
On-Line Pizza Idea Is Clever but Only Half-Baked (1994) - Reedx
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-08-25-fi-31168-story.html
======
elicash
Make sure you read the article not just the headline - this person actually
NAILED it (not ironically):

> Instead of simply letting people order a pizza, why not let them design it
> as well? Instead of showing an ordinary menu with a list of toppings, show a
> picture of a pizza with the toppings clustered on the side. Let teen-agers
> and college students build their own pizzas on-screen. Present a palette of
> toppings and let people place their mushrooms and green peppers and
> pepperoni anywhere on the pizza they want. The real pizza is customized
> accordingly. In other words, computer-aided pizza engineering.

> This is precisely the sort of interactivity that computers and networks are
> good at.

> [...]

> Of course, this network designability concept easily extends to bouquets of
> flowers, boxes of chocolates, fruit baskets and the $6.85-billion annual
> market in mail-order clothes shopping. It would be perfect for all kinds of
> gift giving.

~~~
wheybags
Honestly, I don't think they did nail it, specifically regarding customising
the pizza visually. Sure, some sites let you do this but noone cares really. I
think the main draw is you don't to talk to anyone. Not having to have a
social interaction with a stranger is a major selling point. Also, doesn't
apply to pizza, but for other things the main advantage is you don't need to
order during business hours.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I order pizzas on-line quite frequently, and to me it has very little to do
with talking to other people. The main draw of on-line ordering is that I can
_pay_ on-line. I don't usually carry enough spare change in small enough coins
and bills to be able to pay for a pizza on delivery without an extra trip to
the ATM and then a shop (to exchange bills for smaller denominations).

~~~
derekp7
Do you really have ATMs that spit out $50 and $100 bills? Around here the
highest bill is $20. And I've never run across any place that wouldn't take
$20s.

~~~
waterside81
Huh now I'm curious where _you_ live that they don't do this? In Canada 50s
and 100s come out of the ATMs. In Japan, you get 10,000 yen (~$100 USD) in
ATMs.

~~~
nwallin
I've never seen a US ATM spit out anything but $20 bills. Ever.

Higher denominations are so rare that many businesses don't accept them.

~~~
T-hawk
TD Bank around NYC has started to do $50s by default in high-demand locations,
obviously so the machine needs refilling less often. One workaround hack is to
withdraw a number like $80, to force the transaction into $20s instead.
Although I've never yet had a problem spending a $50.

Also, ATMs on casino floors in Vegas dispense $100s.

~~~
rpeden
Interesting that it's a Canadian bank (TD) doing this. I wonder if they're
using the same ATM tech in the US as they're using up here.

I've noticed a couple of banks in Canada where, if you ask the ATM for $100,
it'll ask you if you want a single $100 bill, two $50 bills, or five $20
bills.

------
hprotagonist
Sorry, none pizza left beef is not in uncle enzo's three ring binder. La cosa
nostra pizza regrets the inconvenience, but your order cannot be completed at
this time.

~~~
xen2xen1
Excellent reference. Did you poon anyone on your way in?

~~~
twosheep
Snow Crash is cited in the first line of the article

------
bashinator
I'd feel remiss in not mentioning that Hashicorp's Terraform infrastructure-
as-code tool has a provider for Domino's Pizza

[https://ndmckinley.github.io/terraform-provider-
dominos/](https://ndmckinley.github.io/terraform-provider-dominos/)

~~~
tedmiston
This one's going to require some serious QA testing.

------
franze
Just ordered Deliveroo. Currently they are still a marketplace, but I wonder
when they will go full "Amazon Basics"? They know what people want when, what
prices they want to pay, what quality they expect, how long they are ready to
wait.

with all this data its just a matter of time they offer they own kitchens that
create 20% of the products that fullfil 80% of the market need for 60% of the
market price.

wonder why no delivery company has done this yet?

~~~
tedmiston
DoorDash [1][2] and UberEats [3][4] now both have "ghost restaurants" (virtual
restaurants) as well as "ghost kitchens", which are kinda the next evolution
of shared / incubator kitchens but particularly focused on preparing a small
amount of dishes mostly for delivery. Most recently it seems they're also
starting to pay attention to the carryout market as well, but I think that's a
small slice.

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/14/doordash-
kitchens/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/14/doordash-kitchens/)

[2]: [https://www.eater.com/2017/10/31/16580814/doordash-
kitchens-...](https://www.eater.com/2017/10/31/16580814/doordash-kitchens-
virtual-delivery-restaurants)

[3]: [https://www.eater.com/2018/10/24/18018334/uber-eats-
virtual-...](https://www.eater.com/2018/10/24/18018334/uber-eats-virtual-
restaurants)

[4]: [https://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/restaurants-
and-b...](https://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/fl-
et-ghost-restaurants-miami-fort-lauderdale-palm-
beach-20191022-nrc4xstd5nhl3ljhn3jf3ijzeu-story.html)

~~~
Larrikin
With the increase in dark patterns to hide delivery fees and sneakily
increasing the tip at the end, I'm predicting carryout to become increasingly
more prevalent when people get sick of companies trying to force them to pay
$10 for delivering $20 worth of food

~~~
tedmiston
I think so too. I live in an area where carryout is very easy and the apps
make payment and timing super convenient vs ordering over the phone or walking
in and waiting an unknown amount of time.

As far as I can tell, none of the apps are marking up menu item prices for
pickup today the way they do for delivery. I hope that keeps up.

------
johnpowell
I graduated high school in 1996. I really wanted a computer. This was around
the time where there were Power Computing clones that were licensed from
Apple.

But my buddy just started college at the University of Oregon. They had a
computing center that was this tiny little store that was on the second floor
above all the big rack-mounted computers. I thought it was beautiful. I still
love seeing walls of servers.

But Apple used to give massive discounts to University students. I was not
one, but my friend was. So I gave him $1,400 in cash for a Performa 6214, a
Apple Multiple Scan 14 Display, and a StyleWriter 1200. It was around a 50%
discount for being a student at the university. I spent two months gutting and
rebuilding my friends parents RV for the money.

I hate cryptocurrencies.. For some meandering reason my point is this.

Computers were expensive in 1996. Some internet providers still charged by the
hour.. I got a 14.4 connection using my friends dial-up info from the
university. I paid 200 dollars for my modem.

So the barrier to entry to the internet was steep back then. So ordering pizza
was a novelty. Computers were wildly expensive, internet was by the hour, and
slow.

So might as well just pick up the phone and be done with it in two minutes.

Back to Bitcoin.. Don't say it is just like the internet. The internet was
hard in 1996. I can drop a five on Coinbase and get Bitcoin, but I don't want
to because it is stupid.

~~~
merpnderp
I wonder what the internet would look like if people still had the since of
awe, wonder, and appreciation of what exactly is going on when we connect to
the internet. I can remember being a small child, 6 or 7, and connecting to
the internet in the 80's and joining a chat room full of adults who were
professionals, talking about the problems of doctors, engineers and
financiers. It was absolutely amazing and I couldn't get enough. And then I
blew through my 30 minute allowance the first month and my parents cancelled
"the internet" after a $500+ phone bill.

------
bovermyer
This article was already talked about six days ago here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21320814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21320814)

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
The link was even showing as visited. I kept refreshing my browser because I
thought my cache was stuck!

------
quickthrower2
I find what I like most about ordering pizza online is that you are looking at
a menu that calculates the cost and lets you put together the order. Then
instead of having to then call someone up and read it out to them, you click
ORDER and you are done.

The bad bit about using DOMINOS website is the shitty popups and 'you want
this?' 'you want that?' yum-cha style experience that wastes a lot of time.

~~~
mNovak
I like being able to google for coupon codes. Trial and error doesn't go over
so well on the phone.

------
cbanek
Now I'm wondering if the people that did the pizza ordering scene in _The Net_
read this article. It does the same thing with the pizza design and showing
the toppings.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CnWs8jDbXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CnWs8jDbXo)

------
Jedd
The year before, I think just after we'd seen Mosaic / glimpsed the future, a
colleague had observed that 'one day soon you won't have to hang up to order
pizza'. (Most of us were on dial-up back then.)

Not flying-car level of techno-prophecy, but prescient in a way I didn't
immediately pick up -- ADSL / cable improved our speed, but the significantly
larger impact was from having always-on Internet access.

------
Razengan
When you see online written with a hyphen you know it's from the 90s.

~~~
acheron
Sierra was called “On-Line Systems” in 1979, and “Sierra On-Line”, with the
hyphen, starting in 1982. Definitely not a 90s thing.

~~~
Razengan
Yes, I should have said 90s or earlier.

------
contingencies
Awesome UX for pizza ordering in Tomsk, Siberia [http://www.xn--
80aaa4abubjt5ea.xn--p1ai/](http://www.маминапицца.рф/)

------
bernierocks
I remember buying a digital tablet of sorts at that time..I can't remember the
name of it. It was a startup that sold them as a glorified web browser (and
eventually went out of business because many hobbyists did just that and got
rid of all the advertisements), but there was a way to root it and install
Linux.

This device had the ability to order pizzas through Pizza Hut. I tried it once
and it worked pretty well.

~~~
improv32
Perhaps you're thinking of the i-Opener?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener)

------
hunter2_
We hyphenated "teen-agers" back then? It's well known that hyphenations tend
to be temporary, but that one is news to me.

------
elif
After thinking we were in the golden era of food delivery, getting food in
45-60 minutes, I was recently blown away.

In major cities like Tokyo and Osaka, I had food in my hands in as little as
18 minutes after pressing "order" with an average around 25 minutes.

The software (ubereats) is the same, the difference is in restaurant
efficiency and cultural norms.

------
chadlavi
Really makes you feel humble about anything you might say about emerging tech
today.

~~~
jsight
Or the opposite of that, since so much of what was said in the article is
basically true. Ordering pizza via the internet wasn't a big deal. Getting the
customizations across correctly, OTOH, made a huge difference, and every pizza
ordering site now uses interactive ordering processes similar to what the
author described.

~~~
jdnenej
And yet I still end up just calling the pizza place by phone since it's easier
than navigating a slow and awkward UI and having to enter my payment details
rather than paying on pickup.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Where I live I stick to using one of the two dominant platforms for ordering
food. The UI is half-decent, but more imporantly, it's the same no matter
which restaurant you source the order from. That's a relief compared to the
garbage individual pizza places put on-line.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Does it remember your payment details? That would make it a win all by itself.

~~~
TeMPOraL
AFAIK it can, though I don't use it - I don't trust these sites _that_ much.
Web flow of paying with my bank account is fast enough, and with recent
popularization of a mobile payment system, the flow can be as fast as pulling
out my phone, PIN-authing to my bank app, typing a six digit number shown on
my phone into a web form, and confirming the purchase on the phone. Takes 30
seconds.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm glad there's a safe way to do it. But that honestly does sound pretty
complicated...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Perhaps the fault of my description. It _is_ really simple. They payment
process with BLIK (the mobile payments system) boils down to: select you want
to pay with BLIK on the merchant's site[0], type a six digit number into a
box, press OK, press OK on the phone. An extra speed bump is involved with
knowing what number to type - it's a randomly-generated token with 3-minute
expiry time; to get it, you need to login to your bank's app. All the apps I
use (perhaps all of them in Poland) offer a simplified login flow here anyway;
for me, it's "click the bank icon, click BLIK, type 4 digit PIN, see the six-
digit token".

It really is fast and easy[2] enough that it's become my default payment
method in Poland, but honestly, prior to that, I kept going through the
slightly more involved flow described in [0]. I really don't like giving my
card details out, especially that at least three large e-commerce sites I did
give those details to can pull money out of my account with zero confirmation
or notice beyond me clicking the "buy!" button on the site, so I assume a
criminal with access to that data could do it too (and it's a debit card, so I
can't exactly do a chargeback).

\--

[0] - Or with one of the intermediaries[1] that you know handles it, which
without mobile payments I'd be using anyway. The intermediary lets you turn
what would be "give your card details to the merchant/payment processor" flow
into "login to your bank directly through your bank's login page to just
authorize a transfer request from one of your accounts" one. The nice thing
about it is that a) it's faster (I remember my bank credentials, not my card
number), b) the whole is is PUSH, not PULL - I send them money, c) it's not
tied to a card; I can pay from cardless accounts, and d) the merchant doesn't
get my card number or account details. The UI flow is simple too, there's a
string of redirects and prefills that make a payment with the intermediary
just a few clicks, a login, and some 2FA thrown in the middle.

[1] - Like these guys:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayU).

[2] - And safe! When you can get improvement on all three of the trade-off
triangle, it only shows how much the older system sucks.

------
mlang23
This would have been inherently inaccessible to people with visual
disabilities. Besides: 5 years later, I ordered the first pizza in my
hometown. It never arrived. Gotta love the new trends of the Internet.

------
newman8r
Being able to order a pizza via a new technology is a humorous benchmark.
Reminds me of the first pizza ordered with bitcoin.

The next big one might be the first person to order a pizza with a brain
implant.

------
AptSeagull
>"Fundamentally, there’s not much difference between ordering a pizza over the
phone and ordering one on-line. "

Except for dealing with people, friction is constant

------
kbos87
Judging by the performance of Grubhub’s stock today, this headline was spot
on, and seeing it here on HN is utterly ironic :)

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/JMFbi](http://archive.is/JMFbi)

------
jammygit
Does anybody else still get 30 minute delivery guarantees? I haven’t seen one
of those in 10 years

~~~
ripdog
As I understand it, they were pulled because employees would drive in a very
unsafe manner in order to meet the guarantee and not get penalized/chewed out
by their boss. I think somebody died...?

~~~
berbec
Yes. There was a lawsuit after a fatality. The delivery driver was a witness
against Domino's.

They now have a satisfaction guarantee. If you call and say it was too slow,
you'll be calmly told they don't offer a time guarantee, but if you were, for
example, dissatisfied with your oder, you get free pizza.

------
dfukuba
Some are including games and entertainment with their pizza buying experience
;) [https://garfieldeats.com/](https://garfieldeats.com/)

