What millennials and gen Z’ers don’t love about food delivery apps

They are gaining huge traction, but are they truly fulfilling users’ needs?

COVID-19 has seen all of us stuck indoors and dinners and lunches out at restaurants became a thing of the past for most of 2020 and some of 2021.

Whereas it had previously been unthinkable for me to host dinners at my apartment (my cooking skills are limited and I despise getting dressed to hang out in my living room), suddenly I found myself hosting 3–4 times a week (in a socially distant, Harvard-approved setting) at my apartment on campus.

My love affair with food delivery apps, which I had used sporadically outside of work for the first 26 years of my life, began in March 2020. I experimented with several different delivery platforms each time I hosted and my friends and I (all millennials aged between mid-20s to early-30s) discussed our experiences with each platform at length. To add an extra perspective, I also rounded up some of my 19-year old cousin’s friends to interrogate them about their experiences.

This article is the result of what we learnt, appreciated and didn’t love about the platforms we tried. So, if you’ve been thinking about beginning to binge on take-out and haven’t yet made up your mind, here’s the list of the platforms to consider, and which ones my friends and I would recommend.

How they work: pretty much all the apps considered below work in the same way:

1. you scroll through and either search for or choose a restaurant from the list on each app — not all apps have the same restaurant, which makes sense as these apps sometimes charge the supply-side (i.e. the restaurant) to sign-on to a platform so no restaurant would usually want to pay for multiple platforms (except for large players such as McD’s)
2. If you are ordering through a single order, you simply choose the items you want (as you would on a normal in-restaurant menu) and add them to the cart. The process is a little more difficult if you need to set up a group order, where you then share the link with the group and then spend hours chasing everyone to add their order before finalising the checkout
3. At checkout, you get the total price + all service fees + delivery charges and you get the opportunity to add a tip for the driver and schedule a time (you can choose between ASAP or select a predetermined time slot)

Doordash

Pros:

• Favourite UX for everyone across the board — the app design, ease of use and intuitive functionality won the unanimous ‘favourite design’ award
• Doordash’s customer service is exquisite — I had a problem with delivery a couple of times and they gave an immediate refund and then called the next day to get specific feedback on what had happened
• DoorDash’s premium service (Dashpass) is worthwhile if you’re a frequent user as the $9.99/month fee pays for itself within 4–5 orders

Cons:

• No loyalty discounts or reward programs, even for the restaurants you frequent — this is likely to encourage the purchase of the premium version of DoorDash (which I eventually succumbed to), but can be frustrating when you don’t feel rewarded for using the platform
• Missing some of the trendier restaurants on their platform (particularly in Boston) often force you to trade over to another app
• Inability to easily communicate with restaurants for changes/requests can make the process more frustrating and stressful

Grubhub

Pros:

• Used by several colleges, so easy for college students — as a result, it is often used in a specific setting (i.e. at university) but the user does not tend to transfer the app over for personal use
• Can scheduled pick-up up to 4 days in advance, making it easier to plan meals ahead of time
• Has great discounts over time if you use it often — discounts range from any restaurant to loyalty-specific discounts for restaurants you use often

Cons:

• Tipping function often glitches — seems to be designed to set at 25% and harder to change this
• Less variety than Doordash / UberEats / Seamless
• UX is less intuitive — cannot be sorted by cuisine which is unideal for the adventurous try-something-new customer
• Does not sync well with availability — you can place orders for restaurants that are already closed, leading to wasted walks to pick-up locations if you don’t do your due diligence beforehand!
• Inability to easily communicate with restaurants for changes/requests can make the process more frustrating and stressful

Seamless (part of GrubHub)

I’ve only ever used Seamless at work (as had everyone else I spoke to) and thoughts about this were varied as it is perhaps not the most direct comparison to the other platforms we used for personal reasons. In any case, the key takeaways (pun intended) are below.

Pros:

• The billing system (for billing your employer) is straightforward
• The ordering system is easy to use and you can easily reorder favourites

Cons:

• Less variety than DoorDash or UberEats in terms of restaurants
• Old interface, which can be clunky to use and is not as user friendly when you want to discover new restaurants or want recommendations
• Customer service is notoriously bad — the app does not seem to have a 24/7 team to service its customers which disproportionately impacts late-night dinners should anything go wrong with the order
• Inability to easily communicate with restaurants for changes/requests can make the process more frustrating and stressful

UberEats

Pros:

• Has some of the trendiest, new restaurants (such as CAVA, which has become a huge favourite of many) that it has an exclusive relationship with
• Provides a clearer breakdown of fees — unlike DoorDash which lumps them all together, UberEats aims to provide transparency so you can see what you’re paying (so much!) for

Cons:

• Terrible user experience for most — from broken group order systems to orders which vanish without warning, this was the least favourite platform due to its technical glitches
• Exorbitant fees — by far the highest fees of the other apps for delivery + service
• Inability to select whether you want utensils with your food often leads to a frantic search for chopsticks before your guests arrive
• Inability to easily communicate with restaurants for changes/requests can make the process more frustrating and stressful

Restaurant-specific apps

There is a wide variety in the quality, ease of use and overall user experience of restaurant-specific apps. The consensus was that ideally, you’d want to avoid using restaurant-specific apps which unnecessarily crowd up your phone if you’re

Pros:

• The ability to contact the restaurant directly with any problems makes for much less of a headache when things go wrong!
• Rewards/loyalty points are a big win to encourage you to continue using and if you’re a frequent user, you can definitely save more via these
• Can have lower delivery and service fees as the restaurant is not (unless they are partnering with another third-party delivery platform) paying away its margins to external parties

Cons:

• Restaurants that partner with Doordash provide delivery estimates which may not sync with when a DoorDash driver (a “Dasher”) is actually available and hence have less accurate delivery times
• Having to download an additional app is sometimes an effective barrier to entry for people looking to order food and these businesses often miss out on customers as a result

The verdict

In conclusion, there’s a lot out there to try, but (and I wish Doordash actually sponsored me), the consensus amongst the millennials and Gen Z’ers seems to be to stick with Doordash, except for those times when Doordash simply doesn’t seem to have managed to get hold of the new, hip restaurants that we all crave.

Restaurant-specific apps provide the greatest incentive for repeat orders as they often come with rewards or savings that the other apps don’t offer as frequently, so if you’re loyal to that coffee shop, it is worthwhile downloading their personal, often better-looking app.

What are your thoughts?