soon as the plastic bags packed with containers of hummus, baba ganoush, and other Turkish delights get passed from kitchen to counter to driver, the Zifty driver methodically checks every detail. The DoorDash driver is gone without a glance.
No value assignedCoskun says the restaurant’s relationships with the various delivery services are just a means of reaching more customers or to make it more convenient for their existing customers to get Café Agora’s food more often. “We have a good reputation,” he says, “and we don’t really do any advertising, so this is kind of like our advertising — the delivery services bring us customers, we give them a percentage of the profit.” He estimates that delivery services have added a total of about 20 percent to Café Agora’s existing business. Not bad.
Café Agora is better suited than most restaurants to take advantage of the delivery model — Mediterranean salads and kebabs simply travel well and are relatively quick to prepare. Even before the emergence of UberEATS, Café Agora did a healthy delivery and takeout business on its own –– and continues to do so. Coskun rationalizes the restaurant’s added use of so many new services by pointing out the minimal investment to do so — “for me, it’s just food costs. We use the same employees, we’re here, that’s it.”
In other words, so far at least, the café has been able to take on the additional orders the delivery services provide without having to hire more employees. All it takes is counter space for each of the delivery services’ proprietary devices to receive incoming orders. Thus, the NASA-esque mission control center counter that faces Coskun each day.
No value assignedWhen I push Coskun on the downsides of working with the delivery services, he brings up the customer service factor. Anyone who has experienced the hospitality of Café Agora’s owner, Al Ozelci, as he personally feeds them baklava will tell you the restaurant is notoriously welcoming and friendly. So how do you replicate that relationship when a delivery driver you don’t employ is the one delivering the food to the customer? That’s the one thing restaurants inherently yield when using middlemen.
Coskun admits ensuring quality once they hand off an order is an issue, but one they try to minimize. “Sometimes there are mistakes,” he says. “The driver doesn’t take the food to the right place or on time. Usually, the customers call us — they think it’s our fault. Just today, a customer called us because a driver forgot one of the bags. The customer called me and complained, saying, ‘where is my food.’” In typical Café Agora fashion, Coskun’s hospitality took over. “I drove the rest of the order all the way up to Buckhead myself to make them happy. It’s my customer. I don’t want them to be unhappy.”
Despite the fact that Café Agora’s food stands up well to the rigors of travel, Coskun also keeps an eye out to make sure the delivery services are minimizing travel time. “Our food works well for delivery,” he tells me, “but sometimes it can sit here in the restaurant for 20 minutes waiting for the driver. I’ll call them — the system, not the driver — and tell them it is really disrespectful to the customer and to me. When the customer eats an order that has been sitting around, it might not be at its best. Sometimes I’ll make the delivery company resubmit the order and ask them to pay for it; sometimes I have to make the order two times. Whatever it takes.”
No value assignedIt seems like a lot to put up with, but there’s no denying that the delivery services have brought additional business to Café Agora. And Coskun focuses on the positive. “Someone in Decatur? That’s really far away, and I wouldn’t be able to deliver to them myself. So this works out well for us and the customer.”
As for the direct daily impact on the restaurant and in the kitchen, Coskun manages everything at the counter. The tablets light up with an alert as soon as an order comes in. He quickly pivots to his own order entry terminal then hits a button specific to each delivery system to re-enter the order. Coskun tells me it would certainly be easier if the delivery apps and his own order entry system were seamlessly integrated, allowing the delivery orders to go straight to his kitchen, but he actually prefers to be able to review each order personally in order to make sure everything is clear.
The cooks in the kitchen don’t know who is picking up the order; they just know to pack it to-go, like they would for any customer who might walk up to the counter and ask for food to-go.
No value assignedWhen the line of customers — real, live, up-close-and-personal customers — is long, Coskun admits that a delivery driver running straight up to the counter can seem a bit unfair. “The drivers sometimes don’t respect the line,” he says, but it doesn’t anger him. “They’re in a rush, which I understand. Even still, it’s good for our business. We have the capacity. They help us use it.”
If you take Café Agora as an indicator, delivery service apps are here to stay. Among the many players delivering food today, Coskun gives the advantage to Uber EATS — which he deems “by far the fastest and cheapest.” There probably won’t be such a crowded array of competitors a few years from now, but Coskun believes they will continue to take a larger and larger slice of the restaurant pie. And if a few of the current delivery players go away, that just means more space freed up on Café Agora’s counter. All the better to see the customers standing right there in the restaurant.
DRIVE TIME: The UberEATS driver loads up her car and heads out for a delivery.Mia Yakel