Delivery App Orders Restaurants To Cook Almost Whatever You Want (bloomberg.com) 77
Russia's largest tech company is launching a delivery service that allows a customer to tell a restaurant what to cook, whether it's on the menu or not. From a report: Yandex NV will prepare meal kits with ingredients based on a customer's requested dish and send it to a nearby restaurant for cooking. Once the food is ready, Yandex couriers will handle delivery. Yandex has been rapidly expanding its delivery services. In 2017 it merged with Uber Technologies' Russian ride-hailing and food-ordering businesses. The new offering, which it calls a "cloud restaurant" service, mashes together Yandex.Eats, which delivers cooked food from restaurants, and Yandex.Chef, which already supplies meal kits for home cooking. For now, customers won't be able to create completely bespoke delicacies, but Yandex has created a list of hundreds of the most popular dishes among users of its food businesses, which will be priced typically for no more than 250 rubles ($3.86) per dish. The service will be initially available in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Visit Your Grandma (Score:3, Informative)
Put down your phone and go visit you grandma instead. Even if it's just boiled cabbage and potatoes, she'll make it with love. You'll both be better off for it.
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Put down your phone and go visit you grandma instead. Even if it's just boiled cabbage and potatoes, she'll make it with love. You'll both be better off for it.
Grandma will only answer the door these days if she's somehow become a lich. In which case she'll make boiled cabbage and potatoes out of me sooner than for me. I would not be better off for it.
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Does Russia have enough feckless millenial fuckwads who a) have enough money and b) are stupid enough to fall for this shite?
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Oh yeah, certainly. I was just in Kiev a few weeks ago and I don't think I've ever seen so many aipords and those fucking electric unicycles in any Western European or North American city as I've seen there. That's Ukraine of course so rest assured Russia would be even worse.
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Would you be willing to bring me a club sandwich with fries for less than $3-5?
An idea as bad as democracy. (Score:1)
Yes, they definitely have the right to eat what they want.
The problem is that most are so clueless, they can't even tell they're clueless, and hence overconfident.
Also, humans aren't made to be fully independent, and most of our will is shaped by other people. We believe it is ours anyway.
We can't be experts in everything, nor is that a good idea. I may be a good programmer, and a pretty good cook too, but I can only become an expert in one, at the expense of the other. I cerainly won't tell my doc where to
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Whoever is actually qualified, will already cook for himself, and not want to pay somebody to do it.
That's not true.... I can cook, but that does not mean I want to do 100% of my cooking and never want to eat out. I enjoy eating good, new or different food other people have prepared as well -- even indulging in fast food on occasion.
I think the same is true for anyone. Being qualified does not imply you don't ever pay other people to do the task.
Now what I don't understand is why any restaurants wo
Every real restaurant does that (Score:2)
"whether it's on the menu or not."
The menu is just a suggestion. If the ingredients are there, they will cook it for you, it's their business.
Re:Every real restaurant does that (Score:5, Insightful)
The menu is just a suggestion.
Yes, and that suggestion is half the point of having a chef.
I don't hire an interior decorator to paint my walls, I hire one to suggest good colors and good materials that will go well together. By the same token, I go to a restaurant not just to have a skillfully cooked meal, but also to have a masterful chef "design" or "invent" that meal, or whatever the word is in the food business. If they're just going to cook what I tell them to, I'll just do it myself.
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By the same token, I go to a restaurant not just to have a skillfully cooked meal, but also to have a masterful chef "design" or "invent" that meal
And then there's the pepperoni pizza. May I suggest that other people order out for other reasons? I've been to restaurants where you order complete plates and those you mix and match yourself, both have a place. Unless you're asking the chef to have some kind of unique skill or ingredient to make that particular dish, who cares if you want salmon with baked potato and ketchup. It's your meal...
Yeah but won't the food be terrible? (Score:2)
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Have you tried that? If it's a very simple and reasonable request (you really would like some potatoes) this is probably true for most restaurants, but for whole dishes I doubt many restaurants would bother.
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Some restaurants. Many won't go off menu, especially if busy, because it takes more time and makes the chef's jobs harder. They might have potatoes for fries, but that doesn't mean they'll dedicate an oven for an hour to make you a baked potato.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster for me. (Score:2)
"Yes, and that suggestion is half the point of having a chef. "
I think you're assuming your food is cooked by a "Chef" in most restaurants. At quite a lot of places your food is much more likely to be made by a line cook whose expertise lies in making the dishes they've been specifically taught to make.
Along with that, based strictly on my own experience working in the restaurant biz and the two professional chefs I know, kitchen staffs hate special requests. The menu is not a choose your own adventure book
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Gee... All that's missing is... (Score:3)
... drones. How can this be a serious delivery service if drones aren't involved?
Ah, Mr. Putin . . . I was expecting you . . . (Score:2)
. . . I'll have your liver with some fava beans . . .
Cook! Cook! (Score:2)
Where's my Hasenfeffer?
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"If I didn't know it was Hasenpfeffer, I'd swear it was carrots."
I christen this new service... (Score:5, Funny)
Mom.
in soviet russia we cook you! (Score:2)
in soviet russia we cook you!
All hail Serfdom! (Score:2)
Best Russian invention since People Being Too Lazy To Learn Recipes!
Good idea for grocery stores (Score:3)
They have all of the food already. Local ones around me offer some cooked things like chicken and mashed potatoes and a salad bar (ugh).
We do Blue Apron which is a nightmare of mostly recyclable plastics (should I waste potable water or recycle this little container?).
Maybe grocers could offer a big menu, 100+ different meals. Maybe not 100% custom, but a very wide variety. I would expect they would sell a lot of add ons like fruit and beverages. Delivery service would be nice, but I would take carry out (only a small grocer near my house, big one by the office).
A good time to try whale (Score:1)
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I've tried whale. I didn't like it. Kind of like salted beef.
Whether machine or human, don't annoy the chef (Score:1)
Less than shelter food. (Score:2)
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Well it is Russia, so it's pretty much like a shelter anyway.
gig economy (Score:2)
Lol (Score:2)
Am I alone? (Score:2)
This is not a new idea (Score:2)
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10... [techcrunch.com]
But will the food be GOOD? (Score:2)
At most restaurants, you want to order one of their signature items. Never mind things NOT on the menu, stay away from dishes that aren't very popular that ARE on the menu. You might regret ordering that cheeseburger at a Mexican restaurant, or the steak at Denny's.