restaurant-food-delivery-research

Restaurant & food-delivery research

Look up restaurant reviews, reservations, and delivery menus, plus grocery search across restaurant, delivery, and grocery platforms as normalized JSON from the Crawlora API — no scraping delivery-app pages.

When to use this skill

• "What are the reviews / menu for this restaurant?" (Yelp, OpenTable)
• "Can I book a table at ?" (OpenTable availability)
• "What's available for delivery near me?" (DoorDash, Uber Eats)
• "What's on this restaurant's delivery menu / what does this dish cost?"
• "Search groceries at this Instacart store."

Setup (one-time)

• Get a free Crawlora API key (2,000 credits/mo, no card) at https://crawlora.net.
• Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY in the environment before running the helper.
• The helper reads CRAWLORA_API_KEY from the environment and sends requests to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Missing/invalid key → 401.

How it works

Most of these platforms are location-scoped — every search/store call needs a latitude/longitude (or postal_code), not just a keyword.

1. Yelp — /yelp/search (term+location) or geocode an address first with /yelp/geocode; /yelp/business/{id} for detail, /reviews (+ /reviews/search, /reviews/highlights), /menu, /photos.
2. OpenTable — /opentable/search (term+latitude+longitude) to find a restaurant, then /opentable/restaurant (restaurant_id, optional date_time+party_size for availability context), /menus, /reviews.
3. DoorDash — /doordash/search (query+latitude+longitude, required) or /doordash/feed//doordash/explore to browse nearby restaurants; /doordash/store/{store_id} (+ /menu, /info, /reviews) for one restaurant — every store call also needs latitude+longitude.
4. Uber Eats — /ubereats/search (latitude+longitude, query optional) or /ubereats/feed; /ubereats/store/{store_id} (+ /menu, /reviews).
5. Instacart — resolve a store first via /instacart/stores (postal_code) to get its shop_id/store_slug, then /instacart/search (shop_id+store_slug+q) for product-term suggestions, /instacart/departments for its category taxonomy, /instacart/trending (postal_code) for popular items.

Full endpoint list, methods, and params: reference/endpoints.md.

Calling the API

# Yelp:
scripts/crawlora.sh /yelp/search term="ramen" location="San Francisco, CA" | jq '.'

# DoorDash (lat/lon required):
scripts/crawlora.sh /doordash/search query="pizza" latitude=37.7749 longitude=-122.4194 | jq '.'

# OpenTable:
scripts/crawlora.sh /opentable/search term="Italian" latitude=37.7749 longitude=-122.4194 | jq '.'

# Instacart (resolve store first):
scripts/crawlora.sh /instacart/stores postal_code=94103 | jq '.'

Use scripts/crawlora.sh for all requests; it keeps the API key out of command-line arguments.

Endpoint reference

See reference/endpoints.md for the full supported restaurant, chain-menu, delivery, and grocery catalog.

Examples

• Cross-app delivery compare: /doordash/search and /ubereats/search for the same coordinate + cuisine, compare which restaurants/prices show up.
• Restaurant due diligence: /yelp/business/{id} (rating, review highlights) + /opentable/restaurant/reviews before booking.
• Grocery run: /instacart/stores to find the nearest store, then /instacart/departments to browse its categories.

Notes & limits

• Credits / pay-on-success: billed only on 2xx; free tier 2,000 credits/mo. Key at https://crawlora.net.
• Public data only — public listing/menu/review pages; no ordering or payment actions are performed.
• Security: key lives in CRAWLORA_API_KEY only — never hardcode, query-param, or commit it.
• Location is required, not optional, for DoorDash, Uber Eats, and OpenTable search/store calls — geocode an address first (e.g. via /yelp/geocode or the geocoding_* endpoints in web-utilities-research) if you only have a street address.
• Instacart is store-scoped — you need a shop_id+store_slug (from /instacart/stores) before search/item/departments will work.