I ordered a pizza from @zomato recently. I thought this feature was a simple implementation, but this shocked me when I got to know the reality.

A Thread 🧵

We as a species hate to wait. With this feature, @zomato answered an impatient question by most people, 'When will my food arrive?'

Yes, I am talking about the Food Preparation time that @zomato displays on their app after the user orders food.

I thought that this is something that the restaurant enters. But @zomato uses Machine Learning to predict this time!

I was amazed after knowing this, and here is how they implement this to achieve accurate results.

Let's consider you also order pizza like me from 2 different restaurants. @dominos and a local restaurant that has the pizza on their menu but not their specialty.

It's easy to guess that @dominos will make the pizza faster as it's their specialty and will have a dedicated kitchen capacity geared towards preparing pizzas.

But more factors are in play here like queued orders, fine dining restaurants vs delivery kitchens, opening hours, etc.