*This post is brought to you by PickMe Food.
After 2 whole months in home-quarantine, Colombars are thriving now. It's not exactly the lifestyle that we used to have, but more like a window of opportunity to adjust our lives to the new normal, that was built alongside the precautionary measures against COVID-19.
Even since the pandemic broke out in Sri Lanka, PickMe Food has been doing their bit. Just within a day, they teamed up with Sathosa and Litro so we can get our essentials delivered. Expanding in a countrywide manner, the number of grocery vendors on PickMe Food has been growing ever since, along with the long list of restaurants they have on board.
While Tourist Board approved restaurants in Colombo are open for public now, a lot of us are still quite unsure about dine-in. I'm sure that we'll eventually become familiar with it, but worry not, we always have the PickMe Food delivery option, coupled with another cool feature, PickMe Food Self-pickup.
What Is PickMe Food Self-pickup?
Basically, you're ordering what you want through the app, and pick it up from the restaurant. It's really convenient as you can avoid the hassle of calling the restaurant to place an order and standing in a long queue to collect it.
Let us give you a step-by-step guide.
- Open the PickMe app on your phone, and go to Food.
- After setting up your address, select Self Pick-up. This will list down all the restaurants around you that have enabled the Self-pickup facility.
- Select a restaurant and then select the dish/dishes you want to order and add them to your cart.
- To proceed with your order, go to Cart. If you select the "I'll pick up myself" option, it will take you to Google Maps app on your phone, which will show you the location of the restaurant. That's where you should be heading to.
- Self-pickup orders are allowed for card payments only. Therefore, make sure that you've connected your Debit card to the PickMe app.
- Once everything is done, proceed with "Place the Order."
- When the order is successfully placed, you'll receive a text message with the order number, Google map location of the restaurant and the estimated preparation time.
- Based on that, you can drop by the restaurant, show the Order ID to the counter, and collect the food.
- This Order can be also found under My Trips on your PickMe app.
The Restaurants
As of now, there are over 280 self-pickup enabled restaurants on PickMe Food, covering a whole bunch of areas, including Colombo-central (Irish Bar & Grill, Monsoon, Agra, Tsing Tao, Thai Cuisine Boulevard and Chambers etc.), Colombo-suburbs (The Shore By O! – Mount Lavinia, Lavinia Restaurant & Pub – Pelawatte, Kande Gedara – Dehiwala, Machang – Nawala and Ignite Pizzeria & Lounge – Wattala etc.), Kandy (Vito Pizza, Vezzo Lite, The Radh, Cafe Nihonbashi and Cafe Aroma Inn etc.), Negombo (Bella Vista, Dolce Vita, Tuk Tuk Wine & Dine, Coronation Restaurant and Mahdi Family Restaurant) and Galle (Fort Bazaar and The Night Market By The Bungalow etc.).
It's a handy feature that gives you the opportunity to grab your food safely and hygienically while saving you loads of time as there's no need to stay in a queue or wait for your food to come to you. Try it out, and do let us know how the experience went.