[PaulHoule]

I remember a long time ago when food apps were really new putting in an online order at a sub shop which is a well oiled machine. (The kind of place they'd write a business school case study about.)

A restaurant with absolutely excellent process for handling walk-in traffic can fail entirely faced with an occasional online order. In their case they made the sub half an hour before I requested it be ready and stuffed it in some corner where they couldn't find it.

In the last two years I've seen the small facilities run by Cornell Dining go from handling almost all in-person order to handling a large fraction (between 1/3 and 2/3) of online orders. In-person orders are handled by Kanban-style process where the people making the food take orders at they clear work-in-progress. I'm not really sure how they handle online orders that aren't gated by this. I suspect there are many indirect effects, for instance, I think because the traffic patterns are more complicated it would be easier to walk out without paying for your food. (On the other hand, I'm a member of a cohort of middle-aged people who complicate traffic flows by going into line to pay for food before it is ready because that's efficient.)

Anyhow, once I know a place is good for handling online orders I'm inclined to do so. But if I'm not sure I'm much more inclined to go in and do things the old fashioned way.