Foodler: Ordering Food Online

We eat a fair amount of take-out these days, life is just to hectic and time consuming for me to cook every night. However, I don’t think we are the only family that resorts to the same type of take-out from the same places over and over. Not to mention, being that I’m always in a hurry, when I do try a new place, I almost always order something safe and kind of boring, because I don’t have a minute to stand there and squint at the overhead menu during the lunchtime or dinnertime rush.

Foodler is an online website that lists restaurants that deliver or allow for take-out. You can search by cost, rating, distance, and delivery features. Menus are listed in detail online, and the restaurant, as well as each individual food item on the menu can be rated through a 5 point star system. In your individual profile, you can list your address for delivery and restaurant preferences. You can even chose to have your food order ready for a certain timeframe, several hours or days away.

Here’s my favorite part of Foodler, the more you order on-line, the more Foodler bucks you earn, which are like reward points. Earn enough Foodlerbucks and cash them for food credits at your favorite Foodler restaurant, or save them and cash them in for merchandise through Amazon.com, Apple.com, or gift cards from Starbucks.

I was provided with $15 in my Foodler account to to try out the service for the purpose of this review. As there was only 1 restaurant in my hometown that subscribed to Foodler, I chose to use the service for lunch, in the town that I work in, because there were a few more choices with restaurants I had heard of. Due to timing, I chose to pick the food up, rather than have it delivered. Some restaurants have varying delivery fees that are clearly defined in their profiles.

When I logged onto Foodler, I searched by my zip code and chose the restaurant location, Tom’s Bourbon Street Pizza Company. After that I began searching for what I wanted on the menu, then added it to my cart. Adding it to the cart was easy. I picked a chicken finger wrap, then in the comments section was able to click off certain details and add special instructions that I wanted tomatoes, pickles and lettuce. I liked having the ability to peruse the menu, when I had the time, and not feel like I was rushed to make a decision determined by the amount of people standing in line ahead of me. I felt like I had gotten a pretty good idea of the menu, but was instantly jealous and thought of changing my order, once my friend chose something I hadn’t seen in my search.

We added her meal to the cart and clicked send. I immediately got an email from Foodler with the information about the restaurant, their location, price, meal tax, and when to pick up my food.  The particular restaurant I used had additional reward points available for purchase there. When I arrived at the restaurant, they had received my order and said that it would be just a few more minutes. They handed over the food and back to school I went. Our order was 100% correct when I opened it 15 minutes later.

Some Foodler quick tips:

• Don’t forget to add your drink. I forgot to add it to the menu when I ordered and had to use my card to pay for the drink at the restaurant.
• This is the best type of service EVER for offices and school systems who order a lot of food, regularly. Can you imagine how quickly you’d be cashing in your FoodlerBucks for gift cards if you placed the order on your account? People who order can also pay for their purchases separately so there isn’t awkward money exchanges, or paying too much for what you purchased
• I’ve purchased restaurant.com gift cards in the past and it’s been difficult to find a restaurant that I can use, with the type of gift certificate I have. The flexibility of Foodler  bucks makes it really easy to order from places, even if you are on vacation.
• I like the star system where others can rate what they like. I felt like I knew that there were actually real people using this system, besides you get extra FoodlerBucks for your ratings, so why not give ratings and give them honestly?
• Having a young child, walking into a place and just getting my food and leaving is KEY. The less time I have to wait around for a money transaction, the easier it is on everyone.

I should let you know it’s dinner time while I’m writing this post and I’m starving. When searching around for more information to include in my post I got crazily hungry and just ordered a pizza from a local restaurant using Foodler. So, now I’ve got to go pick it up!

Foodler provided $15 for me in free Foodler Bucks to try out this service. Any opinions are my own.