Fast Food Watch: Forget Online Ordering

Ah, the convenience of online or mobile ordering. It's like some dream of telepathy – I think of a Big Mac, and 20-something minutes later, it arrives upon my doorstep. If only this were true in Beijing.

Clearly McDonald's, KFC, and Pizza Hut are doing a big delivery business. Their bikes are all over the place, they have toll-free numbers, and the first two deliver 24-hour per day. That's all fine and good, as long as your address is in their system. And as for finding your address, good luck.

All three use similar systems that ask you to enter first your city, then your street. You then receive a Java menu drop down of, in some cases, dozens of addresses that require the user to scroll through and find theirs. This is a great system if you're a programmer or large fast-food conglomerate, but not if you're someone who would like to order food but has a lesser-known address. If the address doesn't match, the user is told that their address is not in the system and that the order cannot be completed. You could also just call, but that defeats the point of ordering online in the first place.

Needless to say, I didn't get any breakfast this morning.

Photo: the Beijinger