Not Enough Time to Eat Lunch or Dinner?

Life hacking is how Silicon Valley survives, whether it's a new software, device or food – its mantra is to make life simpler and easier. Allset lets you book a table at a restaurant, order your meal and pay for it before you even get to the restaurant’s door, that is, if you live in Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan, Chicago, Brooklyn, Boston, or Austin, Tex. And it’s not every restaurant. I filtered Upper West Side in Manhattan and found just one restaurant; coincidentally right around the corner from where I live. Macadamia-crusted salmon is $28; French onion soup, $12; and an apple crisp for dessert, $12. That's $52 for lunch before a beverage (which you can’t order online), tip and tax, which adds up to more than $75 in all for lunch. 

Allset focuses on lunch for now, with plans to expand to dinner, and it told Quartz that it has 100,000 users at more than 450 restaurants in the six cities noted above. It’s estimated by the Census Bureau that New York City alone has more than 8,000 eateries. Allset takes a 12 percent commission on bookings. Menu prices are the same as what Allset charges. 

You could argue that 15 percent is a lot to give, or that, for a busy restauran,t it's a small prices to pay to turn a table one or two more times during lunch. 

The question is whether this concept has legs. Of course, as the service grows, conceivably more restaurant choices will be added, making it more convenient for those office workers to vary their noon ritual. Right Management Associates, a global career management firm, says that only one in five people leaves the office for lunch these days, and most eat at their desks. Many who do eat out use it as a way to relax and recharge – yes, eliminating the wait for a table is nice, and so is not having to wait for a waiter to come and take your order – but in our drive for efficiencies, could Allset actually be causing us to wolf down our food and turn what could be 'me time' into yet more stress?    

Office Team, the nation’s leading temp service for office professionals, conducted a survey and found that 48 percent of workers spend 30 minutes or less for lunch, and more than four out of 10 said they use lunch as a time to socialize with colleagues. 

Also, remember that you’ll still have to wait for your food to be prepared, which is often the longer wait time anyway.