UPDATE: May 21, 2017 at 9:05 a.m.
Last year, Facebook partnered with Delivery.com and Slice to offer food ordering through individual businesses' Facebook pages. Now, they are testing a streamlined service that aggregates all nearby restaurants using Delivery.com or Slice, allowing users to browse restaurants and place a delivery order without ever leaving the Facebook app.
The service might be on your phone already — it's in the testing stages, so some users already have a blue-and-white hamburger icon in their Facebook app's main navigation panel.
TechCrunch tested out the service and found some bugs, including the option to order appearing and disappearing on the navigation panel, pages not loading correctly, and notifications that there are no places that can deliver to you right now.
Once these are smoothed out, the service will let you easily order your favorite foods without having to switch over to another app, like GrubHub or Seamless. However, the restaurants so far only include those that partner with Slice or Delivery.com, so choices may be limited in some areas.
According to The Tech Portal, the option is available on desktop too, with a colorful hamburger indicating the tab to order food.
UPDATE: April 17, 2016 at 1:32 p.m.
Today Facebook announced another bonus to its instant messenger service: a free and secure way to pay your friends and get paid back. Starting today, you can send and receive money between groups of people on Messenger. That means you can instantly split a restaurant bill.
Here's how it works: Tap on the plus sign in the bottom left hand corner of a group convo to find the payments icon (it's a dollar sign: $). From there, choose who to send or request funds from. The cool part here — and what sets is apart from other apps like Venmo — is that you can choose everyone in the group or only a few members.
After that you just enter the amount you want to request per person or the total sum to divide evenly. You can include yourself in the calculation or not. Then add a note like "pizza party" or "fries before guys" and you're done — just hit that request button.
ORIGINAL POST: October 20, 2016 at 6:20 p.m.
Restaurants' Facebook pages are typically good for sharing photos of your bomb meal or writing comments about a bad experience you recently had. But the social media giant wants to totally change that. Today, Facebook announced it will be offering a food-ordering option on those business profiles.
Essentially it seems the company would like to eliminate your need for apps like Seamless and GrubHub by allowing you to put together dinner orders and get them delivered—all without leaving the Facebook app.
"Simply click 'Start Order' on any restaurant's Facebook Page that uses Delivery.com or Slice," the company noted via press release. But you can also book appointments at spas and salons, get a quote from local businesses, book tickets to movies, performances, and other events.
As convenient as this seems, we're wondering how effective it will become. As Consumerist noted, it depends on each business and whether it chooses to participate. Plus, there are already so many different ways to order food nowadays—from Twitter to instant messenger to one-click buttons. We've got a lot of options, so what would make consumers choose Facebook above all the rest? We'll have to wait and see.
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