Katherine MacAlister doesn’t have to wait for long to sample the delights of the new Deliveroo revolution

Would the alarm bells go off Ghostbusters style?

Would the Deliveroo men be sliding down poles into special suits, bikes ready as we pushed send on our computers? Would Deliveroo manage the 36-minute deadline? Either way, the clock was ticking as we waited for our lunch.

Deliveroo is a brilliant idea. Order from a great and varied array of local, independent restaurants, pay online and have your food delivered to you in Oxford in just over half an hour. You have to pay a £2 delivery fee and order a minimum of £15 worth, but otherwise it’s a doddle. Just register, put in your postcode, click and pay.

If, like us, you work on an industrial estate, Deliveroo is like a gift from the Gods. Maybe not everyday, budget wise, but there’s a great selection of food from healthy to blow out, as well as a choice of salads and soups, stirfrys, pizzas, burgers, burritos, pasta, risotto and other options to choose from.

Deliveroo is in its early stages, so other restaurants are waiting to be lined up and put online, but in the meantime the initial offerings of Café Coco, Kadai & Naan, Pomegranate, The Rusty Bicycle, Branca, Al Salam, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Maxwell’s, Noodle Nation, The White Rabbit, La Cucina, Mission Burrito, Cibo! and Spice Lounge were a good place to start on a dark, cold Tuesday lunchtime.

And with similar models rolled out in London, Brighton and Manchester, it’s a formula that already works.

We went for Mission Burrito. One Super Vegetarian Burrito, one Super Pork Carnitas Burrito and a Super Chicken Burrito, all with guacamole and cheese.

“Do they come with tequila?” music man Tim Hughes asked. I ignored him obviously, but booze aside, they arrived five minutes early on a bike ridden by a nice chap called Johhny Cormont. No jumpsuit, no fuss, just a cyclist in jeans with a red puffy pizza-style warming bag to keep our food toasty for £21.55.

The following day we pressed the magic button again, just to see if it was a fluke, whether it would work with a pizza, whether it would arrive cold and therefore ruined – although The White Rabbit has never made a bad pizza in its life.

So it was with glee that we ordered an American with pepperoni, a Diavola (hot,hot,hot) and a Bufala (basic margherita) for £32.50 and sat back as content as Tom Jones in a medallion factory. This time there was a 40-minute estimated delivery time, but yet again the pizzas arrived early. In fact, we’d eaten them by the time they were supposed to have been delivered, meaning our dreary day in the office was transformed into something much more exciting.

If you’ve never experienced a White Rabbit pizza then here is the perfect excuse, because ours were juicy and succulent, the dough chewy and crispy, as good as we’d expected.

And that’s the genius thinking behind this scheme, because it enables a new audience to sample Oxford’s best independent restaurants from the safety of their own homes.

The downside was that the food wasn’t piping hot and if you’re picky like me, and want hotter sauce in your burrito, or chilli oil on your pizza and extra capers, you can’t fiddle with the dishes. Otherwise, Deliveroo is a gift. Lunchtimes will never be the same. All Deliveroo needs to do now is supply a personal trainer afterwards.

You can register and order at deliveroo.co.uk