ChowNow: Local Food Ordering Reviews

by Michaelspringfield

Placed my first order for a local BBQ restaurant. Estimated delivery time was about 45 minutes. No problem. An hour later still no delivery. I checked my bank and my card had been charged. I called the restaurant and was told that my order had been picked up at least 30 minutes before. I live less than five minutes away. As I was hanging up the phone I received my first text update from this app giving me a link to track my order. Basically told me nothing but the driver’s name. 15 minutes later still no order. I call the number on the link and the driver answers. He lies and says that he is at the restaurant right then and would be there in 10 minutes. 20 minutes later, 1:45 after placing my order my wife calls the number for the driver and he hangs up without saying anything. She calls back and no answer. I call the restaurant back and they explain the this app actually collects money and sends them the order. The manager apologizes and remakes my order, even though they will not get paid for the second order. Meanwhile it has been over 2 hours since placing my order and paying a delivery fee and tip. I end up going to get my remade order. The original order never showed up. I will never do business with this app again.

by Xel234567890

I’m honestly enraged that I can’t give negative stars as this app is a company that provides zero added value with a terrible customer service team. For a convenience company to simply confirm an order without checking with the restaurant leads to the issue of over promising and under delivering which leads down a path of a bad customer experience.

To pile on top the customer service team upon following up was rude and attempts to place the sole blame on a small local restaurant. The representative I spoke with couldn’t answer any questions regarding how their process works or how to prevent this error moving forwards. I’m honestly amazed at how terrible my overall experience with this app was and will surely avoid any interactions moving forwards.

I’ll be waiting for my failed order refund as I have absolutely no confidence in this company, the way they operate, the way they treat their partners or customers.

by Brandyl32

This was my first time ever ordering online for a food delivery. Website was very easy to use and understand but the delivery side of this has been horrible. I ordered something that takes 5-7 minutes to make, it told me 45 minutes wait, okay no big deal I’ll wait. Order confirmation said delivery at 2:28, I’ve been standing in our lobby for 20 minutes waiting and checked the status and it’s reset to order received. I called the place I ordered from and they said the food has been waiting on the driver, so now I’m getting 30-45 minute cold food. I had to use ChowNow because my vehicle is in the shop down the road, and I’m 7mo pregnant and can’t walk to get lunch from where I’m at. Will NOT be using this service or door dash again, as I see chow now is powered by door dash.

by $🍔

I ordered food through ChowNow. I ordered it for pick up and meant to order for delivery. Realizing my mistake, I called customer service. They said, “let me see if I can get someone from the restaurant to deliver it because Doordash can't take the order number.” I know the restaurant can't deliver. If they did deliver, I would call them and have them deliver. If I reorder, they could get doordash to deliver the food, but that I would have to pay for both orders because the food from the first order was made.

I can call the restaurant, and they can tell me they don't deliver. I can place an order on doordash. It wasn't bad enough that even the concept of this company is a useless waste of human thought. Let's talk about the service. After not finding any place in ChowNow to reach customer service, I searched it on google. After holding for 15 minutes, I got a rude and unapologetic representative who had no concern for this issue whatsoever. He had the gall to blame the restaurant for not having the staff to deliver the food. Zero stars for this platform. Zero stars for the guy working there. Do not use ChowNow, they are THE third party that no one wants.

by KLGatt

Awful delivery experience. Right after I placed the order I got an email confirming my order, I saw that my card had been charged, and then I received a follow up email telling me when it would be delivered. The delivery time came and went. Then an additional 45 min came and went. I tried to use the this app chat function to figure out where my food was. I was kicked off of their chat twice. No one gave me any information, no explanation, no apology, no refund, nothing. More than 2 hours after I placed my order it was delivered freezing cold. Their expectation management and customer service is awful. If things are going to be late, that’s fine. But you have to tell the customer that. Not surprising that it’s powered by DoorDash and that it’s awful. I guess I should be happy they didn’t steal $600 from me this time.

by Testing Rockstar

I was recently a victim of fraud on my chow now account. Chow Now refused to issue a refund directly, and they have no safe guards in place to detect fraudulent orders. The orders placed were in a location many states away from my usual orders, for amounts much higher than my usual orders and twice in a row. My previous order history showed that I had never ordered twice in the same day before.

All of these things should have triggered some warning in the system requiring extra validation. I caught it and had to call the restaurants to cancel the orders myself as well as my bank and chow now directly. It was a frustrating and time consuming effort. If Chow Now wants to take the responsibility of holding card information for its users, it needs to have better safe guards in place and processes for fraud.

by Leo User

ChowNow took my DELIVERY order, sent no confirmation, has no order info on the actual app (the only way I know it was ordered was through my credit card charge) and then when I call to find out where my food is, the “customer service” tells me that I placed a Pick Up order (why would I be calling about a pick up order? Why would I put my full address in for a delivery order?). He then accused me of lying about the delivery order, told me to walk 20 blocks and go pick up the food myself, and then kept me on hold for 20 minutes to report that they cannot reach the restaurant and are unable to refund me. Now I have to go through my credit card company to refute the charges. It should also be noted that the “customer service” “man” laughed at me and talked over me the entire time.

This is literally fraudulent and gross. Will never use ChowNow again.

by Mgw1234678

My account was hacked two weeks ago. I got charged $130 for noodles from a restaurant on the other side of the country, and even got the email confirmations and a phone call from the delivery driver. I canceled my credit card, asked this app to delete my account, and then set up a new account with a new email address. My new account was used today to order food in another state. I tried to contact customer service again, and they told me they wouldn’t be able to delete my account for up to 45 days and to contact my bank about the charges because they would not refund me or the restaurant. I’m now canceling my second credit card in two weeks. The scariest part is that I never saved my card info to my this app accounts, yet whoever was able to access my accounts were still able to use my credit card. IF YOU VALUE YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION STAYING PRIVATE, STAY AWAY!!!

by Radu Dutzan

this app really bangs the “help local restaurants” drum loudly. Whether their guilt-inducing, almost mob-like advertising (buy from us or the restaurant gets it) works is not the subject of this review. What is though, is the really poor quality and vast incompleteness of ChowNow .

We’re all used to the Doordashes, Uber Eatses, and Grubhubs of the world. Yet ChowNow seems to ignore the (not even very high) standards set by those apps, lacking so much functionality and being so user unfriendly that I don’t even feel like getting into details, just like I don’t ever feel like using ChowNow.

The direct-ordering mobile web experience this app sells to restaurants is actually so much better than ChowNow. If you want to use a this app service to order from your local restaurants, you’re better off hunting for the restaurant website and ordering directly from there.

by Le Lola

I’ve spent quarantine ordering a lot of food from a lot of apps, this is by far the worst one. The only reason I use it is because a local restaurant I like is only available on this app for some reason. First of all, ChowNow works through DoorDash, another food delivery app that’s way better than this one. When I choose ASAP delivery, it tells me it’ll be 20-30 minutes, then gives me an estimated delivery time of an hour. There’s no way to track your order in ChowNow , you have to use a link they send to your email, which then takes you to DoorDash’s website. There’s no way to view past orders to leave a review, which is BEYOND frustrating when you end up with missing items, which happens 90% of the time when I use this app. Save yourself the headache and get another app.

by Kiraomans

I was excited for ChowNow because it benefits restaurants but it is HORRIBLE and not user friendly at all. There’s no way to track your current order(s), so we ran into our order not being accepted by the restaurant even though ChowNow sent a confirmation email.

You have to turn on a filter to even ensure the restaurant is open (so you can put together an entire order just for them to tell you it’s closed when you want to check out). ChowNow also doesn’t tell you when a restaurant is “offline” until you’re done ordering and ready to check out. I’ve also placed the order, didn’t receive it, and then looked the restaurant up, and it had been shut down completely.

I really want to use ChowNow for restaurants, but it is so difficult to order from, and after numerous failed attempts, I’m not trying again.

by MAW1029384756

When I ordered my food for me and my kids everything was great. I got the email for my receipt and the estimated time my food would be done. My kids and I left, drove 20 miles to get our food and then back home we went. Well part of my order that I paid for never got sent to the restaurant. I paid for it, but they didn’t get the order to make it so she didn’t get her food. I didn’t think much of it when I was picking up my food because the total on the receipt was the total that I paid. The meal just got converted to gratuity. I called the place after we got home and asked if it just got missed. My card got charged the full amount and there really wasn’t anything they could do and we didn’t really want to drive 40 miles round trip for her food. Pretty tough for a restaurant to take care of their customers if the apps they are using aren’t reliable.

by Delia1776

ChowNow needs to get its act together. We used it for the first time today and ended up in a crowd of about 35-50 people - all getting angrier and angrier as we waited LONG past the time your app told us. If it’s going to take an hour and half TELL ME, don’t LIE to me so I wait on the hot sun with my little kid. Meanwhile try to ask a question? So many other people were angry they were swarming, totally ignoring social distancing guideline that were clearly taped off. Holy. Crud. All over bagels? Sad frustrating and a huge waste of time when honestly I needed to be getting ready for the first day of school tomorrow. And what did the angry people on the line say? “I never heard of chow whatever before” “there’s a reason for that!” Next - tell me if you’re going to use my Google name or my credit card name!!! Just put it somewhere in the email to me so we don’t waste time!!! I wish my adorable indie restaurant never tried you.

by TAHoover

Used this service after reading that the restaurant keeps a bit more profit, so we figured we would give it a shot. A terrible mistake. Chow Now hosts restaurants but then never takes responsibility when the restaurant acts poorly and unprofessionally. DoorDash and GrubHub take it very seriously when there is an issue with my order (which is rare) despite it not being their fault because they know how to keep customers. this app customer service rep was the least helpful and offered to do NOTHING after they couldn’t get in touch with the restaurant. I waited for my food for almost 2 hours and all the customer service rep said was “I’m sorry, the only thing I can do is try to get you a refund” after he wasn’t able to get anyone on the phone. Unprofessional. Poor service. Clearly not a smooth process like their competitors. We will not order with this app again and will stick to the delivery companies who actually appreciate customer loyalty.

by Lilyxzy2

I had a group of people over and we ordered pizza from a local restaurant in town. All was well until the order was 20 minutes late. I held my patience until it was almost a half hour late. I call the pizza place and ask if our food has been picked up and they say it did around 25 minutes ago. I waited for almost an hour and a half and the food has still not arrived. The website now says that our food has been delivered but is no where in sight. I check down the road, infront of the garage, nothing. I emailed and called “this app” and got zero response. After around 15 minutes of trying to get ahold of someone, we talked to her and she was extremely helpful. She told us the the driver had put in the complete wrong address and delivered our food to a closed business on the other side of town. Please don’t waste your time and hunger with ChowNow !

by No Hot Wings For The Draft

An incredibly limited app. I placed an order and a few minutes later I realized the delivery option needed to be changed. The restaurant said to cancel and resend. Ok, that sounds easy enough...

I went to the this app app to do so, but there’s a problem, I can’t find the order anywhere on ChowNow . Poof, it’s gone, then I see ChowNow doesn’t provide any order/acct history at all.

I looked for a help interface in ChowNow and..there is none. So I went to their website and used the chat. I wait some 10-15 min b/t the robo interface passing me off and a rep responding. Guess what the rep said “oh just cancel and re-order” How the F am I supposed to do that? Rep offers to reach out to the restaurant. Ok, let’s try it...I wait another 15-20 mins with a “only thing I can do is cancel and get a refund. Want to do that?”. So now this app wants to screw the restaurant b/c of their own incompetence in design and operations.

At least this app ends the IM convo on a winning note “I am sorry you feel that way. Should you need anything else, please chat back in anytime...Have a good one!” “Have a good one”, are you serious? I felt like I was in the middle of a comically cruel scene from HBO’s Silicon Valley.

I give it 2 stars since creating the initial order is fine and I haven’t had issues with amounts charged to my card. Which is like giving credit for tying your shoelaces and not drooling on yourself.

by Secm89

I love the restaurant selection and being able to order from local places without going though the predatory competitor apps, so I order from this app as often as I can. That said, ChowNow itself needs some work. Always defaults to a wrong nearby address, even though I have mine saved in there. The filters seem to work only sporadically, so sometimes pickup-/takeout-only options show up in delivery, and it’s not clear from the interface/tags which restaurants have delivery or just takeout (the tags are sometimes wrong). Restaurants say they’re in your delivery area per the location filter and then tell you they’re too far away after you’ve already selected your food and are checking out. There should be a place for restaurants to add a description and delivery notes separate from the menu itself. Also, you can’t add special delivery instructions, which has been tricky for me when I live in an apartment building and need no-contact delivery during COVID. Needs work!

by Chickensdntclap

I support this app’s mission of reducing costs for restaurants and hope they succeed! With that said, there are a couple of glaring problems that would be easy to fix:

ChowNow defaults to pickup rather than delivery and defaults to “current location” rather than a preferred saved location (and the GPS is always a couple of houses away at my location). Further, there is no way to update the location/drop-off preference once the order has been placed other than to contact the restaurant directly and hope that they pass along the message to the driver.

Unless you’re careful to change both of these settings each time you order, you may be forced to go pickup the food when you intended to have it delivered (like every other delivery app) or, spend the evening with one ear out of the window waiting for the food to arrive at your neighbor’s doorstep. Not ideal, but this could easily be fixed if ChowNow allowed you to save preferences to default to delivery and a preferred address.

If they resolve these problems, I would use ChowNow exclusively.

by Carmen2u

The restaurant selection is good and I hope it continues to expand. The map is not ideal, as it seems to approximate my location, but doesn’t quite nail my address. I wish I could just enter my address once and have that come up as my default setting. I like that ChowNow sends an email confirmation with the restaurant’s phone number, but it only provides that option once after the order is given. If you want to check on your order and call, you refer to the email, and not ChowNow . There should be added functionality where location details and other messages can be sent to the restaurant after the order is placed, prior to delivery.

by Jelleybean72688

I prefer to use this app over any other delivery app because more of the money goes to the restaurant and it’s delivered by employees, but about 90% of the time I place an order I have to call the restaurant 15-20 minutes after my order was supposed to be delivered, and I find out they were confused thinking an outside driver would be picking it up.

Please provide more education to restaurants that sign up to be on this app, if they don’t understand that they’re supposed to be delivering the food the whole value proposition of ChowNow disappears. I’m trying to support employees rather than the exploitative gig economy, but I would like my food to occasionally show up on time and without me calling to explain to the restaurant how this app works!

by Noah Ues

I like the overall notion of this app and the offerings, but I find that customizations in orders often end up incorrect in my shopping cart on checkout unless and until I go back several times to fix it. Similarly, it toggles from delivery to pick up to the point where i pay careful attention on check out to make sure it’s still delivery. This time it was clearly delivery and went through as a pick up. I didn’t find out until the order never showed up. I won’t be ordering through this app again unless and until this app sufficiency fixes this glitch and provides assurances it won’t happen again. This space is too competitive between Seamless, Postmates, Caviar, etc to put up with that utter lack of reliability.

by Yesyesyes4756

They’re terrible at telling you if a restaurant is closed. You have to place your order first, wait 30 min, then you’ll get an email saying your order didn’t go through and 2 weeks later you get your money back. Now when you place an order when a restaurant is closed they have it ready for pick up the next day it’s open, in this case it was two days later. I always select pick up and made asap. But now the new update places your order the next day the restaurant is open and you’ll lose your food and money. Don’t waste your time or energy on this app

by Doihachan

Ruined my FIRST order. It appeared to take my order, my money, and then when I tried to find my order in ChowNow , it turns out my account wasn’t technically created. I signed up, and STILL no evidence of my order was under my account in ChowNow ! At least it showed up in my email.

I had to call the restaurant to see if the order sent— it didn’t. I should have just called the restaurant, this was a total waste of my time. No help/support links in the confirmation email?? Just passes the buck to the restaurant? Sketchy! I should have read ChowNow reviews first, and my bank shows the charge has gone through. Very upsetting.

by DStevie123

I would not recommend this service. We placed an order through ChowNow for delivery because we can’t leave the house due to broken leg and illness. After 1.5 hours and no delivery, we called the restaurant to confirm the order was received and they confirmed that the order had been ready for over an hour and was supposed to be picked up by Chow Now, but nobody showed. No notification from the company that we wouldn’t receive our food and now we have to start looking for an alternative when we should have had our dinner over an hour ago. The restaurant confirmed that this was not the first time it’s happened. We won’t be using the service again.

by Ethno-Animist

seriously. any restaurant that partners with these charlatans at this app deserve the loss of business using their app will cause. it is literally unusable. after trying to submit an order for one hour and continuously cycled through false error messages I gave up and ordered from a similar but different restaurant that used CAVIAR. Im sure my office’s $425 dollar order is not a big loss to the restaurant...but my future and continuing admonition against people ordering from any restaurant that uses this app? well that is going to sting before long. restaurants should sue the developer for loss of business.

don’t believe me? just try ChowNow for yourself. but guess what, all these other negative reviews besides mine? wonder why theres so many?

by Gehrkenstein

ChowNow is always set to Pickup. I always have to remember to set it for Delivery or after 45 minutes I realize the food isn’t coming and I have to go and get it. It’s also waaaay too easy to accidentally thumb your way out of the restaurant menu and back to the search results, and when you tap on your restaurant again to resume your order, guess what? It’s re-set to Pickup again! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go and get my food or call the restaurant to beg them to bring it. This is glaringly poor design. I can’t find any way to set Delivery as my default option. Please fix, as my favorite Chinese restaurant is only on this stupid app and I’m basically ready to give up and just call them on the phone like a stinking caveman.

by Jacob Allen Smith

I ordered food from Burger 7 using this app. I placed my order and submitted my payment. I receiver confirmation that my order was received and should be completed soon. I went to the restaurant to pick up my order, and the restaurant was closed. I NEVER received my order. I called to inquire about my food, and payment that was taken from my bank account. They told me up to 7 business days for a refund. I must wait up 7 days to receive my money back in order to eat?

There was no problem taking my money immediately in exchange for their service, but the service was never performed. Misleading, and deceitful business. I will never use their services again.

There are plenty other food ordering services that I can use to put up with this terrible service.

by Prim_LA

Par level, considering ChowNow among all others, it has to be the absolute worst. I am astounded by the very existence of this horrible waste of space. There is 0 accountability for deliveries, no way of tracking. No way of verifying what you actually ordered or when you ordered it. And apparently, the default setting for orders is “pick up” so if you order something and don’t reposition the toggle to say “Delivery,” you will wait for hours for a dish that will never come, because they thought you were going to come and get it, as if it were 1997. I’m irate and I will never do this again, despite how much I love Garage Pizza

by Elgrego1939

Basically needs to have feature parity with competing apps.

Not as many options for the same item at the same restaurant as are available in other delivery apps. Apartment number field says that it’s for delivery instructions, but the text field isn’t long enough. If you use Siri to enter (too much) text in that field and hit save, the text becomes un-editable. Apparently no pictures for menu items; pictures make it easier and faster to choose what you want. Can’t check order status. Can’t look at previous orders.

by Alig333

ChowNow is almost really great. It’s easy to use but missing so much information! I can’t view order history. And once I place an order the only info I have is my email confirmation. The order I just placed is gone from ChowNow . There is also no contact info for any help desk within ChowNow . In the email, they only give you the restaurant to call. Not very good customer service, eh? These things are pretty fundamental and new app or not- customer service should be on point from the start. Customer service hasn’t been bad- it’s just not even available at all...

by FridayZuckerbraun

I really love how clean and easy to use ChowNow is. I knew that some of my local restaurants used this app and had their own apps but I love that I can see all of the restaurants that use them with ChowNow. I’ve even found a few new (to me) restaurants that aren’t on some of the other ordering platforms! I’ve had no trouble ordering and my deliveries have been seamless. I like that I can pick up my food myself as well - unlike Postmates.

by ASJ1991

The this app app is very user friendly, it's a lot of fun to check out their map feature and discover new restaurants. Most importantly, after speaking with my favorite restaurant about this app, they do not charge a fee to the restaurant on every single order like GrubHub, Eat24, UberEATS, etc. Bottom line: if you support local restaurants USE ChowNow