I had no idea people use food delivery this muchI had no idea people use food delivery this much
From her roughly $50,000 annual salary as a data processor in San Diego, Ms. Reedy, 34, spends at least $200 to $300 a week on food delivery. Ordering in has eaten away at her savings, she said, and led her to socialize less. She tips generously, but worries that the delivery drivers are poorly paid.
Between raising two young boys and putting in long hours at a marketing job in Atlanta, Kevin Caldwell can almost never find the time to make dinner. So he and his husband spend about $700 a week to order in.
Many readers said they had impulsively ordered a single item for delivery: a coffee, a milkshake, a scoop of ice cream. Erin Molnar, a marketer in Ferndale, Mich., once paid about $15 for a tiny chocolate lava cake.
This has me thinking I should go into the restaurant business. I mean, I love cooking. If I can find 10 of these people who like my food, I got $7k per week revenue. Or maybe just run a cookie shop and charge like $15 per cookie, drone delivery.
In 2024, almost three of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant
So why even bother? Just rent a kitchen and don't have a order-in option. I'm sure many restaurants do this, but you'd think it would be way more widespread.
Mercuri Lam, a Yale sophomore, said there’s almost always a delivery driver outside her dorm, even though undergraduates living on campus are required to pay for a meal plan.
I'm going to do the "kids these days thing" but, like, isn't being a starving student a thing anymore? What happened to Ramen or living on one bean burrito a day?
Is it that the convenience is too enticing? Are people just too busy these days to cook? Is it a matter of impatience? Or specialization?
I think it's convenience and recreation maxxing. I also think digital life feels like it's moving so fast that we can't spare the time away from screens.
Why spend 30 minutes cooking and cleaning when I can spend that time scrolling (or whispering to my bot) and get the precise thing that I'm craving?
I really have a hard time listening to people cry about hard they have it driving newer cars, using newer phones, and never cooking. No one can buy a home these days. It's too expensive. It is expensive but we addicted to having stuff now.
I order delivery fairly often, and to be honest it's because I usually value my time and convenience more than the added costs (because you actually pay twice, the delivery fee, and the higher item price, not to mention tip).
I've never done it for just one item though. If I order delivery it's usually a meal for the whole family. And $700 a week sounds crazy to me also.
This is incredibly common. According to this slop it's a nearly $100B industry already.
It's extremely common. I drive by one of these factory kitchens on my way home from work.
You can also tell when restaurants on DoorDash are from these kinds of places. They tend to re-use the same images of food.
I kind of wish there was a way to access these kind of restaurants that wasn't delivery. I'd be curious to be able to show up to the counter of some cloud kitchen and have like five different restaurants to choose from...I guess this is what they call a food truck park...
You can order pickup from them within delivery apps. There are a bunch of them operating on 6th street - multiple virtual brands served from some dated restaurant's kitchen. You walk into a cafe or restaurant with a different name/menu/branding and pickup your food.
This is why there's so little sympathy for "affordability"
I suppose one explanation I forgot to include is efficiency: it is possible that there are many people for whom food delivery makes sense but it wasn't a solvable problem until internet, smart phones and doordash.
It would be easy to construct efficiency arguments (and they'd probably even be true), but they're at odds with the idea of an affordability crisis.
I think the affordability crisis is primarily referring to three markets specifically: health, education, and housing.
I agree, but the lack of sympathy comes from seeing regular people splashing money around like it ain't no thang.
I get that, but some would argue that the causality is reversed. That is, people turn to financial nihilism because actually saving for a home, education, and being able to pay for your own healthcare seems out of reach
Sympathy is a feeling. It's immune to your causality.
I see the gulag is finally doing you some good