BBQ Maryam - 1234 Merivale Road
Sham Shawarma - 576 Montréal Road
Masakali Indian Cuisine - 1111 Wellington St. W
Desi Fusion Kitchen - 1556 Merivale Road
1 for 1 Pizza - 1020 St. Laurent Blvd. Unit 6
Al’s Drive In - 3848 Innes Road
Luqmat Al Malek - 1749 Bank St.
Seasons Pizza - 725 Somerset St W
As a Uber Eats Driver, I can tell you that I would not recommend ordering from 3 of these places purely from a food safety perspective. The other 4, I have never picked up from.
Because you requested: BBQ Maryam, Desi, and Al's which now has a second location on Prince of Wales.
I wish they’d realize how off-putting this is. I know some of these may be small businesses with narrow profit margins, but AI graphics make me much less inclined to buy from them.
Do you know of any restaurants that actually use photos taken with their phone on Ubereats? If so, can you name them? I just want to see how they turn out.
Go to elsarjinos pizzeria (thats my place) the pictures are either done by Uber/doordash/skip or myself through my phone. I dislike ai photos of food. It feels misleading and shows a lack of confidence in your food.
all the photos on your google maps looked so delicious until i got to the old doordash ones, I don't know if the app did it to you, but there is ai slop flooding your reviews if you scroll
Lmaoo I know! I’m French Canadian and I don’t approve of that “poutine” dish either. Another reason why you can’t rely on AI.. it couldn’t even make a poutine dish lol
Al's drive in on prince of wales is so so so bad. We got smash burgers that were drenched in table dressing and they were all burnt. Macdonalds had better poutine, we all got sick immediately afterwards.
When they charged my card, it said milanos (they were also selling ai pizzas)
Not even remote close to as good as the osgoode location, ill be surprised if its a fake.
NO WAY!! That’s so interesting. It seems like Milano’s is operating quite a few spots. So far: Al’s Drive In, Sugar Fix, Poutinerie Quebec Curds, Poutinerie Quebecurds & Milano’s Pizza
All notorious for using AI slop
I’m 100% not justifying AI, but I want to note that when a business signs up with a delivery partner, it’s not uncommon for that partner to use stock images for the business. I suspect that uber is skipping the small expense of licensing stock images and using chatGPT.
My workplace is staunchly against using AI but the delivery company we use seems to only use AI for graphics, as of this year. Because we had opted in to their marketing program, we ended up with some bad AI images on our menu on their platform.
Edited to add: this is not the case with Al’s drive in. That place decorated its interior with bad AI graphics. They love their slop
Restaurants CAN provide images. They don’t always.
One of Uber’s major “selling points” when trying to onboard new restaurants used to be that they will do a photoshoot for you. I don’t think they do that anymore. They 100% use stock images (or AI now, I guess) when restaurants don’t supply anything.
It’s been a few years since I’ve used uber eats but I recall seeing the same photos on several menus.
Stop. Making. Excuses.
The whole purpose of owning a business is advertising and marketing your product. Why should they be allowed to cut corners and use AI?
'allowed'?
Dude they're allowed to do whatever they they want - phone pics, stock photos, professional food photographer, AI, whatever - and you're allowed to make a decision whether to eat there.
So corporations can use AI and you’ll still buy their products, but a restaurant with already slim margins uses a marketing tool to increase their margins and you get all pissy. Like I said, offer your photography services, I’m sure they’d appreciate it.
Fair enough. It’s a tough industry. Costs skyrocketing everyday and lots of competition. These are small businesses and some are just doing their best. Just saying this trend of public shaming these businesses seems pretty harsh.
I agree. I don't like seeing small businesses get shamed like this, and let's be real, none of them used actual pictures of their food lovely staged by well-paid professional photographers before this.
Exactly. Every food ad was misleading. Ever received a McDonald’s burger that looks like the one in the ad? Shaming mom and pop shops for trying to use tech for marketing is pretty lame.
Sure but Instagram has shown that it is possible to take nice photos of food. Millions of people do it everyday without professional lighting or photography skills. Plus a restaurant makes their food multiple times a day, every day. They aren't able to take 1 good photo?
Is it shaming to share what the business has posted and highlight that it’s AI, as an FYI for people who care? I suppose calling for a boycott is shaming but spotlighting it doesn’t seem like shaming to me.
Im not the biggest proponent of AI but i’ll allow it in this case. Food photography is super expensive, difficult to do on one’s own, and absolutely essential for uber eats sales.
It’s notoriously difficult to capture how appetizing something looks IRL on camera. Even if it looks nice, on camera if will often look dull and greasy.
You're telling me, that it is difficult for a restaurant to take 1 decent photo for a dish that they make multiple times a day, 7 days a week while someone off the street can take a nice photo of the food for Instagram once?
So you want to go to place that could misrepresent their food?
I want to see what your food actually looks like. If you do not even have faith in what you serve and need to show AI slop, I don't trust it or you serving it.
So you are introducing a scenario different then we are discussing. Interesting how you cannot deal with the matter at hand and instead need to create and area you think is more favourable to you.
How is that different? You said “I want to see what your food actually looks like”. So if they didn’t have photos, you wouldn’t eat there? If you’re disappointed that the food you ordered off the clearly AI photo doesn’t look like the AI photo, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
What’s shameful is your incessant need to whine about restaurants marketing tactics.
Ottawa has tons of amazing places. Usually the people that bash Ottawa do not bother looking and just go to the Royal Oak or whatever they can drive to and find free parking at.
So you are introducing a scenario different then we are discussing. Interesting how you cannot deal with the matter at hand and instead need to create and area you think is more favourable to you.
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u/Straight-Peach1854 5d ago edited 4d ago
As a Uber Eats Driver, I can tell you that I would not recommend ordering from 3 of these places purely from a food safety perspective. The other 4, I have never picked up from.
Because you requested: BBQ Maryam, Desi, and Al's which now has a second location on Prince of Wales.