21 Mar Please The Palate Pick of the Week: Restaurant Take-Out and Delivery Resources

It’s been a challenging week, to say the least. As we have all been forced to “self-distance”, “shelter at home” and isolate, our lives have changed drastically. Every industry is suffering, and the hospitality is no exception. The hospitality industry and food & beverage industry have been hit extremely hard. Restaurants around the country have shut down and thousands upon thousands of people have been laid off in the hospitality industry. But many restaurants are trying to stay open, trying to keep people employed and trying to provide us with some semblance of normalcy. They have adapted to the new safety concerns and come up with different ways to offer to-go and delivery so that we can enjoy our favorite foods from the comfort of our own homes and that is the Please The Palate Pick of the Week. Food delivery apps, such as Postmates, UberEats, Grubhub, Caviar and DoorDash, are wonderful resources that we are all familiar with using. As we have done in normal times, we go on the app, select the cuisine we are in the mood for and choose a restaurant to order from. But many restaurants that did not offer takeout or delivery before the Coronavirus outbreak are now offering a variety of services. Everyday I receive emails from restaurants letting me know that they are offering food-to-go, delivery services, have created marketplaces and special order menus. We can order online, pick-up curbside or get deliveries across the nation from the food delivery apps we are accustomed to using. How do we keep track of who is open, what they are offering and how we can access them? Luckily, numerous sites have been created offering comprehensive resources. Joey Ngoy, CEO (Chief Eating Officer) of TFN Media Group and co-creator of Smorgasburg’s popular BOLO, created a Restaurant Delivery and Take-Out Map via Google My Maps to help support restaurants and get the message out, that although they’re not open for dine-in, they’re offering delivery and/or take-out. There are currently close to 600 restaurants listed. The majority of restaurants listed are in SoCal but the goal is for the map to be national very soon. Eater, the resource we all go to for restaurant reviews and recommendations, has running lists in all of their cities of where you can order take-out or delivery, including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Portland, Chicago, Boston and more. OpenTable, the online reservations resource, has complied a list of their restaurants who are offering take-out. On the OpenTable app, scroll to the “Order takeout” section and then select a restaurant and call directly to play the order. OpenTable has also partnered with delivery services such as Caviar, Postmates, Uber Eats, ChowNow, Olo, and Deliveroo to facilitate delivery and take-out at restaurants on the OpenTable network. Go to the OpenTable app and scroll down to the “Get it delivered” section. Tap “View All” toward the upper right corner and it will display all the restaurants near you that offer delivery. You can then place the order. Tock, the reservation management system, is offering family-style menus from some of the top-rated restaurants,such as Spago, Vespertine (Los Angeles), Manresa (Los Gatos), SingleThread Farm (Healdsburg) and Rose’s at Home (Washington DC). Resy, another popular online reservation system, has created city guides for restaurant delivery and takeout. We will be eating at home for the unforeseeable future and will miss going out for dinner to our favorite restaurants. But, luckily we can bring them home to us. Not only will that provide us comfort and give us something delicious to eat, but we will be helping a vital industry that is struggling right now. Let’s support our local restaurants! For additional tips on how to indulge in food delivery during the pandemic without spoiling your budget, click here.