Towers, docks, and the Friday cutoff

The food is simple. The building usually is not. A morning order stands or falls on whether the driver knows which dock to use, which lift a supplier is allowed to enter, and whether Friday in that building is already a different kind of day. Write those things in the order. A pretty tray that is still in the van at 09:40 has not been delivered.

Towers and docks

In the towers along Yigal Alon, Menachem Begin, HaShalom and the Ramat Gan diamond district, we stop at the loading dock. We do not pull up on the plaza, and we do not hand a crate to a lobby that has already told three couriers to go around the back. The order needs the dock’s name or number, the service-lift hours, the floor, and the company as it is written on the suite door. “Building C, third floor, the glass one” is how a crate misses a window. If the lobby will not release the service lift without a host, send someone down. We wait ten minutes inside the booked window. Then we call the mobile on the order, and then we leave for the next address. The urn does not wait in a queue of furniture trucks.

A ground-floor studio in Florentin or south Tel Aviv is the other kind of drop: the driver parks as close as the street allows, carries the crate to the door, and needs a name on the bell that matches the order. Old walk-ups with no lift get a crate only up to the second floor, and only if you have said so. We will not carry an urn to the fifth floor of a building with a broken lift and call that a delivery. Say the stairs in the loading note and we will tell you, before the day, whether to meet us at the street.

Door codes and badge instructions belong in the loading line, not in a standing WhatsApp chat from last quarter. We use the code that morning. We do not keep a book of codes after the crate is back. The privacy page says what happens to that note. If the code changes on the morning itself, call the kitchen line, 03-374-6182, before 07:30. After the van has left Holon, a new code is a phone call we may not see until the driver is already at the barrier.

Shabbat elevators

Some buildings in Bnei Brak, and a smaller number in Ramat Gan and Givat Shmuel, run a Shabbat elevator that stops at every floor, or they switch the freight lift into that mode on Friday before noon. A crate that should take four minutes can take twenty. That is enough to miss the next office and to deliver your coffee late for the meeting you booked the first window to protect. On Sunday to Thursday, write which lift a supplier may use, and whether it is the weekday freight lift or the one that stops everywhere. If the freight lift is closed to food before 09:00, the first window is the wrong window and we would rather book you onto the second drop than pretend.

We do not deliver to Bnei Brak on Friday at all. The docks close early, and the lift is the wrong tool for a crate on a short day. Givat Shmuel is off the Friday map for the same reason. Sunday to Thursday, Bnei Brak is on the map if the loading note is specific. “Near the rabbinate” is not specific. A street, a dock and a lift are specific.

Friday morning, and a closed Saturday

Friday orders are in by Thursday at 13:00. The kitchen bakes early, the van runs only from 07:30 to 10:30, and the last arrival we will promise is 10:30. There is no Friday afternoon drop, no Friday collection from the Holon dock, and no second window. The Friday map is the inner ring only: Tel Aviv-Yafo, Ramat Gan, Givatayim, Holon, Bat Yam and Azor. Petah Tikva, Kiryat Ono, Or Yehuda, Yehud, Rishon LeZion and Bnei Brak wait until Sunday. If your Friday meeting is in one of those places, hold it on Thursday or move the food to Sunday.

Saturday the kitchen is closed. There are no drops, no crate collections, and no one answering the phone. A Friday crate that security could not release by 12:00 stays with security until Sunday’s first van. Do not leave it on the pavement. Eves of festivals follow the Friday rule: a short morning, an earlier cutoff, and a reply from the kitchen that states the hour. The form does not know the festival calendar. The reply does.

Where the van goes, and where it turns around

Sunday to Thursday we deliver inside Gush Dan, and we name the edge so a pin in the wrong city does not become an argument at 07:00. The van covers Tel Aviv-Yafo from Ramat Aviv through the business towers, Florentin and Jaffa. It does not serve the port’s inner piers or the lots by Reading. It covers Ramat Gan, Givatayim, Bnei Brak, Givat Shmuel, Holon, Azor, Bat Yam east of the promenade, Kiryat Ono and Or Yehuda. Ramat Hasharon is in, up to the Morasha and Glilot edge. Petah Tikva is in on the western side, as far as the Geha and Jabotinsky corridor, and not out at Segula or the far side of Em HaMoshavot. The northern edge of Rishon LeZion, down to Moshe Dayan station, is in. Yehud-Monosson is Thursday only, and only if the order was in by Wednesday at 16:00, because it is the long end of the first loop and we will not invent it on a Tuesday night.

The van turns around, and we will say so when you ask, at these cutoffs. North: Herzliya, Kfar Shmaryahu, Ra’anana and Hod Hasharon. A Holon bake that tries to make an 08:00 drop past Glilot is a late drop, so we do not book it. South: Rishon LeZion south of Highway 431, Nes Ziona, Rehovot and Yavne. East: Rosh HaAyin, El’ad, Shoham, and Petah Tikva east of Segula. Beach hotels along the Bat Yam promenade are outside the run. We are a crate at a dock, not a banquet at a shoreline ballroom.

One address, one window, one minimum of ₪490 for delivery, VAT included. Prices on the board already include that VAT. Collection from our own dock at HaMerkava 21 in Holon is separate: Sunday to Thursday, 07:00–09:30, from ₪220, and you carry the crate to your car. The way to book either one is the order page. Nothing is held until the kitchen replies.