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[0:01] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Today on Support for This Podcast. If you are one who just waits for the food to come to you, you are not in any way seeking out or finding. My urge to go and get my food is like the hunter's desire to go into the wood, into the wild, to find what it is that I want and to get it. We speak to Conrad Malone, a New York City-based man who exclusively orders his food to go and never orders delivery. Conrad shares what he loves most about pickup orders, and how his early days racing home with Domino's pizza cemented a lifelong commitment to pick up and carry home his own food. And that was the moment where I realized that there was not only satisfaction in rubbing this pizza in my mother's face, but I also had the opportunity to eat that sweet victory, and neither my siblings were able to enjoy it with me. Their pizza came about two minutes after I arrived and was slightly colder. Join us, won't you? I'm Emily Amy Lauren Becca, and this is Support for This Podcast.

[1:26] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Hi everyone, Emily, Amy Lauren Becca here. I'm very pleased to be sitting here with Conrad Malone. Thank you for joining us, Conrad.

[1:35] Conrad Malone: It is my pleasure.

[1:37] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, lovely. Can you take us back to the day where you decided, instead of uh ordering your food with a delivery service, seamless or Delivery.com, that you decided to pick up your food order? Can you just take us back to that moment? Where where were you? What what happened and what prompted that kind of radical change?

[1:58] Conrad Malone: Emily, Amy, Lauren, Becca, I feel going back to the hunters and the gatherers, if research shows that fighting for your meal, doing something to get the meal is the most satisfying way to uh enjoy a meal. If you are one who just waits for the food to come to you, you are not in any way seeking out or finding. My urge to go and get my food is like the hunter's desire to go into the wood, into the wild, to find what it is that I want and to get it. My first experience, hearkening back to your initial query, was uh my mother was not great.

[2:50] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[2:51] Conrad Malone: She was not a traditionalist uh in the sense that I am, and and she was very much on the cutting edge we had and and computer and uh other such modern technological advances. And she wouldn't uh cook us meals, and I loved um I loved pizza because I was a child, and that's what we like. Finally, some common ground.

[3:15] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I don't understand.

[3:16] Conrad Malone: But I will tell you that Domino's uh is a uh a popular restaurant chain, and they advertised that they could bring a pizza to you in 30 minutes or fewer minutes. And I decided that my uh revenge against my mother was to actually bet her that I could go to Domino's, get a pizza, and bring it back in twenty eight minutes or fewer.

[3:49] Conrad Malone: And that was the moment where I realized that there was not only uh satisfaction in rubbing this pizza in my mother's face, but I also had the opportunity to eat that sweet victory, and neither my siblings were able to enjoy it with me. Their pizza came about two minutes after I arrived and was slightly colder.

[4:14] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh. So you've always been one to pick up your order.

[4:18] Conrad Malone: Yes.

[4:18] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: And it runs deep for you.

[4:20] Conrad Malone: Very deep.

[4:21] Conrad Malone: It runs very deep.

[4:23] Conrad Malone: Emily Lauren, Amy.

[4:25] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I feel Amy.

[4:27] Conrad Malone: As if I It's fine. If we're going to uh argue uh I I don't deal well with other human uh beings. Look, I I When you pick up your food, is there anyone at home that you're sharing that food with?

[4:44] Conrad Malone: Yes, there is someone else who shares with me. No, it is not a person. No, it is not an animal. Yes, it is a stuffed object, no, it doesn't feel feelings. Yes, it doesn't eat when you get a pickup order.

[5:01] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Do you call and order the the order through the phone?

[5:04] Conrad Malone: Oh yes. Oh yes. It's one of the greatest feelings.

[5:07] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[5:08] Conrad Malone: I love to call. I use a corded landline telephone.

[5:12] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I uh A curly cord.

[5:15] Conrad Malone: Yes.

[5:15] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, yes.

[5:16] Conrad Malone: Yes. Now we've got some common ground.

[5:19] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: A curly cord, yes. I love it.

[5:21] Conrad Malone: Uh oh, I do too. I d I love feeling it in my fingers. I love it. Winding it around yourself. Oh, it's like a bat. I'm trapped.

[5:30] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[5:31] Conrad Malone: Oh, a game I play. Oh, we should hang out.

[5:36] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh. I like to call. I like to speak to someone. I like to get their first name.

[5:41] Conrad Malone: Oh. Uh I like to have a relationship so that when I show up, they can look at me and they can say, Conrad?

[5:47] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes.

[5:47] Conrad Malone: And I say, that's me. Uh I don't cook. I feel that food tastes better out of plastic. I have so many plastic containers.

[5:59] Conrad Malone: Oh. From takeout orders that I've had. And my home could be a museum.

[6:04] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes, and and they really are museum pieces because as you said, you don't cook, so they serve literally no function.

[6:10] Conrad Malone: That is true. But Plastiques Corporation, uh, from Wilkes Bar, Pennsylvania. Uh does make art.

[6:17] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes.

[6:20] Conrad Malone: Uh disposable art that I choose to keep.

[6:23] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes, what's a gift from the restaurant.

[6:27] Conrad Malone: I consider if you go to the restaurant and you eat, do you get to take a plate home with you? No.

[6:32] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: That's an excellent point. You you're an individual, that's for sure.

[6:36] Conrad Malone: Thank you. So, okay, are there certain places? Do you have a a rotating uh number of restaurants that you go to? Do you have a like a top three or ten, or you you never cook, so how many different restaurants are we talking about here?

[6:49] Conrad Malone: I eat at an average of let me see, five meals a day. Six days a week. I eat out forty times a week. So that's roughly twenty restaurants. I usually will double dip. Perhaps. There will be a leftover. Not often. Uh I am a full-figured lad. Sometimes what I will do is I will place an order for delivery and have them deliver to their own restaurant.

[7:19] Conrad Malone: Oh my goodness. And I will wait there. And as the invariably the sweet man gets on his bicycle, looks at the thing confused. I'll go outside and I'll say, uh, are you the delivery for Conrad?

[7:32] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[7:33] Conrad Malone: And he'll look at me and say yes, and I'll say, right here.

[7:37] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Does he like that?

[7:38] Conrad Malone: I would imagine he might feel quite frustrated. I mean, he probably got his jacket on and his helmet and the bike and the vest, and then packs it all up and then only to go nowhere. You know, the feelings of other people have never been my primary concern.

[7:53] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, but I think you might be onto something there.

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[9:15] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: For some of our listeners, they've never picked up an order in their lives, in their probably young lives. Um times have changed uh somewhat rapidly. Can you uh just give us a play by play of what happens when you when you order a a restaurant a food order for pickup? You you if you have ordered delivery to your home, you can go on about your daily life as if nothing is happening.

[9:38] Conrad Malone: You don't think about it again. Well, I think that's why people do that. You just tip tap tap in that computer, send it off, don't talk to anybody. There you the next thing you know, you have a delicious meal at your door. Oh, you poor people. You're missing the point. It is the anticipation, the walk to the restaurant.

[9:56] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Sure.

[9:57] Conrad Malone: So you get yourself to the establishment, you open the door. Usually there will be uh a register, someplace uh bar, uh some area where uh the more the interchange of food to person is at a more rapid rate than say sitting at a table.

[10:10] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Are there chairs?

[10:12] Conrad Malone: There can be.

[10:13] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: There can be stools.

[10:14] Conrad Malone: If there's a bar, chances are there will be a stool or some sort of higher type chair for you to sit in.

[10:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Do you sit there?

[10:21] Conrad Malone: I will.

[10:22] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[10:22] Conrad Malone: I will. And I will take a complimentary glass of water.

[10:25] Conrad Malone: Oh. Uh sometimes there is uh uh some sort of uh mixed nuts, maybe mixed nuts.

[10:34] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Exactly, and I will Does it bother you? Do you eat the mixed nuts in a common bowl on a bar?

[10:41] Conrad Malone: I do.

[10:41] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Okay. Is there a reason that I shouldn't?

[10:43] Conrad Malone: Some people think there might be germs from other the random hands that have also been in the bowl.

[10:48] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, I promise you. There is no hand dirtier than mine. So I don't really worry about that.

[10:54] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh my goodness. Your eyes.

[10:56] Conrad Malone: Oh.

[10:57] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: You can't hear them on the radio.

[10:59] Conrad Malone: Oh.

[11:00] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: My goodness. Oh, well, let's uh let's keep focused on the on the material again.

[11:06] Conrad Malone: I'm so sorry. I know that it's the food that I pick up, but I haven't seen a visage like this.

[11:15] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I don't get out as they say.

[11:17] Conrad Malone: It's 2017, so let's um I'm not comfortable with where this conversation's going.

[11:23] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Duly noted. I think that went well. So getting back to the when you go to pick up the order, you said that there you show up. There's usually some kind of either seating area, you could be at the bar.

[11:37] Conrad Malone: You're missing a step. You're missing a step. Now every restaurant in this city, for the most part, has some sort of uh gong, alarm, bell that goes off when you walk in.

[11:48] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: And that is an announcement. And when you hear the pong pong, or you hear a ding a ling, and everyone looks to you.

[11:56] Conrad Malone: Yes. Sometimes um at Japanese restaurants, they the man at the sushi bar will say something in Japanese. It's like a thing that they do.

[12:03] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, I've I've seen that in uh I've seen that in in in in film. Um you don't order you don't do a lot of pickup sushi orders?

[12:12] Conrad Malone: Small portions, my dears. I'll put it this way. If you teach a man to fish, sure. He'll eat for a lifetime.

[12:22] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Right. If you make a man go pick up raw fish.

[12:27] Conrad Malone: Oh. He'll eat for 10 seconds and still be hungry.

[12:30] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow, what a what a spin on that. Classic proverb. I actually read that proverb from a fortune kiki.

[12:38] Conrad Malone: Oh. Now, that actually brings up an interesting point that I wanted to ask. You why don't you cook it all?

[12:45] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Why don't I cook? Great question.

[12:48] Conrad Malone: Two reasons. Reason the first, I don't know how. Reason the second, I don't want to learn how. Reason the third.

[12:56] Conrad Malone: Surprise reason. Oh, it's not an apartment, it's more of a supply, uh, closetslash cabinet in a small printing press.

[13:06] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh my goodness. Those are all totally legitimate reasons.

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[14:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Do you cook?

[14:21] Conrad Malone: On occasion I I do.

[14:23] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Hmm. Tell me your tell me your most famous recipe. What do you make better than anyone?

[14:30] Conrad Malone: Oh what do you make best? Oh, uh, gosh. Well, you know, um I've done some traveling in my day, and I was fortunate enough to spend a summer in um Ravil.

[14:44] Conrad Malone: And so I've learned to make some Brazilian dishes uh that my husband used to really enjoy. Um If you would ever like to take uh a sojourn to Brazil, uh know a few good uh establishments that uh I have actually gotten takeout from Oh dear, Conrad, please.

[15:06] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Uh please. No, I don't no, I don't mean please. I mean enough. If you How do you feel about farmers' markets?

[15:14] Conrad Malone: I love and loathe them for disparate reasons. Uh I love the fact that it's a market. I hate the fact that there are farmers there.

[15:22] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh. Uh I feel the farm to table phenom uh does not take into account the someone cooking it part.

[15:30] Conrad Malone: Sure, they kind of skip that in the title, don't they?

[15:32] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes. Because if you said farm to chef to table, it kind of takes away the immediacy.

[15:36] Conrad Malone: Well, yes, and people are always trying to save on extra letters in their advertising. And so we're just save time.

[15:43] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Right. I don't want I don't eat raw food. Just don't do it.

[15:46] Conrad Malone: You you have a bit of a European sensibility, I would say. You know, you're not in a rush. Food matters.

[15:51] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Not in the way that I think of Europeans, you know, actually cooking their own food and taking great pride in how they do that. Um I've seen a lot of uh films that uh take place in Europe, and so I have gravitated toward that lifestyle.

[16:04] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: When you when you go to the restaurants to pick up your order, the people they must know you well then, right? Do they say, Oh hi Conrad, do you enjoy that familiarity?

[16:13] Conrad Malone: I do. I do. I love the idea of walking into an establishment and someone saying, Hello, Conrad.

[16:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Sure. Exactly as you did.

[16:21] Conrad Malone: Yes. Oh, it made my heart skip a beat.

[16:24] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh. It's full. My heart is full.

[16:26] Conrad Malone: Oh, that's lovely. Like my tummy. And what do you do professionally?

[16:32] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: What don't I do professionally?

[16:32] Conrad Malone: Oh. Anything. I am on disability because of my weight fluctuation.

[16:40] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Sure. And I have what is called a flop foot.

[16:43] Conrad Malone: Now you might have heard of a drop foot. Uh this is like a drop foot, except it's more of a flop foot because I like to drag my foot off to the side when I'm sitting, and occasionally someone will step on it in a way and I'll say, Ah, you flopped foot.

[17:00] Conrad Malone: Uh and so uh the state has uh awarded me a weekly stipend, uh, from which I can order delivery Forty times a week.

[17:10] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Well takeout, yes. I order takeout forty times a week, and uh I have to say, we this country is doing better than it ever has before.

[17:21] Conrad Malone: It's treatment of its citizens.

[17:24] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Hmm. And now four more years of William Jefferson Clinton.

[17:29] Conrad Malone: Wow. It's clear that this means so much to you and you enjoy pretty much all aspects of it. But what what would you say is the best part of the experience of of ordering uh an order for pickup, a pickup order?

[17:41] Conrad Malone: When you order takeout, you get a chance to tell someone exactly what you want. And then when you get there, and I will do this, I will open the order at the restaurant.

[17:50] Conrad Malone: And if it isn't correct to the letter, I will dump it on the counter and I will say, do it again. And they will.

[18:01] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh. Oh. Have you ever been kicked out of an establishment for that?

[18:05] Conrad Malone: Yes, I have. Can you understand why?

[18:08] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I see. If someone does a poor job, it is in some way my fault.

[18:13] Conrad Malone: Well, interesting. Interesting millennial point of view, Amy Lauren, Becca, Emily. I feel as though in this day and age, your sense of entitlement is nothing compared to my sense of entitlement.

[18:28] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I come from the old school. When I don't get what I want, it's not uh I don't I wrote some words down. I don't throw shade. I don't write a bad review on on on gel.

[18:44] Conrad Malone: I instead tell them instantaneously, you can do better and do it again.

[18:51] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: You know, that's not where I thought you were going, but you actually make a really good point.

[18:56] Conrad Malone: Thank you. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell uh the people at the unemployment office that I looked for work today.

[19:10] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, yes. Um I will give them your phone number if that's on you.

[19:15] Conrad Malone: Of course. And I have to say, there's a sadness about you.

[19:19] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, that I I am so uh I don't consider myself to be a Luthero. Yeah. But I do sense a chemistry here.

[19:31] Conrad Malone: And I don't know your situation, but I would like you to know that if you ever would like to get a hold of me, feel free to give me a call after 6 p.m. when the office closes, and I might pick up the phone.

[19:49] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I'll be sure to remember that you said that to me.

[19:55] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Thank you so much for joining us, Conrad. It's been uh a really insightful and haunting experience.

[20:02] Conrad Malone: You're welcome.

[20:04] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: For reasons I don't understand, I took Conrad up on his offer to take me to his favorite Brazilian restaurant. And it got weird fast. I knew Conrad was odd, but I didn't anticipate he'd scream at our waiter, saying his water was too liquidy.

[20:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I'm Emily Amy Lauren Becker. Thanks for listening. And as always, for supporting support for this podcast.