Lunch at Leeds Street Bakery, in happier times. Coffee, a small baguette, ham and cheese.
Lunch at Leeds Street Bakery, in hap­pi­er times.

So it’s been a long four weeks or so at Level 4 and at 11:59pm tonight we’ll be going to Level 3.

For some people this means they’ll be able to go back to work, with appro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions. For some oth­ers, the lucky ones, who were able to work from home dur­ing this peri­od, the change in Level will not mean a lot of day to day dif­fer­ence from Level 4.

There is, how­ever, one major change that many of us can now enjoy: and that is takeaway food.

There’s plenty of big chain food fran­chises ready to take your dol­lars from tomor­row – good for them – but they’re (mostly) not going any­where. As an altern­at­ive we’d recom­mend check­ing your favour­ite loc­al takeaways joint or, if you can, one of the large num­ber of res­taur­ants and cafes spin­ning up pickup and deliv­ery options.

All of them are going to need our sup­port to sur­vive the com­ing months.

If you have a favour­ite place it’s prob­ably best to check their web­site (or Face­book page) first and see what options they have. They will be keen to point you to the option that helps them the most.

Oth­er­wise there are a num­ber of dir­ect­or­ies to help with find­ing res­taur­ants that offer takeaway and deliv­ery options. Some I like are:

  • The Pan­dem­ic Pack group of ven­ues which includes the Leeds Street Bakery and Boquita – they will put togeth­er orders from sev­er­al res­taur­ants and deliv­er them to you;
  • Reg­ulr, a loc­ally made app which shows a list of the 20 40 or so cafes and res­taur­ants closest to your cur­rent loc­a­tion and lets you order, set a pickup time, and pay; and
  • Wel­ling­ton On A Plate’s dir­ect­ory of At Home res­taur­ants (if you want all of NZ cov­er­age try Dinefind or Eat­Loc­al)

While you could just use the oth­er deliv­ery apps you have on your phone – the UberEats, Deliver­Easy, Flamin­go­Food, On the Go, Menu­log and the like – most of these, while con­veni­ent, charge up to 35% com­mis­sion to the res­taur­ant as well as char­ging you for deliv­ery. Abso­lutely use these apps for dis­cov­ery but (once again) maybe check your chosen restaurant’s web­site to make sure they don’t also offer some oth­er option they’d prefer to use in get­ting their food to you.

For me: I’ll be hop­ing to get in a Little Pen­ang deliv­ery at some point in the next week or two… but first up for us is a big and some­what unusu­al treat: a cel­eb­rat­ory Level 4 exit din­ner on Wed­nes­day. I’ll be pick­ing up some takeaway din­ners from Hill­side Kit­chen and Tinakori Bis­tro, doing a con­tact­less deliv­ery of two of these meals to the kids’ grand­par­ents before head­ing home for a fam­ily meal with them via Face­Time.

It’s going to be great.