bring me the food

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.