Progress. Everything delivered with the touch of a button. Choices everywhere. Everything there is to desire is right in front of you. And in most cases it is delivered for free \u2013 I mean free as in: no extra fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During my trip to Hangzhou, for the very first time I decide to join the sprawling online food ordering community. My app of choice is Dianping. I stare at an endless list of food. I’m hungry but I don’t know what I’m craving for. Whatever I type in, dozens of options pop up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This needs a strategic approach. First I try blockbusters like \u201cfried rice\u201d or \u201cfried noodles\u201d, then I try \u201ccauliflower\u201d. It’s all useless. Isn’t it already difficult to choose from a menu when sitting inside one<\/em> restaurant? Choosing from all the menus of all restaurants in the city does not improve the situation. Despair kicks in, I put my phone down for a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ll make a second attempt. Once again I scroll through the lists of the restaurants. Meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, carbohydrates, desserts, soft drinks. Oh my, it all starts to look similar now. I have to decide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What could be wrong with any random portion of fried noodles? Bam, I’ll pick one that’s closest to the hotel. 20 minutes later my phone rings. Food is at my doorstep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This food delivery platform makes me think. The whole city as a customer. Restaurants cook what they wish. No physical, cultural, financial obstacles of a neighborhood. At the same time: millions of critical customers with virtually the same taste. Without giving any personal feedback, they eat behind the device from they ordered the food. Looking for their next purchase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is culinary innovation stimulated with such a platform? Is there a need for this at all? Can these questions be broadened? Will a dimension be gained or will one be lost?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Written on April 17, 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Progress. Everything delivered with the touch of a button. Choices everywhere. Everything there is to desire is right in front of you. And in most cases it is delivered for free \u2013 I mean free as in: no extra fees. During my trip to Hangzhou, for the very first time I decide to join the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orangebooklet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.squaredant.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}