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the original Empire Szechuan Gourmet first opened: Moon Palace, Great Shanghai, Happy Family. Today al of them are gone. If Misa hadn’t come along with her vision of aggressive delivery, would it have occurred to someone else from those restaurants? Or perhaps Misa’s success had to do with choosing the right market, introducing delivery in the right New York neighborhood at the right time. The Upper West Side of Manhattan was densely packed with apartment buildings, co-ops, and brownstones. Women were moving into the workplace in larger numbers, and were looking for quick but healthy ways to feed their families when they didn’t have time to make home-cooked meals. Young professionals loved the idea that food could come from a phone rather than a stove.
    But the more I thought about it, the more the whole situation seemed eerily familiar. A low-cost method of distributing advertising had led to indiscriminate carpetbombing of materials, which had led to copycat marketers, which had led to infuriated customers, which had led to a back-and-forth in judicial and legislative recourse, which had led to new ways to distribute advertising.
    This was spam. Miss Chang had succeeded in part because she had understood the power of spam before anyone else. It wasn’t just about the service; it was about the marketing. I had met the proto-spammer.
    The decision to buy the building on Broadway and Ninety-seventh Street turned out not to be the wisest business move for Misa’s partnership. “I know Chinese restaurants. But I don’t know real estate,”
    Misa admitted. Managing an aging property, with its upkeep and building inspections, eventual y became too much of a headache. She and her partners sold to a landlord who wanted to turn that valuable spot over to Bank of America. Empire Szechuan Gourmet had to find a new home.
    Misa decided to move the flagship restaurant to a preexisting spin-off on 100th Street, long nicknamed Empire Szechuan Junior. I watched her haggle, in her broken English, with the owner of a town-car service upstairs. She thought his company’s sign was ugly and offered to make him a new one that would fit better with the new Empire Szechuan decor.
    The original Empire Szechuan on Broadway and Ninety-seventh Street shut down on October 4, 2005, after nearly twenty-nine years of business. Misa wasn’t at the restaurant for the formal closing, because it pained her. The restaurant was disassembled without much fanfare. By the next afternoon, the staff had moved to the new Empire Szechuan restaurant on 100th Street. It was open for business immediately.
    The change attracted little attention. By then, neighborhood Chinese restaurants were nothing special. Other places, like the Vietnamese Saigon Gril , had intoxicated Upper West Siders with their exotic new cuisine.
    Over time, it became clear that the 100th Street restaurant didn’t have the same visibility and traffic as the original location, which had been just a block away from a major crosstown bus line and an express subway stop. Business slowed.
    Today, nearly every self-respecting restaurant in Manhattan, from neighborhood diners to high-end establishments, delivers. They have to, in order to survive. Over the years, Chicago, Washington, and Boston also jumped on the delivery bandwagon, though some other cities, like San Francisco, seem stubbornly resistant. Several years ago, many of my friends began murmuring about something cal ed SeamlessWeb. I had never encountered the service.
    But my friends, particularly those in finance, consulting, and law, swore by it. At work, they could order lunch and dinner over a Web site and never have to see the bil . Even the tip could be set and bil ed directly to the company. Now it was possible to feed yourself without ever leaving your desk. No more turning in receipts stained with chicken tikka masala.
    No more struggles with English on the phone.
    Companies loved it. Accounting departments loved it.
    My