Fast food on the couch, candlelight dinner from your favorite Italian on your own kitchen table or recipes to cook with regional ingredients: food has been delivered to almost all German households since the last year. But where can I order food near my location? You can find all about the best food delivery platforms here.
The best delivery platforms for ordering food near my location
By closing the gastronomy, many digital providers have sprung up and expanded the market with innovative food experiences. These are the possibilities to order a - more or less ready - meal on the table:
- Online delivery platform: comfortable, but not always environmentally friendly
- Click and collect: support the restaurants directly
- Cooking boxes: Simply become the head chef
- Vegetable box: Get the vegetables raw and natural directly from the organic farmer
- Ghost kitchen: The trend from the USA is now also available in Europe
- Beer and wine tasting: You can do that at home, too
1. Order from a selection of restaurants with delivery services
When the refrigerator is empty or you do not feel like cooking, delivery service portals offer a large selection of different kitchens that deliver freshly cooked dishes directly to your home. What a few years ago, came with a lot of plastic waste as well as short journeys by car or scooter are now being offered more sustainable by several providers: many dishes are now in paper and wooden packaging or even returnable containers. In large cities in particular, numerous bicycle couriers are also on the road to deliver food instead of using the car.
However, if you want to order food in Germany, you can hardly avoid the huge Lieferando company. The delivery giant has now bought up sites like Deliveroo and foodora as well as Pizza.de or Lieferheld and recently made headlines with high commissions for brokered customers and poor working conditions for drivers.
2. Contact the restaurant directly
Order food near my location? Then order directly from your favorite restaurant. This means that all of the money goes to the local restaurateurs. Have the desired meal delivered or order and pick it up on the website using Click and Collect. This has another advantage: the food is guaranteed to be fresh and comes to your home as quickly as possible. Many restaurants also have no problem with bringing your own bags, cans or plates. This also saves you packaging.
3. Cook fresh dishes yourself with cooking boxes
If you prefer to cook yourself but do not have the time to shop or only have few ideas, you can try so-called cooking boxes. The freshness packages are filled with everything you need for a balanced meal - including a recipe and instructions. Also suitable for vegans as well as low carb or gluten-free. These cooking box providers offers something for everyone's taste:
- Viani
- Hello fresh
- Vegantastic
Viani
The former cookhouse is now part of Feinkost Viani. The lifestyle concept stands for natural foods, handcrafted and above all with proximity to regional kitchens in order to retain knowledge of traditional recipes and ingredients. The ingredients for the recipes can be purchased from local vendors and cookhouses.
Hello fresh
Probably one of the best-known suppliers is the Berlin supplier of cooking boxes HelloFresh. A large selection of cooking boxes with different filter options and in different sizes can be ordered directly from the online shop. The delivery takes place in cooling packages, which is taken back and recycled by HelloFresh when a certain amount is reached. There are many vegetarian, vegan and organic alternatives in the range.
Vegantastic
The first purely plant-based cooking box can be found at Vegantastic. You can order on the website, and the selection of recipes is made online. The ingredients are checked by Vegantastic, the vegan cooking boxes contain almost exclusively organic products.
Source & Copyright by Vegantastic
4. Support regional farmers with fruit and vegetable boxes
Have fresh fruit and vegetables delivered to your home? Vegetable boxes off the internet make this possible. Order vegetables as well as food right near your location. You have the choice whether you just want to try regional crops or exotic fruits. These are the best suppliers for vegetable boxes:
- Fresh mail
- Etepetete
- crowd farming
Fresh mail
You can put together your own fresh box with fruit, vegetables and other products from local farmers with Fresh mail from Hamburg. Each Frischepost location - currently there are five - has its own local network and also an individual range of unique products from your region.
Etepetete
Etepetete not only sells fresh organic fruit and vegetables, it saves supposedly imperfect food from the bin. The Munich-based company is climate neutral and keeps its transport routes transparent and as short as possible. The bio-boxes are available in different sizes, starting at the 2-person flat share to the family box.
crowd farming
At Crowdfarming, you can buy fresh food directly from the producer. Through direct sales, farmers receive fairer compensation for their products. The fruit, vegetables and more come from farmers all over the world and are sold by the box.
5. Ghost kitchen Germany - delicious food from the cloud?
Ghost kitchens probably only prevailed in Germany with the corona crisis. Virtual restaurants without catering rooms rent kitchens or other areas in order to focus exclusively on selling their meals outside of the building. The offers vary depending on the city and can either be ordered through the websites of the Ghost Restaurants or via delivery service portals.
6. A special experience: beer and wine tastings
Try and enjoy: tastings can also be held in your own four walls. Numerous providers send the sample packages straight to your home and use video calls to tell you more about the origin, taste and production of their delicacies.
- Organic beer tasting
- Wine tasting
Organic beer tasting at Haderner
Necessity makes inventive: the Haderner Brewery near Munich organizes an online brewery tour with subsequent tasting due to the lockdown. The different organic beers will be sent to you a few days before the event.
Source & Copyright by Hadernder Bräu
Wine tasting from the Palatinate organic winery
The organic winery Franz Braun offers online tastings of its own organic wines. The six selected wines will be sent to your home by post before the event. You are connected live, can comment and ask questions.
Source & Copyright by Bioweingut Franz Braun
Have food delivered: a bit of normalcy in difficult times
Food delivery services are particularly useful at times when you cannot go out to eat or see friends to have a cooking evening together. So you can easily order food near your location. They incorporate a little normalcy into our everyday life and can even be really fun.
However, it should be noted that a lot of packaging waste is created, especially with cooking boxes or plate delivery. Even vegetable crates are less sustainable than buying the products directly from the market due to the sometimes long transport routes.
Nevertheless, it can and must sometimes be comfortable. That is why you should rely on local and regional companies in the vicinity of the location when having your food delivered. The shorter the transport routes, the better.
