Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online
forbes.com
forbes.com
They even went in and updated unclaimed listings on yelp, google, Foursquare, etc. and put their site.
That would be fine if the pizza shops were on board with this. But none of the shops I order from had any clue their orders were being hijacked. Oh, and Slice charges more than if you ordered directly from the shop.
I see this in some small shops. Their order counter is crammed with an iPads for each delivery service usually (4-6). Just to run ONE APP. It's ridiculous with what they have to put up with.
Seems risky for a startup "integrator" (hypothetical company who would solve this) to have their business depend on providing specific integrations per startup + POS system. You would need to keep tabs on any changes ea. of the companies like Slice, GrubHub etc. made from both a service standpoint, and a hardware standpoint, right?
To top it off, it would just be one more layer ontop of this, so how would the company make money? Doesn't seem to solve the Pizza guys problems.
Or perhaps you just generally meant, why hasn't someone built a more modular POS unit that would work with any of these guys. That I have no idea about.
We (and our competitors) are partnering up with Grubhub, Eat24, etc. to solve the hassle of multiple tablets at the counter. Orders can just flow seamlessly from Grubhub's web site / app to our software (which the restaurant already uses), and the restaurant staff just has to confirm the order.
Unfortunately the margins all pretty thin, and ultimately you try to make money off payment processing.
My guess is that the companies would otherwise have trouble enforcing their cuts if the customer chooses to pay when they pick up
That is why I wonder, if these food delivery apps are actually going to be a boon or bane for small mom and pop shops. Sure, they bring in customers but if it comes at the cost of reducing margins it is not good.
Many of the smaller shops might end up going out of business - either because of reducing margins or because they can't find customers later - all their customers might actually expect them to provide service through these apps.
This is their site: http://kestepizzeria.com/en/home/
Not to be confused with the Slice site, which is linked on Google Maps (https://www.kestepizzavinonewyork.com/)
Then he’s in the wrong market or marketing his product wrong. Lots of cities put a premium on well-made pizza over cheap, “I’m drunk” pizza.
Man, that is terrible. This is a major problem with capitalism, the optimisation doesn't work when it gets corrupted with marketing - in theory these frontends would compete until they were making practically nothing above their costs, in practice the one(s) with the most capital behind them (or best marketing department) will win and leech the money away from the producers and to the people who commissioned a clever app. It all seems pretty evil to me.
"growth hacking"
There needs to be a new movement like the eco or fair trade stuff, where you know that the owners get a fair deal. I’m sure there is a market for that
"Nice pizza shop you got there. Be a shame if someone was to burn down its search engine rankings and hold unclaimed profiles to ransom".
He showed us command line tools that you could use to order and track your pizza, so you could set it up in cron and then have it tell you when the pizza is about to show up.
He told us about all the load testing they had to do before the Superbowl, because unlike any regular weekend, where there is a burst of order activity around dinner, the orders weren't spread across time zones. During the Superbowl, everyone ordered their pizza to show up at halftime, regardless of their time zone.
So yeah, Dominoes has been working on this for a long time, and they are way ahead. Their only real disadvantage is that their HQ is in Detroit, so all their best engineers get pulled away to the coasts for better paying jobs (like my friend did).
http://blog.pizzahut.com/dont-miss-a-second-of-march-madness...
"Genius!"
Perhaps it's the fact that Detroit is not known as a nice place to live that's the problem?
I get that certain types of firms just don't sound like they have interesting work though.
Might I suggest GAFMAN to be even more comprehensive? And if Dropbox gets big enough, we can make it DGAFMAN.
There is a whole generation of Albanians that moved in Italy (after the 90s), learned the trade there and eventually moved in NYC and opened their places.
Fun fact number 2: A lot of greek places in NYC are actually operated by albanians. (for the same reasons as above).
The main reason is marketing: People in the US know italian and greek food very well, but they are not familiar with Albanian food (which is just as good), so it is much easier for Albanians to market/open a italian/greek restaurant.
Il Duce ha sempre ragione!
Given that plenty of Greeks are, to put it mildly, less than fond of Albanians, is there a lot of tension in the Greek Diner/Pizzaria run by Greeks, and those run by Albanians? I hope not, but I’d guess that there is.
Sure, there will be some greeks that don't like Albanians, for x or y reason, but it is not universal.
Also, there substantial number of greeks with Albanian origins: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvanites ) and Albanian and greek food is very similar as there has been a lot of cross cultural pollination.
Both Albania and Greece were part of the "same empires" for millennia. First the Roman Empire, then Byzantine Empire, then eventually the Ottoman Empire.
Even before that they were either in alliances, or fought each other. Alexander's the great mother was of Illyrian origins.
I think what happens is the restaurateurs see what's popular and figure they can pass for whatever other group it is. And the food is like software, you can learn another framework reasonably well if you have the fundamentals and a little experience.
Its also changed the flavor of many historic areas. In the 9th Street Italian Market, many of the shops have painted the eagle, snake and cactus on top of the ubiquitous Italian flags.
Another pizza place near where I used to work was run by an Irish guy, who then later sold it to a Chinese guy.
Oh, and my favorite pizza place near where I used to live was run by a Dominican guy.
I think that pizza place food is not really connected with Italians in the US any more; it's pretty much just become mainstream American. Though there is still a trend for them to have Italian names.
Oh that's too bad. There are a few Indian pizza places out here. Some are mostly Indian food on pizza dough, and some have embraced the hybrid (mozz + chicken tikka masala on dough). It's a great combination.
I think that pizza is probably a blind spot for many SF/SV startup people. Not surprised this startup is based in NYC.
Is there an avocado toast startup?
Edit: come to think of it I had vegan pizza in NYC a year and a half ago (and on other days while I was visiting, I had some non-vegan pizza). I wonder if it was at a pizza place run by Albanians.
Really? I found New York pizza to be pretty mediocre in general (Joe's on Bleecker is pretty good if you're okay with burnt dough). DNA Lounge's pizza is not known to be great though. Out here, Patxi's does a good deep dish vegan pie, and there are plenty of places to get a good New York style slice.
SF has good deep dish (Little Cesar and Paxtis), and maybe one good true Italian/wood/brick pizza in Northern Beach but that's it.
In NYC you have good pizza every other block (as well as crappy $1, or $2/slice type of places ). Once you try few places, you find which ones are good/legit, and stick with them, and avoid the crappy ones.
For pizza and bagels there is just no comparison between the two places.
But pizza? Your typical place in New York isn't a whole lot different from what you'd find at New York style places (e.g. Escape From New York, Serranos, Arinell's). The 99 cent chain isn't as bad as folks make it out to be IMO.
Out here you've got plenty of wood fired places 'authentic' and not (e.g. Zuni, Tony's, Una Pizza Napoletana, Pizzaiolo); Indian (Zante, Brother's); California (Zuni again, Goat Hill, Arizmendi / Cheese Board -- their sour dough puts puts anything I had in New York to shame); deep dish (Little Star, Patxi's, Zachary's); and, of course, Delfina.
The typical New York pizza isn't significantly different in overall quality than the stuff you find in the Bay Area. If you go looking for it you can find excellent pizza in New York I'm sure (but the same is true in the Bay Area).
That ain't pizza.
With that said, we're still nowhere on the level of NYC.
For Neopolitan, you've got Tony's (actual restaurant, not the takeout shop), Il Casaro, and Carmel Pizza Co. in the North Beach area. Elsewhere, you have A16.
Golden Boy is good pizza, but it's in its own category of American pizza.
> "We give our restaurants Indian names," the Bangladeshi manager of another Indian restaurant said, "because people in America know about India, and maybe they wouldn't come if we said we were from Bangladesh."
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/07/nyregion/the-star-of-bang...
Ditto with Jewish delis. One of my dad’s good friends shut a very successful deli down because the family wanted nothing to do with it.
There's always a Mercedes Benz in the parking lot.
My favorite slice by far is the marinara and sausage/meatball (the pizza on the background):
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipP3K30cRMfe41WljFJP...
The place is called "Stromboli Pizza" and is in the middle of East Village. When the weather is great is just grab a slice and sit down at the stools outside "The Bean", which is next door on 9th st.
Most pizzerias offer 10+ types of pizza. Pizza life is pretty boring in the US by comparison.
That may be part of it, but among people I know the majority of it is cost. A 16" pizza at most of our favorite spots ends up around $25. I can get a 14" 3 topping pizza at Dominos for $7.99.
The local pizza is great and we get it a couple times a month, but it's not 3 times better.
I might enjoy eating it ~2x or 5x as much as Dominos, but if it's not in the budget, the choice is between Dominos or no-pizza.
A few doors down at Harran, you can get a large lamb shish kebab in a box, with rice, salad, bread, chilli sauce, and cacik, for £6.50. And the salad and bread are both really good!
I think expensive food was just one of the defining traits of London, though.
Look for a grande cheese pizzeria if you don’t live in a good pizza area.
If Domino's is winning from convenience then perhaps the M&P product needs more help than their technology?
It was so light when they handed it over, I immediately opened it before signing the check. I remember the driver just looked at me, like Dang, that's a weird order. He didn't jump in with an apology or anything.
When I said I wouldn't pay for the pizza, he asked me to sign the receipt and said he would go back and bring me another pizza. I said that's not what a receipt is for... a receipt means you RECEIVED the product.
I am pretty sure that guy ate my pizza, and after I signed the receipt he would never have came back. I called the store to complain and they offered to send me a free pizza the next day, but it never came.
here companies with SEO skills are stiffing smaller shops and i cannot think of any better advice.
It is of course hard to do - basically the Teamsters were the only effective ones at it and they used ... unethical approaches - but i do think it's feasible.
Also this is the essence of the open source critical mass problem. Proprietary houses can afford the initial upfront investment to say make a pizza site but which non profit union exists to run an SEO operation to compete here?
Is this just a failing of small shops who are destined to be beaten if they don't grow? is this a failing of SEO at google who cannot distinguish between a local shop and a chain?
That's what I was thinking when I saw Sliceline... because venture capitalists already subsidize my transportation (cheap Uber) and movie tickets (Moviepass) why not subsidize my pizza?
It sounds from the comments that Slice is creating an intermediary where none existed before, by providing a service (acquire g and processing online orders) that's hard for any single restaurant to build at small scale. So when the first few restaurants sign up, it's incremental revenue for them. Over time, though, as every pizza place uses Slice, it's no longer a competitive advantage but expected.
I imagine that, at the early stages, those restaurants that adopt the model win at the expense of laggards. Over time the gains probably accrue to the middle man, with some gains going to consumers (who have a wider range of places to order from) and some losses to the restaurants (who end up competing with the whole extended neighbourhood, and giving margin to Slice for both incremental customers, and customers who would have bought direct before this whole thing started).
Is it because people are growing more adverse to the brief limited social interaction of a phonecall? Is it because people are placing very large and complex orders that are difficult to convey over the phone? (admittedly most of my orders are for a single pizza with two or three topping specified..) Is it because websites have more pictures that people find attractive?
Often times I can order a pizza over the phone using nothing more than three words "yes ... yes ... yes", in response to the questions "are you still at [address]", "same order as last time?", "cash?". Certainly a website can remember such details as well, but poking around at a webpage that remembers such details isn't nearly as straight forward in my mind as simply talking to a person for a few seconds.
Possible? Yes. Terrifying? Not even remotely.
I find this interesting because most places I call for carry out just take my order and name.
I then pay at the counter with my credit card when I pick it up.
- Online only or other coupons/deals are usually displayed
- Entire restaurant menu and other sides can be perused at my leisure and selected
- When ordering for multiple people can build a shopping cart of what is wanted by all and verify it's right before confirming order
- Phone calls feel rushed to me when I call in, like 'hurry up and order'
- I don't get put on hold on the phone
- fewer worries order will be put in wrong
- sometimes have a hard time understanding, due to noise, accents, bad connection
- sometimes in an environment where I need to be quiet
- just don’t like the phone
There's also the fact that at a couple of the local places, the staff don't speak English as a first language, which combined with the noise of the shop often leads to you repeating yourself or there being occasional mixups.
I can avoid the person at the register punching the wrong thing in, get a receipt on my phone, and not have to call several times in a row to get the teen working the register to pick up.
The phone call's easier if I know which restaurant I'm going to order from, which coupon I'll use, and everything I plan on ordering, but often those 3 things don't apply at the same time...and I still have to go online to find the place's phone number.
Online pizza ordering could be awesome, and good for pizzerias, because most of them are limited on phone staff at the times the most people order which can make the phone order process inconvenient (and filled with long hold delays) unless you avoid ordering at busy times which, by definition, lots of people don't.
OTOH, most online ordering systems for pizza seemed to designed for maximum UX horror, making calling a better experience even at busy times. But online ordering should be a win through asynchrony.
Try one of the touchscreen McDonald’s order kiosks. You need to navigate many dark patterns to order anything that isn’t a meal deal.
I mean, I know there's Little Caesars that has their super cheap medium pizzas, but they're super cheap for a reason and pizza seems like one of those things people are willing to pay a little more for, because quality can vary quite significantly.
I would never have a chain food app on my phone just from a privacy-suck standpoint. For example, here are the permissions the Dominos app wants on Android:
This app has access to:
Location
- precise location (GPS and network-based)
Phone
- directly call phone numbers
- read phone status and identity
Photos/Media/Files
- read the contents of your USB storage
- modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Storage
- read the contents of your USB storage
- modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Camera
- take pictures and videos
Microphone
- record audio
Device ID & call information
- phone status and identity
Other
- receive data from Internet
- view network connections
- pair with Bluetooth devices
- access Bluetooth settings
- full network access
- control vibration
- prevent device from sleeping
This summary of Slice's business feels like it ought to be generalizable to other industries. Anyone have other examples of companies trying to do something similar in different verticals? (s/Big Pizza/Big Floral, or something?)
Marketplaces are often a terrible deal for small businesses and small business owners know it, so there has to be some incredibly compelling benefit to being part of it for them to want to do it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sliceline
"The Slice App taking over, the real Pied Piper of Pizza!"
"This app has access to:
Identity: find accounts on the device, add or remove accounts
Contacts: (are you kidding me?!?!)
Location: precise location (GPS and network-based)
Photos/Media/Files: read the contents of your USB storage, modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Storage: read the contents of your USB storage, modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Camera: take pictures and videos
Wi-Fi connection information: view Wi-Fi connections
Other:
- receive data from Internet
- view network connections
- create accounts and set passwords
- full network access
- use accounts on the device
- control vibration
- prevent device from sleeping"
So, what they don't make on taking a slice of providers, they can make on selling marketing/demographic data.
Fake cheese, Fake chicken, Fake mushrooms (I was amazed at fake mushrooms) all put together onto a tasteless base.
Gives me the boke.
What is fake chicken? Do you want a live, breathing chicken?
A chicken breast today (not fed on chemical feed) is £8-£10 each from a decent butcher or a farm.
You can get chicken breast from a cheap supermarket 10 for £2.99.
These aren't the same thing.
Chicken fed on chemical feed is not "fake" chicken either. I can understand it doesn't live up to your expectations though.
What exactly do you think is on their pizza?
Analog Cheese, Water Pumped Chicken, Ultra Hydrated mushrooms.
If I am paying 3 pound for a pizza, I expect it to be shit. If I am paying 10 pound, I expect it to be reasonable.
More seriously, in America "cheese" is a term that's regulated. Cheez-wiz in a can is called something like "cheese product" because it can't legally be called "cheese". Surely this is the same in the UK too?
That doesn't make those things "fake."