Like any big metropolis in the world, Bangkok has witnessed an increasing demand in food delivery services in the last couple of decades. With street hawkers no longer allowed to crowd the sidewalks in many parts of town, and reluctant to battle the city’s heavily congested traffic, hungry Bangkokians today need do nothing more than pick up their smartphone when they fancy a meal. They simply tap on an app to access restaurants and eateries across genres and price ranges and have their favourite dishes delivered to their door in no time at all.

While for a long time food deliveries were limited to Western fast foods like pizza and burgers, the menus improved with the launch of phone-ordering and online services like Food By Phone and ChefsXP, both of which promised to deliver “real food from real restaurants”. Now with user-friendly and speedy smartphone apps, a wide range of menu options is available for delivery to office and home.

In 2012, Bangkok welcomed the first and probably most comprehensive food delivery application, Foodpanda. With less than 60-minutes delivery time, you can browse through more than 1,000 food and beverage outlets, from local noodle shops to hip cafes and proper restaurants. The app, which is available for all smartphone platforms, works on a proximity basis. Once you’ve set up an account, you enter your location and the app lists nearby restaurants that can deliver food to you. It works very well, especially if you reside in central Bangkok, for example along Sukhumvit as well as Silom and Sathorn roads. Confirmation and tracking information can be reviewed through your smartphone screen.

Another convenient feature is that you can pay with either cash or credit card, and the delivery fee is only Bt40 to all locations, with no minimum order.

You can also order via Foodpanda’s website, and the service has now expanded to include Pattaya, Chiang Mai and Hua Hin.

Line, Thailand’s most popular instant communication app, also delivers food. Launched in May last year, Line Man is the first localised O2O (Online to Offline) service in Thailand. It currently offers three main services: “Messenger” in partnership with Lalamove that quickly delivers and picks up your packages, “Convenience Goods” that sees goodies from 7-Eleven delivered to your door, and “Food Delivery”, which brings food from more than 20,000 eateries to your doorstep in a very short time.

“Online to Offline service (O2O) is one of the next big trends given the mobile internet user growth and the transformation of user behaviour in Thailand,” says Ariya Banomyong, managing director of Line Thailand.

“Line Man is the latest feature of this O2O service platform that helps connect service providers to end-users.

“Line Man is the first service that is fully implemented by our local team for Thai consumers. The team is very proud, and I would like to thank our partners Lalamove, and Wongnai for their support. Line Man will be adding new services, and expanding its service area in the future.” he adds.

For the food delivery service, Line Man has partnered with Wongnai, the popular restaurant review app and portal in Thailand, to offer a food purchase service from a wide range restaurants and street food hawkers around Bangkok. Users can choose from the app’s recommended restaurants sorted by distance or popularity, based on Wongnai’s database, or search by typing in the restaurant name. After placing an order, Line Man, which is actually a guy on a motorcycle, will drive to the restaurant to pre-purchase the food and deliver it to you. In addition to the price of the food, there is a delivery fee calculated on distance, starting from Bt55 with no additional charges or minimum order.

Besides super-fast delivery, Line Man’s best feature is that it gives you access to street food stalls that are not likely to be listed on other applications. You can also contact the Line Man driver directly and give specific requests – less sugar, more spice, no peanuts – or just add anything you might have forgotten to the list before he makes the purchase for you. You do need to have a Line account, though, to receive push notifications about your order.

“I love Line Man,” enthuses Wanicha “Ying” Yodsukhon, an analyst who works in an office on Sathorn Road. “The delivery fee is a little higher than other apps, but you can get food from any restaurant. I use it a lot for lunch to avoid the lunch crowd. About an hour before my break, I start looking for food I want, order and just wait for my lunch to be delivered. I really hope they expand the service area to cover outskirts of Bangkok, where I live.”

The latest app to arrive on the scene is UberEATS, which made its Thai debut in January. Similar to Line Man, you punch in the restaurant you want from the list of nearly 150 eateries, place an order and wait for your delivery. In Bangkok, UberEATS is currently available in Sathorn, Silom, Pathumwan, Ploenchit, Nana, Asoke, Phrompong, Thonglor, Ekamai, Chinatown, Rama 9, Ratchada, Ari, and Din Daeng. The delivery fee is Bt50 and payment is by credit card only/

Does the success of the apps mean fewer customers eating out? Can the delivery service overtake restaurants? One Bangkok-based restaurateur, who prefers to remain anonymous, says delivery service is both good and bad for business.

“It’s great in the sense that it gives us wider access to customers,” the entrepreneur and owner of three mid-range restaurants, told us.

“For example in the rainy season when people don’t want to go out and table reservations are low, we can still do good business because they can now have our food at home.

“But there again, the dining experience is not just about food. It’s a combination of atmosphere, vibe and table service that defines a restaurant’s character. Maybe that’s not so true of a street eatery, but for an establishment that aims to offer the eating-out experience as a whole, food alone is not the complete package. Equally, from the quality point of view, it’s risky in maintaining standards. Once the food leaves the restaurant and travels on the road for a while, quality gets compromised, and we lose personal touch with customers. Some foods you need to eat it right after they are cooked, fresh. While these apps try to offer a wide selection, they overlook this fact and exploit the people’s impatience, laziness and “I want it right now” attitude without paying much heed to quality.”

Chow’s up

>> Get Foodpanda at http://www.Foodpanda.co.th

>> Get Line Man at http://OneLink.to/LineMan

>> Get UberEATS at http://www.UberEats.com/Bangkok/