Thank you to Postmates for sponsoring this post!
Funny story: a few years ago, Matt and I were at a wedding with a bunch of my grad school friends. We had all just spent hours sweating up a storm on the dance floor and decided to order some late night food. The only thing we could think of that delivered was pizza. Matt said: “I have the Dominos app on my phone – we can use that!” Immediately after he said that he looked over at me all sheepish – turns out his secret dude routine was to order Dominos on weekends I was out of town. Lol!
He said he used their app simply because it was easy to use, but that he’d order healthier stuff if it was an option/just as easy. So when I was invited to try Postmates, a cool on-demand delivery platform that delivers ANYTHING anywhere, I figured this was the perfect way for Matt to broaden his home food delivery options a bit. 😉 Postmates is on web and mobile too! You can download it on the app store here. Use promo code fannetastic8 to get $10 in delivery (new customers only).
On Monday, Matt and I were both working from home. Matt had to be home because we had an electrician coming to do work that would take the entire day, and I decided to work at home, too, to keep him company. For lunch, we didn’t have much food on hand, we were craving different things, and we couldn’t leave the house together because of the electrician. Perfect opportunity to give Postmates a shot!
Postmates is currently in 40 major U.S. cities and growing, and it delivers whatever you need and want (food, groceries, toiletries, cold medicine, etc!) right to your door through their network of local couriers. You pay what you’d normally pay for the item, plus a delivery and service fee (and a tip, if you want).
The app was easy to use and we had fun perusing the options near us. Matt was thrilled to find one of his favorites, The Italian Store, was an option, and I was thrilled to see Sweetgreen was! This was especially awesome because the Sweetgreen near us is INSANE at lunch time – not only is there always a crazy long line, but you also have to circle around to find (and then pay for) parking, and in cold months when you can’t sit outside there’s not always space free inside. Perfect example of a time I’d use Postmates instead – totally worth the delivery fee to avoid that hot mess.
A few minutes later and we had ordered a sub for Matt from the Italian store and a bowl of goodness from Sweetgreen for me! The app was easy to use and I love that you could select substitutions/add ons easily, too. You can’t order from more than one location in a single transaction (e.g. you can get different items from Walgreens or a grocery store or different meals from one restaurant, but you can’t ask the same courier to bounce around to different restaurants/stores), so we just did two transactions which was easy and no big deal.
About 45 minutes later, just as the app predicted, both of our lunches arrived within minutes of each other! I really liked that you could see on the app the predicted amount of time it would take to deliver for each location – and that once you ordered you could track your courier to see where they were/how long until pickup. Very cool!
I ordered a hot seasonal bowl from Sweetgreen to see how well the meal was kept hot, and was impressed when the courier arrived with the Sweetgreen bag inside his own insulated bag.
Still hot – thumbs up!
Matt was able to add all sorts of toppings to his sub via the app, and it came correct as ordered.
Bonus: since we were at home, we were able to add things to our meals! We both threw some arugula and basil into the mix, and Matt added some hot sauce!
Our second Postmates adventure was on Tuesday night. It was pouring rain and generally a gross night and neither of us felt like cooking or venturing out, so we decided to have a cozy date night in. I can definitely see us doing this again in the future! I was craving salmon and Matt was up for whatever, so we decided to order from nearby Silver Diner (which has recently made their offerings way awesome/less diner-ish – their brunch is especially delicious and surprisingly creative now)! Sedona salmon with quinoa and roasted veggies? Don’t mind if I do!
We hung out, relaxed, and did some picking up around the house while we waited for our meals (Matt got a burger and a big salad), which arrived as promised about 45 minutes later.
I put a huge handful of spinach on a plate and microwaved it for 30 seconds before adding my meal on top of it – my standard trick for getting in more veggie volume! Delish. And I had half leftover to enjoy the next day. 🙂
I can definitely see us using Postmates in the future, especially for cozy nights in – there were a lot of cool DC restaurants on the app that are inconvenient for us to get to and always have massive waits that would be perfect to order from instead! (I’m looking at you, Toki Underground – been wanting to try that place for ages!) And I know that Matt will certainly be using Postmates often when I’m out of town. 😉
- Want to try Postmates yourself? Click here to download the Postmates app on your phone and use the code fannetastic8 to get $10 off your first delivery! (Applicable to new customers only, for use on delivery fee.)
- Have you ever tried Postmates? What do you use it for? And if you haven’t – what do you think you would you use it for?
