Photo by Eric.

We’ve been putting off this talk for a while now, but your mother and I realize that you’re getting older and certain changes come along with that. Pretty soon you’ll be living on your own, buying your first car, having your first real relationship. We know that this is a time in your life where you’re going to want to experiment, and we respect your choices. The thing is, no matter how old you get, we’ll always feel responsible for you. So it’s time we talk about your online food ordering.

Choices used to be simple for young people. When I was your age Yelp was really the only online option, and they didn’t even offer delivery then. Now it seems like a day doesn’t go by without some newfangled option presenting itself. We’re living in a world where cookies and milk are being delivered by bike courier, Uber drives around with lunch orders, and there’s a delivery option named after a food nobody but rich people can afford.

Now you have even more choices, like “eleat“. Apparently eleat (and why it’s lowercase is anybody’s guess) is an app that’s just about to start up in DC. It’s no delivery service, though. You go to the restaurant, and then you do your ordering through the app. If your table has a sticker with a number on it, you can order your food and have it delivered to your table without even talking to a waitress. You can pay the same way. That’s right—you go to a restaurant and spend the whole time swiping on your phone. Sound familiar?

And then there’s this new thing called “Resybird.” It’s like a reservation system for people who find regular-sized menus overwhelming. You buy a “ticket” for a pre-determined meal through the website, which comes with both food and drinks for two. It’s like a prix-fixe meal for people who’ve never learned how to pronounce words in French and who don’t like to make food choices in a time-sensitive setting.

This one, I kinda get. Prix-fixe meals are fun and you usually get a pretty good deal—Resy says that you spend less than you would if you ordered items a la carte. Resybird restaurants charge a fee for you to make a reservation using their system, so you’re already paying a surcharge just to get in the door. Plus, if you’re running late or need to cancel, you might lose some or all of your money. The restaurant also rates you when you dine, and you have to email Resy directly to find out what your rating is. In my day you had to decipher a waiter’s body language to see if he was going to spit in your food.

What we’re really saying is that even though we know you make smart decisions, we still worry. You’ve got a lot of choices ahead of you, and we’re nervous that people seem to be losing the ability to talk to each other, or to be even a little bit patient. After all, sometimes being an adult means ordering food from strangers and being nice to servers, who we all know are basically underpaid servants. These things are important! What kind of world would we have if people only had conversations and relationships through their phones? I guess we’ll find out.