What app can i use to get food delivered to my house?

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How great it is to live in an age where you can get groceries and hot meals delivered right to your doorstep with the click of a button? Food delivery apps like Doordash and Seamless allow for you to order from a wider range of restaurants and across a wider distance range than most restaurants may organically offer, and grocery delivery apps like Instacart and Shipt save you trips to the grocery store.

The Good Housekeeping Institute is comprised of experts and editors who test tons of online shopping services and round up top-selling products to find the best. We're also constantly talking to leading experts about updated food handling and consumption advice to ensure we're ordering takeout in the safest ways possible. Paired with user reviews and online ratings, we used our categorical expertise to round up the best food delivery apps. When you choose your food delivery app, consider the following:

• Delivery fees: Most apps require a standard delivery fee, but some apps leave the fees to the individual restaurants you choose to order from. Note that some food delivery apps will also charge an extra service fee if you end up ordering from from a non-partner restaurant.
• Order minimum: Restaurants are typically in charge of the order minimum, but sometimes apps set their own minimum and charge you an additional fee if your order value doesn't meet the minimum.
• Accepted payment methods: Of course, most food delivery apps will accept major credit and debit cards, but some even accept Paypal or cash.
• User interface: Food delivery apps are meant for convenience and should aim to create a seamless shopping experience. Look for apps that let you search and browse with filters like menu price, food item, and user ratings. Some apps even let you track your orders in real time.
• Work practices: Whether you're a customer or a driver, it's important to know that the person handling your food is being treated well by their employers.

Here are the best food delivery apps of 2020, including the cheapest food delivery apps and the best apps for food service, vetted by Apple and Google Play App Store star ratings and online reviews:

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1

Best Overall Food Delivery App

2

Cheapest Food Delivery App

3

Food Delivery App with the Best Service

4

Best Food Delivery App for Groceries

5

Best Food Delivery App for Pre-Ordering

6

Best Food Delivery App for Gifts

7

Best Food Delivery App to Work For

9

Best Meal Delivery App

10

Best Food Delivery App for Amazon Prime Members

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Welcome to Ask Eater, a column from Eater SF where the site’s editors answer specific or baffling restaurant requests from readers and friends. Have a question for us? Submit your question in this form.

Dear Eater SF,

I know you already have a running list of restaurants that are still open for takeout or delivery, but I would particularly love a list of places that have their own delivery folks so I’m not putting money in the pocket of evil GrubHub or Uber. My husband is immunocompromised and we live in a small apartment, so unfortunately I’m not comfortable going out to pick up food at the moment.

Sincerely,

Hungry But Conflicted

Dear Hungry But Conflicted,

We feel you, HBC. One of the many, many infuriating things to worry about during the ongoing coronavirus crisis (apart from, you know, turning over the thought that things didn’t need to go nearly as poorly as they have) is the possibility that wealthy conglomerates like Amazon are the ones who will emerge from the pandemic even wealthier and more powerful than ever — all while small businesses in our neighborhoods shutter left and right. That’s why it’s great, whenever possible, to ensure your money is spent directly with small businesses — and why food delivery app companies like DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, and Uber Eats might give you qualms.

All these companies have long been at least somewhat problematic — for their ethically dubious practice of adding restaurants to their sites without permission, for their treatment of their workforce of contractors, and for the fact that even during this time when restaurants are most vulnerable, they’re still taking commissions that are as high as 25 to 30 percent.

That said, at this time when takeout and delivery are the only option, it’s a challenge to support restaurants if you’re trying to avoid the delivery apps altogether. A lot of places just don’t have the resources to run their own delivery operation. If you do order via one of apps, at a minimum, please, please, please tip your driver beyond generously. People are out there risking their health so you get that carton of chow mein!

Now to the meat of the question: While the options are a lot more limited, the good news is that there are some solid restaurants in the Bay Area that are doing their deliveries in house (or through non-app partnerships), though availability will obviously depend on where exactly you live — and some of them are even finding fun, creative ways to it.

There’s SoMa’s Deli Board, which is doing delivering its massive, East Coast-inspired sandwiches via bike messenger (!) — to anywhere in SoMa, FiDi, the Tenderloin, and the Mission.

If you like the idea of a Russian food truck pulling up to your house to drop off some piroshki or cabbage rolls, Kolobok is now doing home deliveries, with a $30 minimum order and a rotating schedule that they update on Instagram. (This week they’re hitting up San Francisco on Saturday and different areas of the East Bay each day of the week.)

You know who was doing delivery long before these apps were ever a thing? Chinese restaurants. Calling up your favorite neighborhood spot to see if they’re delivering is a good way to start. Just know that some places, like Beijing Restaurant in the Excelsior, will handle delivery in house if you order from them directly, even if they’re also listed on the delivery apps.

The good thing is that there’s a wide range of cuisines represented by the places that are doing their own delivery: At Prubechu, the Guamanian restaurant in the Mission, you just have to fill out a convenient online form to place a delivery order. In the East Bay, Kingston 11, the Jamaican mainstay in Uptown Oakland, is taking takeout orders for jerk chicken and oxtail stew by phone (510-465-2558) or email () and offers delivery for bulk orders — though chef Nigel Jones says he hasn’t set a minimum order level because he wants to keep the food accessible. And Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, the rosemary fried chicken specialist, is taking pre-orders for delivery on Saturdays and Sundays, all handled in house — only to Emeryville, Berkeley, and West Oakland, though they’re willing to travel further if it’s a large order.

Which is a good reminder: Plenty of restaurants that don’t normally handle delivery themselves are willing to do so if your order is large enough. At the Outer Sunset’s Sunset Deli, for instance, the minimum threshold is $100. Don’t want 10 super falafel wraps? This might be a good time to see if you can figure out a safe, socially distant way to split an order with a couple of neighbors.