In the dark ages you just called a number, said what you want, and if you were a regular and they knew you, then you were done in less than 20 seconds.
Now it's a nightmare of two-factor garbage on top of vibe-coded garbage on top of middlemen selling your data. Everything sucks now.
Busy restaurants are more efficient if they don't have to answer the phone and can treat delivery orders the same as regular orders: just hand the order number over to the courier instead of the actual customer. Plus, in some places young people heavily order delivery now instead of going out to eat, and the restaurant could never cope with just their staff.
Back in the old days, a locally owned restaurant might have had 1-2 delivery persons, and chain fast food (other than pizza) had none. It was easy for restaurants themselves to have their own delivery staff, because demand was low and predictable enough. Today, demand has exploded -- in my European city there is a whole crowd of South Asians with square backpacks going in and out of fast-food places -- but is unpredictable at any given place at any given time.
The gig workers might be exploited and ordering may involve some hassles and middleman-skimming within the phone app, but this is the system that satisfies a lot of younger people today who do not want to go out themselves for food. I think many would disagree this "sucks", and regard the system you are nostalgic for as very limited in terms of their choices.
The people most satisfied with that system are the gig economy companies who seem to have successfully shirked all responsibility and accountability.
There is a world that exists in my imagination where we don't need to exploit people, and pay them their fair share and provide a proper working environment - and also get our food delivered.
Personally I would rather live in that world, and I don't care if that adds to the cost of my delivered food.
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