Ordering a pizza on the Internet? Sounds crazy, but it’s for real with the new [Waiter.Com] service, a new on-line restaurant ordering service started by two recent Stanford Business School graduates, Craig Cohen and Michael Adelberg. 

The service allows customers to use their computers to place takeout and delivery orders at no extra charge. 

Sixteen Silicon Valley restaurants—with sixty locations—have signed up so far. They get the benefit of increased exposure, and pay a commission to [Waiter.Com], which is free to the customer. 

The selections available from [Waiter.Com] include Chinese, pizza, sandwiches, Indian, sushi, Italian, Californian and Caribbean. To tap into such a variety, [Waiter.Com] has teamed up with restaurants such as Le Boulanger, Hobee’s, Togo’s, Round Table Pizza, Florentine Restaurant and Pasta Market, Rock ‘n’ Tacos, Golden Wok, Mango Café and others to offer the free, interactive service which lets consumers order up using their computers. 

[Waiter.Com]’s address is http://www.waiter.com on the Internet’s World Wide Web. Users click on buttons at the web site to specify exactly how they would like their food prepared and when it should be ready for pickup – or delivery from the restaurants which offer doorstep service. 

"We build the [Waiter.Com] system to be user friendly with many benefits to the consumer such as no need to keep a drawer full of outdated menus, no busy signals or long periods on hold when ordering over the phone," said Michael Adelberg, vice president of the service. The Waiter doesn’t mess with cash; customers can enter their credit card numbers into the computer for billing. 

"We were very interested in creating something on the Web that people would find useful every day," said Craig Cohen, president. Customers can select restaurants either by type of cuisine or location. Each menu is then translated into a web version which allows hungry users easy navigation by clicking on their choices. 

The corporate name for Waiter.Com is Maverick Solutions, Inc. It was founded earlier this year by Cohen and Adelberg, who graduated from Stanford Business School a year apart but were classmates at MIT. Cohen, a veteran of Sun Microsystems for four years, handles the technical side of the business. Adelberg specializes in sales and marketing. But Cohen also handles key accounts at the small start-up, while Adelberg, with a background in media and new technologies, understand the interactive end. 

Both presumably use their own company for dining.