Cadence Bambenek

Trying to actually sit down at a restaurant during lunch hours at work can be stressful.

There are so many steps you have to get to in a short period of time, from walking there to waiting for the check. Many people just grab a quick slice of pizza instead.

But there’s an app that is trying to make it a lot easier to get lunch at work. I heard about the app, Allset, through a friend living out in San Francisco. 

The company’s entire premise is to strip the dining experience of all worries. Its tagline is, “No more waiting for a table, food and check.” 

Through the app, you can make reservations and place your lunch orders ahead of time to ensure that you have a table, and that the meal is on said table within minutes of your arrival. The service also completely removes time spent waiting for the check by allowing you to pay for your meal in-app beforehand. 

The company launched its app to streamline the dining out experience in San Francisco last fall, but just rolled out an option to make restaurant reservations via a chatbot through Facebook Messenger earlier this week. For now, the service is available at over 150 restaurants in San Francisco, Palo Alto and New York City. I decided to give the newer platform a test run for lunch near my workplace in Manhattan.

When I opened up the platform in Messenger, I hit “Order Now” and was subsequently prompted to enter either an address or zip code.

From there, nine restaurants, all within a mile from our office address popped up. I scrolled to the right to survey the options.

All of the restaurants appear to be in the middle to higher-end price range. I really appreciated that the address and distance from my location of each restaurant was readily available.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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