An Open Letter To Seamless Web
By Tiffany Peón
To the geniuses/demigods/criminal masterminds at seamlessweb.com,
My name is Tiffany, and I am a frequent user of your service. In fact, I’ll be hurt if at least one person in your order processing department does not recognize my email address.
First off, let me stop to acknowledge the amazingness that is Seamless Web. When it is raining, snowing, too hot, too late at night, or too in the middle of an episode of Glee, your service and its team of friendly delivery people and predominately sushi/Thai fusion restaurants is there to bring me whatever my heart desires. Your service is truly one of the best advances in modern technology (screw medicine!).
With all that said, you’ve also taught me how to dream, and I have dreamed big for you, Seamless. Below is a list of technologies I’d love for you to integrate into your service. Kind of like apps — not the delicious ones you already sell — but the iPhone ones.
1. DrunkEatNO!
What does it do? Forces potential orderees to write a few sentences using carefully picked (or auto-generated) SAT words about why they are trying to order food after midnight.
Why do your customers need it? I’ve surmised that around 25% of my orders are made after 9 PM and under the influence of alcohol. While I have managed to kick my drunk texting habit, I fear I will be incapable of kicking this habit without your help because there are few consequences associated with drunk eating. Unlike drunk texting, which can ruin everything, drunk ordering only comes with the risk of falling asleep before my pizza arrives and scaring my roommates shitless when the delivery guy buzzes a bunch of times at 2 AM. And really that only happened that one time. 99.99999% of the times I am simply rewarded for my bad behavior with a calzone.
2. Thinspiration
What does it do? Tells you the calories of everything you’re ordering while simultaneously attempting to dissuade you from ordering fried chicken with a side of a block of cheddar by blasting you with Nicole Richie pop-ups.
Why do we need it? As a female in New York City, I am not dieting for healthy living purposes. I’m striving to look one stomach flu away from hospitalization at any given moment. Do you know how difficult it is to achieve that goal? Most days I live off of Energy Kitchen and despair (same thing), not because there aren’t other low calorie options out there, but because I don’t know the exact calorie count of some random restaurant’s balsamic dressing so I’m forced to choose between Energy Kitchen and Pret… And Pret is WAY too expensive.
If I knew the calories of everything on your site, I would a.) order less Energy Kitchen “food” and b.) avoid the screw-my-diet fried food combo and make an informed decision.
3. BankSync
What does it do? It tells you NO, NO TIFFANY, DON’T ORDER FOOD YOU HAVE $30 AND TWO WEEKS UNTIL YOUR NEXT PAYCHECK.
Ok, Seamless, this one might be only needed by me. I have no self-control and I don’t forsee self-control become one of my strong suits anytime soon. As a person who has spent as much on your service as some of your VC backers, you owe me a favor or two.
4. Google Street View Integration
What does it do? When you live in a big city, you understand the risk you’re taking by ordering online. There’s a strong chance that the restaurant you’re ordering from is one of those “#47 Chinese Food” places where the pictures of the food on the wall are completely unrelated to what they actually serve (purple backgrounds, peppers on the side of the plate for decorative purposes, meat that looks like real meat). It’s easy to tell once you receive your food that you’ve been fooled. Despite all your experience, you were bamboozled by the massive lunch special and 15 minute delivery time. This would never happen if we could see something like this:
I could go on forever, but here’s a list of some other things I’d like:
Ordering from multiple restaurants as a single delivery:
If you knew how often I would order a cheese plate AND Ethiopian food you would do this immediately.
Laundry pick-up to come with food:
My laundromat is right downstairs. For an additional $3–$5, I’d totally pay someone to pick it up while bringing me my pad thai.
Also, can you bring me alcohol?
I’m assuming their are legal reasons as to why this hasn’t yet happened. BUT STILL. WORTH THE RISK, SEAMLESS.
Sometimes I’d like the delivery guy to stay and watch tv with me… Is that so wrong?
I spent my first New York City Christmas on my couch because I didn’t feel like flying home only to turn right back around two days later. Day one was pretty awesome. On day two I started running out of chick flicks. By day three I would have paid mad money for a delivery guy to sit on my couch and watch an episode of Comedy Central Presents with me.
So anyway, Seamless, thanks for hearing me out. Hopefully I’ll be seeing these genius ideas implemented real soon. By the way… can I get some sort of food credit for e-hand-delivering all these lucrative ideas to you? I have like $45 in my bank account and a crazy bad hankering for a burger.
How about it?