Postmates: App Your Way to a Foodie’s Heart

This is a cool app, one definitely worth downloading if you’re with me, and believe that food is the way to anyone’s heart, but especially a foodie’s.

My dilemma: sending a birthday gift to my daughter, from Wilmington NC to NYC. On the day of, delivered to her office. And for less than fifty bucks, or so. Flowers? Meh. Not so much… a decent arrangement costs at least $100, and a bouquet is so… already done.

The thought of one of those huge chocolate chip cookies that were all the rage in 80s crossed my mind. I started Googling. As a foodie, I could do better, much better.

My solution: this great little app, PostMates. Download the PostMates app, set up your account, and voila, you have awesome access to food delivery.

Now, deliveries are not available in Wilmington, but you can grab a bike rider or a fleet-of-foot delivery person in more than four dozen major cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Portland, San Francisco and, yes, New York City. In North Carolina, you can get a PostMate in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham. Think of the possibilities. If you have people in those major cities, you can send a pasta dinner to sleep-deprived new parents, breakfast in bed to your mom, and a giant salad to your daughter studying for the bar on the other side of the country.

And, yes, something from a lovely little neighborhood bakery to your daughter, celebrating her birthday, right to her desk at her job in downtown NYC.

Here’s what you do:

1. Download the PostMates app, create your account, add your credit card
2. Choose a city
3. Browse the suggestions (delivery for some is as low as $2.99!) or use the search box at the top – I search “macarons” because I was PostMate-ing with intention
4. Select a restaurant – this is where I opened another browser and used Mapquest to make sure that my request wouldn’t be crazy, mapping the restaurant address to my daughter’s office
5. Scroll through the restaurant’s menu and build your order by clicking to add items to your cart
6. Go to the top right and check out
7. That’s it! Then watch your delivery person accept your order, make his or her way to the restaurant, then head out with your food delivery. When your order is delivered, you will be notified by the app, and given the option to tip.

Jamal, who picked up my daughter’s birthday macarons, actually called me from Bosie Tea Parlor to tell me that the flavors I had selected weren’t available, and read off my other choices. Then he said, “I’m on the way! These look great!”

Seriously, the notifications are great – you’ll get text messages, email confirmations, and you can watch your delivery in real time on the app itself. It’s like Uber, for food.

My only issue is that my “special instructions” were neglected, which means my note saying “Happy Birthday from Mom” was left off the delivery. She figured it out, obviously, but it would be a good idea to send a text message from your own phone directly to your recipient as soon as you get the delivery confirmation text from PostMates.

Have fun with happy foodie deliveries:
Postmates in the App Store
Postmates on Google Play

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