#but it worked out in the end hahaha
Ordering food in a restaurant in Korea is one thing, where you can point at the menu or pick up context clues from body language and surroundings. But what about when you want to order food delivery somewhere and you can only rely on the voice on the other end of the phone. It can be a little tricky but if you at least know the key phrases and vocabulary, it hopefully won’t be as daunting.
Phrasesyoumightsaytothedeliveryservice
In the following phrases, anything that is contained within the following brackets < > can be replaced with your own preferred food order.
- 여보세요 - Hello (obviously)
- 지금 배달되나요? / 지금 배달돼요? - Are you delivering now?
(You can remove 지금 to purely ask ‘Are you delivering?’) - <후라이드 치킨 하나, 떡볶이 하나> 주세요 - One (portion) of fried chicken and one tteokbokki please
(You could replace 주세요 with 가져다 주세요 ‘please can you bring’, or 배달해 주세요 ‘please can you deliver’ to be more specific but it’s not totally necessary) - <콜라>도 주세요 - Cola also please
- 얼마예요? - How much is it?
- 얼마나 걸려요? - How long will it take?
- 카드 돼요? - Is card okay?
- 카드로 결제할게요 / 현금으로 결제할게요 - I will pay by card / I will pay by cash
Phrasestheymightsaytoyou
- 어디세요?- Where? (asking where to deliver to) OR:
- 주소 말씀해 주세요 / 주소 말해 주세요 / 주소 어떻게 되세요 - Please tell me your address / What is your address?
- 주문 어떻게 되세요? / 어떤 제품 주문하시겠습니까? - What is your order? / What (product) would you like to order?
- 다른 더 필요한 거 없으십니까? - Is there nothing else you need?
(Don’t forget the rules of yes or no in Korean are different to English. If you say 네 [yes] to this question, that means ‘I don’t need anything else’, and if you say 아니요 [no] to this question, that means ‘Yes. I need something else’. I find it a little easier to just answer ‘있어요’ or ‘없어요’ to get around the tricky yes/no situation) - 주문 확인해 드리겠습니다 - I will check your order
- 금액은 <25,500>원입니다 - The total price is 25,500 won.
- 현금으로 결제하시겠습니까? - Will you be paying by cash?
- 알겠습니다 - Okay.
Of course, there are numerous other things that they might say to you, but these are the key phrases you need. As long as you have the vocab from here, you should be able to at least figure out what is being said and rustle up an appropriate answer.
Also it’s worth noting that the phone conversation will normally just end with them thanking you and you thanking them back (or in the reverse order), then they will hang up. There doesn’t need to be any other formal goodbyes.
NB. As I was pulling this together, it made me remember that ordering food at a restaurant could throw some really random phrases your way so I’ll make sure to do a restaurant post at some point later if people will find it helpful!
