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Comment by wheybags | Hacker News Reader

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.

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The big advantage for online ordering is that it removes the time pressure of being on a phone call with a busy live human being. This not only saves the store labor costs, but also increases sales - the time pressure defaults "do I want X" decisions to "no", and given the laxer pace of online ordering, people tend to spend more.

A lot of chains did centralized call-taking and modems to send the order right to a triplicate dot matrix printer fairly early on. With a fax backup I guess.

It also helps HQ stop under-the-table sales, or blocking the phone lines when they’re busy.

I think a place I use still has its orders print on that.

And I would think it prevents mistakes in ordering. Via the phone (a pizza shop etc is not generally very quiet) I often got the wrong order (but not completely wrong; chicken instead of pepperoni, not pasta instead of pizza) and/or delivered to the wrong address etc.

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).

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.

In the EU, yep. I remember in Austria having to withdraw "80" so I wouldn't get stuck with yet another 100 EUR note. You get used to finding the ATMs that let you get the smaller note sizes, because damn I hate being the jerk in the group that forces the waiter to break up your 50 or 100

I've used plenty of ATMs that didn't get the no bills larger than $20 memo. I haven't gotten a $100 out of an ATM, but plenty of $50s. Enough that for quite a while, I'd request $80, instead of $100, because it's less than what I want, but it will definitely be in bills I can use; $120 sometimes worked, if you knew the machine wouldn't mix denominations.

I remember as a kid in the early 90s cashiers would hold $100 bills up to the light to make sure they were real. But there's been so much inflation since then... when will we stop treating $100 bills so carefully?

Given the number of central banks worldwide that are interested in phasing out higher value notes completely...

$100 is still over 13x the federal minimum wage (i.e. a non-trivial amount of money for someone working at or near minimum wage), so I doubt anytime soon.

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.

I can't remember an ATM that I've used in the US that dispensed anything other than $20 bills, in a very, very long time.

In Boston, in the mission hill neighborhood, I was really surprised that the Bank of America ATM handed out $10 bills instead of $20 ~5-6 years ago and that was the only ATM I've encountered that does that.

That said, it seems like all of the Bank of America and TD Bank ATMs I use in Boston are starting to let you choose the bills you want on screen. Was recently in Montreal and had the same experience there too so I'm guessing that's what ATMs are trending towards.

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.

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.

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.

Vegas, baby! Las Vegas ATMs give you $100 bills. That's the only place I've ever seen it, though.

(Maybe Atlantic City, too. I can't remember...)

My usual ATM only has $20 bills or above!

Wells Fargo ATMs give you the choice of $50's or $20's depending on how much cash you're getting.

In Singapore I get 100 SGD bills from the ATM. (That's about 75 USD.)

I think they have options for smaller bills, too.

In Poland, the lowest you can reliably get from an ATM is 100 PLN (roughly $25, or 3x the pizza's worth). Many ATMs allow withdrawing 50 PLN. Very rarely, you can find an ATM that lets you withdraw 20 or even 10 PLN.

(Also, note that 10 PLN is the smallest bill we have, below that we switch to coins - 5, 2 and 1 PLN. Our ATMs don't handle coins.)

German ATM regularly spit out 50€ notes and depending on how much you draw, 100€ notes.

I can't even draw less than 50€ on most of them because some banks apparently have a "minimum draw amount" for my card.

While some ATMs have limits like that, there are many that let you select a custom amount - I regularly withdraw amounts like 45€ or 95€ to make sure I get some smaller bills.

I'm using a CC from an Internet-bank to withdraw without fees from any ATM. But apparently some banks do not like whatever contract they have with mine about that, so they want me to draw at least 50€, very rarely an ATM will even completely refuse to pay out anything.

I also use a CC from a bank that does not have a presence in my town to withdraw. I think it just depends on the ATM.

Yep. I flaked out the other week and didn't stop by the ATM before the weekend. Near the end of my run on Saturday, I stopped at a Bank of America ATM. I will admit that it offered me the chance to specify denominations, and I didn't take it up. I was quite surprised to get a $100 bill.

[edit] This was in Washington, DC.

In my Southern EU country, pizza delivery drivers carry a mobile (GPRS) card payment reader. I never understood why they didn't catch on in the other EU countries I've lived in.

IME in Poland, they sometimes do, but you have to ask for it specifically (and sometimes they forget). There's probably one spare terminal for the whole group of drivers.

Used to be normal in Denmark, but it's so much easier to prepay.

German pizza chain Joey's used to do that, and I always found it to be a mediocre user experience.

If you pay online, you know if your payment cleared right away. With these GPRS card readers, you wouldn't know until the driver has arrived, and frequently the readers wouldn't work for one reason or another. Of course, if you wanted to pay by card, you usually didn't have cash either, so then the driver would have to phone their shop and ask what to do, and it was just a general hassle.

They've since been acquired by Dominos and offer online PayPal/credit card payment and it's much more convenient.

How do you tip the delivery guy then?

It'd be easier if that's just factored into the price.

I kinda prefer to put cash in someone's hand. That way companies with stellar labor practices like Uber cannot mess with their other payment.

>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 may be in the minority but I find this feature quite useful. As someone whose is a more visual learning person, having the ability to virtually see how my product will turn out makes it easier for me to make choices. Instead of thinking about if item X and Y go together, it gives me a better idea of how it may taste when I see them stacked on top of each other. I know X tastes like this, so seeing them next to each other, it may allow me to better think if tastes will work together.

We also can’t forget about people who may not be able to read properly. Instead of worrying what they’re ordering, they just make it look like what they want. (somewhat of an extreme case but possible)

So while I agree this small design is not a high priority for UX designers, I do think not having it would be somewhat of an accessibility barrier for some users.

It also could allow you to do things not normally possibly like 2/3 pepperoni to 1/3 cheese vs halves. Or a design like a flag made out of pepperonis or a heart on Valentine's Day. I would pay more for the ability to make custom designs.

I mostly like being able to see the price calculations as I order. In the restaurant it’s always unclear if the extra cheese or whatever is going to cost you.

I think order accuracy is an advantage of online ordering as well. It removes the chance that somebody mishears you, etc.

There’s this deli we sometimes order bagels and bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches on weekends we are feeling lazy and want to sleep in. Often I’ll order a “Starbucks Frappuccino” with it. About 30% of the time lately my bag has a pack of “Starburst” in it. We have a few packs in the cupboard just sitting there as a reminder of the illiterate person who happens to pack our breakfast here and there.

UberEats is maybe a good confirmation of this. Their interface for options like toppings is pretty shit, but nobody seems to care. They just figure it out.

Tony and Alba's Pizza in Mountain View had various specials with discounted prices like "Ala Gilroy" with pepperoni, garlic, jalapenos, and bacon, and then you could add extra individual toppings on any pizza at a flat rate. (Their menu and pricing model may have changed since 1990.)

https://www.yelp.com/biz/tony-and-albas-pizza-and-pasta-moun...

Ben Stoltz's original DevGuide/XView/X11 version of PizzaTool and also my TNT/NeWS version both had pizza order optimizers, so if you put together a basic "Cheese" pizza with individual toppings clams, pepperoni, garlic, jalapenos, and bacon, it would optimize it to an "Ala Gilroy" with extra clams, which saved you money.

There was nothing special users had to do (or even know about) to optimize the order: You could just select a pre-configured style or basic "Cheese" from the style drop-down, then click on and off the checkboxes to toggle toppings, and it would automatically reselect the most efficient base pizza style in the style drop-down, to automatically minimize the price.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...

Date: Tue, 28 May 91 19:25:45 PDT From: Paul Simons To: UNIX Today Subject: Pizzatool 4/29/91

Editor UNIX Today:

We the following Sun engineers would like to make a historical clarification regarding the article entitled, “Any Way You Slice It, Sun’s Pizzatool Is Food For Thought” in the April 15 issue of UNIX Today. The original idea of ordering food from the workstation was conceived way back in 1989 by David LaValle who is now at NeXT. The original fully functional implementation of ordering food thru the workstation was “Pizzatool” developed by Ben Stoltz using Sun’s DevGuide. The features that were present in that original version included price optimization, pop-up preconfigured pizza menu, fully selectable ingredients, as well as the fax hook-in to fax an order to Tony and Alba’s. Fax capability courteousy of Ed Un. Don Hopkins subsequently reimplemented this original version of pizzatool in PostScript for the NeWS toolkit and added the WYSIWYG spinning popup pizza which provided a preview of the final cooked pizza.

This letter in no way represents the views, product plans, or announcements of Sun Microsystems and is only the opinions of the engineers who witnessed this historic event. :-)

Sean English, Dave Evans, Don Hopkins, Paul Simons, Ben Stoltz, Ed Un.

Any Way You Slice It, Sun's PizzaTool Is Food For Thought

https://spaf.cerias.purdue.edu/Yucks/V1/msg00044.html

>And in yet another advancement for the free exchange of software, Sun is offering PizzaTool source without charge. [...]

>He said the PizzaTool even has a built-in cost-cutting feature that allows it to chec prices of the toppings you have selected, and try to build a cheaper pizza using a price list from your local pizza parlor. In its current incarnation, the PizzaTool will take an order and send it via E-mail to an address on the Pizza Server. At Sun, the server then sends a fax order to Tony and Alba's pizza place in Mountain View.

I’d rather order by command line. But more seriously, if I could have minimized order interface that’d be best. I want speed and ease.

How much would you be willing to pay for a CLI to Pizza Hut or Dominoes? Its obvious that they will never implement that, so the only way would be a 3rd party and they would probably have to charge on top.

I could see this as some sort of cash-back arbitrage business, where the vendor charges a 5% premium, plus use a 3% cash-back card to cover any remainder of the processing/interchange fees.

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