There's a longstanding tradition, in big American cities, of eating restaurant food at home. Often as "take-out" but especially as "delivery." If you live in Noo Yawk, your lobby is probably filled with take-out and delivery menus (Thai, Indian, vegan gluten-free pizza). Then, in most urban areas, said deliveries are made by the actual restaurant that prepares the food. Seattle, not so much.
A friend of mine who's fine with take-out won't consider delivery because, he contends, you don't know what sort of weird stuff those strangers might do to your order. That's why BiteSquad, for one, provides its own plastic bags to the restaurants whose food it delivers and makes sure they're stapled shut.
Quick digression: Most restaurants (well, maybe not chain pizzerias) HATE "to go" orders. They plop themselves into the middle of the kitchen's work flow (carefully orchestrated by servers talking to real, live, paying customers); they sit on the pass forever, waiting for pickup; when the driver does arrive, no one's around to explain that the kitchen had to sub plain rice; if it's a regular customer coming in for the pick-up, they don't tip (and, if they do, whoever takes the money doesn't send the tip directly to the kitchen).
Want to cook your own dinner? Safeway, among others, will deliver whatever ingredients you like (but you have to have a sense of how to assemble a meal, which requires a bit of culinary knowledge). Want someone to deliver a box of ingredients? There's Munchery and Blue Apron, among others; they drop of a box of goodies selected by a professional chef, along with instructions. And if you prefer having a professional chef do the cooking in your own home (for a party, let's say), Kitchenbug will be glad to send someone over.
Now, if it's a week night and you want something more adventurous than pizza, you can just go online and find out which neighborhood spots offer delivery. But in the end, you're still going to be dependent on the good will of strangers to show up at your door with a box or bag of edible, food-like substances.
When it comes to lunchtime deliveries downtown, it's a crowded field. As you can imagine there are storefronts that specialize in dropping off a sandwich and bag of chips to business clients. And even here, in the five-and-dime realm of the sandwich shop, there's skullduggery: rogue operators who pretend to be a real restaurant.
Says Terresa Davis, with two legit restaurants, "These guys are super brazen. They have a fake website set up for Steelhead Diner which has repeated unauthorized use of our trade name, and many pages of content about us containing outdated menus, incorrect operating hours, and general misinformation. On top of that the site is very poorly designed with awful photography, lots of spelling errors, no punctuation etc." The worst part of this is that Steelhead doesn't even do to-go orders, as seafood does not lend itself to traveling.
Davis's second restaurant, Blueacre, is located across the street from the Federal Courthouse and gets a substantial rush at midday. But her real secret is a thriving lunchbox business, complete with online ordering. Safer and tastier.
In Belltown, David Meinert won't even touch take out. "Our restaurants don't work with 3rd party delivery apps like Postmates. We don't do delivery on purpose (except Mario's and we do that ourselves). The drivers don't work for us and we have no control over what happens with your food between our business and you. They don't have food handlers permits which are normally required by King County Health for delivery people who handle your food. And, the menus on their sites are incorrect. So, if you order food from us via postmates or any other 3rd party app, it won't be delivered."
Meinert's conclusion: "Sorry. But we do love you. See you in person soon!"
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