Waiter.com
in the News
"It’s 2p.m., your blood sugar’s low and lunch looks like
the vending machine – again. There must be a better way, you think warily
as you drop quarters into the machine and push G-3 for the Pretzel Combos.
In fact, there is. Waiter.com, a Web
site founded by a pair of Bay Area entrepreneurs, lets you order meals
from participating local eateries with just a few mouse clicks."
San
Francisco Chronicle
February 4,
1997
"If you’ve ever been stricken with a growling stomach
15 minutes into the noontime rush, you might appreciate the online service
offered by [Waiter.com].
No waiting in lunch-crowd lines or
dealing with surly short-order cooks. Just find the Web site, sign on and
drool at the possibilities—sandwiches, pizzas, pastas. Then order your
meal, noting when you want to pick it up. In the spirit of the Internet,
the service is absolutely free."
Stanford
Magazine
July/August
1996
"You’re at work and craving a pineapple pizza, potstickers,
and a chocolate malt (shaken, not stirred). Don’t get up! Click on [Waiter.com],
a new on-line restaurant ordering service that lets you order take-out
from your computer."
Gentry
February/March
1996
"…it’s almost impossible to grab a quick bite to eat
during a hectic day. But with the creation of [Waiter.com],
you may never have to wait in long lunch-hour lines again. Now you can
just point, click and eat…"
The
Davis Enterprise
November 3,
1996
"Sometimes the best ideas come from people totally outside
of the restaurant industry. And so, proving once again that necessity is
indeed the mother of invention, a busy computer technologist named Craig
Cohen has developed [Waiter.com]
the first on-line ordering system for take-out food."
Restaurant
Business Magazine
February 10,
1996
"The computer prompts the user through the ordering process,
even suggesting side dishes that might be ordered.'"
The
Chicago Tribune
May 23, 1997
BACKGROUND
"Little did [Craig] Cohen
and [Michael] Adelberg, both 29 and living
in Los Altos, have [Waiter.com] in
mind when they were growing up in Long Island. They graduated from M.I.T.
and Stanford’s Graduate School of
Business together. This offbeat tale of entrepreneurship began when
Cohen, a vegetarian (as is Adelberg), wondered whether he could fax an
order to Togo’s Eatery… from his desk
at Sun Microsystems in Mountain View,
where he was designing chips. 'I was told they had a fax but only to communicate
with their 20 some odd other locations, and they didn’t deliver. That reply
set met to thinking,' said Cohen, who at 15 co-founded Star Software. A
computer game company, it developed Candy-Man, an action game for Commodore
Computer."
The
San Francisco Examiner
February 16,
1996
"The first restaurant dining guide that allows Web-surfing
gourmands to place pick-up or home delivery orders on-line has opened for
business in cyber-space."
Nation's Restaurant News
April 29,
1996
"[Waiter.com] is
an Internet company devoted to connecting restaurants to the Internet community.
Founded in 1994, the company is headquartered in San Jose, CA… Restaurants
need only to have a fax machine in each location to be part of the Waiter.com
service. The company manages the entire online ordering process, including
the translation of paper menus into interactive Internet menus and the
transmission of orders to the appropriate locations. Thousands of hungry
customers have used the Waiter.com
service to quickly and accurately place their takeout and delivery orders.
The web site also contains location maps, hours of operation, special promotions
and interactive menus for over 1000 restaurant locations…"
Food Service
Pro
1997
"What do Boston
Market, Chili’s Grill &
Bar, TOGO’s Eatery and World
Wrapps have in common? All have made their complete menus available
for online ordering over the internet on the World Wide Waiter web site
at www.waiter.com."
Chef
July 1997
"[Waiter.com] processes
online orders from more than 1,000 restaurants
in 12 states."
ThirdAge.Com
February 5,
1998
FEATURES
"Waiter.com serves
up every restaurant within striking range of your area code, complete with
menus and maps."
The
Web Magazine
April 1997
"[Waiter.com] will
even send e-mail reminders that it’s time
to eat."
San
Jose Mercury News
April 10,
1997
"[Waiter.com] includes
menus and prices, and has a function to store
previous choices, so that the next time you order your favorite 42-topping
pizza, you can do it even more quickly."
San
Francisco Chronicle
January 5,
1996
"[Waiter.com] contains
full menus and prices and has the ability to save what you ordered previously.
So if you like your sandwich made a special way, you can just call up your
previous order and send it again…"
The
Davis Enterprise
November 3,
1996
ADVANTAGES
"…you can walk into Togo’s
or Boston Market, avoid the
crowd and in a few minutes, you’re off and running again. It’s really that
simple. Upon ordering from Boston Market last week, the meal was prepared
and waiting under a heat lamp, packaged and ready to go."
The
Davis Enterprise
November 3,
1996
"…diners can order take-out without ever leaving the comfort
of their computers."
The
San Mateo County Times
February 6, 1996
"Discounts and cash prizes
are awarded for using this free service."
Scene
at SRI
January 8,
1996
"…the idea is Simon simple. Punch in the address on the
Internet (http://www.waiter.com), and
you get a menu of restaurants, broken down by types of cuisine, everything
from pizza to Thai."
San
Francisco Examiner
February 16,
1996
CUISINE
"You’re surfing the Internet around lunchtime (I won’t
tell your boss) when you come across descriptions of Indian food. There’s
'spicy vegetable balls in delicately blended sauce' and 'pieces of lamb
in delightfully spiced creamy sauce.' With a few keystrokes, you order
vegetable malai kofta and lamb pasanda from Sue’s
Indian cuisine, the first Indian restaurant from the Mountain view/Los
Altos area to go on-line on [Waiter.com]"
Palo
Alto Weekly
December 29,
1995
"The selections available from [Waiter.com]
include Chinese, pizza, sandwiches, Indian, sushi, Italian, Californian
and Caribbean. To tap into such a variety, World Wide Waiter has teamed
up with restaurants such as Le
Boulanger, Hobee’s, Togo’s,
Round Table Pizza, Florentine
Restaurant and Pasta Market, Rock
‘n’ Tacos, Golden Wok, Mango
Café and others to offer the free, interactive service which
lets consumers order up using their computers."
Palo
Alto Daily News
December 18,
1995
Audio
Clips
KVON
Radio - Napa [.au 930K]
February 2, 1997
KSDO Radio - San Diego
[.au 1.1M]
February 10, 1997
Additional articles
include:
ComputerWorld,
August 31, 1998
Takeout Business,
March 15, 1998
Thirdage.com,
March 24, 1998
The California Restaurant
Association, April 1, 1996
Information Week,
June 3, 1996
San Jose
Mercury News, July 10, 1996
The
Palo Alto Weekly, March 26, 1997
The
Stanford Daily, April 29, 1997
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