Food delivery apps (Uber eats, Deliveroo, Menulog, etc) are just another silicon valley scam ‘fixing’ a problem that did not exist.
The restaurants get stung for ~30%, yet are pressured to have a presence on the apps lest they lower thier market prescence, the gig worker delivery drivers get paid poorly and have no benefits, and ultimately the costs get shoveled onto the consumer impacting the highest year on year increases in fast food on record.
Opt out. Buy from places that have their own delivery service. Actually walk or drive or public transport to the restaurant and eat out - no waste from the delivery containers. Fuck the tech bros, we had fast food and delivery working just fine before their shitty apps arrived.
It’s Platform Capitalism.
You insert yourself as a convenient middle-man then jack up the rents once enough people move on to your platform to trigger network effects.
Enshittify until basically no one but a few execs and investors are profiting.
And to any engineers who think they’re on the winning team: look at the gig workers you help exploit. That’s the future of your vocation.
Maybe not ‘fixing’ a problem, but they certainly vastly improved on the existing service aspect of food delivery. Which is the aspect I care about.
Buy from places that have their own delivery service
Figuring out which local restaurant does and doesn’t currently deliver (which would change on a daily basis) was one of the main problems. Restaurant can still have their own delivery drivers but having a central place to look up who is currently (in-real time) delivering and what is a big improvement. Also I don’t want to call or talk to people, so every restaurant would need it’s own system to take online orders. Doesn’t seem realistic.
Actually walk or drive or public transport to the restaurant and eat out
Brilliant. You can also cut down on commute/travel time and cost by just staying home. Or fix your depression by stop being sad! Big brain.
Figuring out which local restaurant does and doesn’t currently deliver (which would change on a daily basis) was one of the main problems.
Your local food delivery places make changes to if they do delivery or not on a day to day basis? Do you live in a warzone? This is nonsense.
Also I don’t want to call or talk to people, so every restaurant would need it’s own system to take online orders. Doesn’t seem realistic.
TFW too scared to dial 9-11 because would have to speak to someone. dies
‘Big brain’ indeed.
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Those services sure are nice when your whole household is locked down with COVID.
Not everyone has access to businesses that also deliver, outside of pizza and Chinese food.
How is this shitting on? Cooking for yourself and your family is chad as fuck.
back in my day calling someone “cheap as fuck” was an insult.
I don’t know what’s up with my fellow millennials in the comments. I do order food once or twice a week.
About the fees, there’s none if you order directly from the restaurant, and the apps/services that apply them (usually just one) take it out above a certain threshold, or looking into your email spam for of their ‘discount offers’, but the prices of the food are higher anyway (which I find more dishonest than simply charging a delivery fee).
Also, I only tip if it’s rainy or super-hot (the weather, not the food or the delivery person), because Europe.
I don’t know what’s up with my fellow millennials in the comments. I do order food once or twice a week.
How?? I suppose I did this like a decade ago, but ever since I learned to cook / budget, it seems untenable.
Cooking your own food is much more fun and a lot cheaper anyway.
Yesterday, me and my wife had a whole roast duck in a christmassy port wine sauce with cinnamon, cloves and anise. Served with potatoes and red cabbage. All the ingredients combined cost less than ordering two pizzas.
Cooking your own food is much more fun
Until you have to clean the dishes.
Takes about ten minutes. And there’s the dishwasher as well.
Also, I don’t have to throw away all the packaging in which the food is delivered.
I have lived in one apartment as an adult with a dishwasher.
I almost forgot about dishwashers. I am renting and the landlords are too cheapskate to fix ours.
I have one but never use it. With only 2 people in the house, it’s faster to just wash our two plates and the skillet right after using them.
I have a dishwasher and I watch Technology Connections. No I don’t!
Paper plates are a thing.
For reals. Why does my passion for good food make me feel old instead of just a healthy habit that most people could partake in despite their age
This meme is as American as it gets.
Cooking your own food is pretty normal in most of the rest of the world, regardless of generation nonsense.
I’d say that it’s more of an economical difference than a cultural one. Rich people will always order (they don’t have time to cook) and their kids are not taken care of by them (not cooked for) so they order too.
The “fee fee” SpongeBob is missing in the image
As a millennial, the only time I have ordered any food to my door was in early 2022 when I had corona and couldn’t leave home for a week. Had to order amazon fresh to restock.
I assume this is a murican problem. Where I live the delivery apps are about 5-15% more expensive than grabbing it yourself. If you order from a close by restaurant (<8km) the delivery is free most of the time, so you only have to pay the service fee (we don’t do tips).
I think what’s missing from the discussion is that virtually no-one is getting food delivery every day.
Cheapass Genx here. We’re admittedly too lazy to cook ourselves and prefer to spend that time on hobbies instead.
But food-delivery got so bad AND expensive here (Germany) that we switched to hiring a cook instead. He passionately loves his work, we love the food, everyone’s happy.
cheapass
hired a cook
???
I hate wasting money on useless bad stuff and take a looooong time to decide on investments starting at one buck. That defines a cheap ass, does it not? Investing in people though is never wasted money. At least to me. One less person that needs to endure a horrible boss. And we (and him) get nice food.
So you hire a personal cook?!
Yes. We both hate cooking and also, at best, can heat up pasta.
You may be cheapass, although I don’t see how, but you are definitely also loaded.
I turn every buck around if that investment is worth it. Literally starting at one Euro. I would never e.g. get a coffee at Starbucks (or wherever) for 10 bucks as I could have 50 cups at home for that. I have two pair of shoes, two pants and just a handful shirts. I’ve been told to be a horrible cheapskate a thousand times.
I can relate to that, partially. Sadly I’m impulsive and will eat out or order food (I can’t afford to hire a cook anyway lol), but I tend to own one pair of shoes, a pair of jeans, 2-3 pairs of shorts and a handful of black t-shirts. All my socks are the same so I don’t have to throw out a pair if one sock develops a hole (socks are a bit of an expense for me, I don’t get the cheapest ones because those start smelling really quickly for me for some reason)
Millennial here, cooking your own food is “cheap af” now? I tell you, fresh produce and meat ain’t cheap where I live! My food tastes better than takeout anyway, f that noise. 😄
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Yes, yes, yes. But do you know the song that goes beep boop boop beep??
Thanks for stating your intentions, I will block you now.
Wide sweeping generalizations about entire generations. I don’t know a single millennial that uses those food delivery services. Clearly someone is using them, but i guarantee it’s just about evenly distributed across the population.
Exactly this. I know millennials that use third party food delivery services for convenience, but I have not and will not. It is predatory, the drivers do not make a living wage with benefits. It also costs too much and the food arrives lukewarm and soggy.
I enjoy eating out now and then, but I can get my ass into a car or walk to a restaurant to pick up my order myself. It is better and cheaper to DIY your own delivery.
Jumping on the “not knowing any millennials who do uses door dash every day/often” train, but also acknowledging that I cant possibly know every single person in the world.
Even tho the fact that people often use these services always bemused me, I cant pass the fact that these services are still thriving and there seems no end to their popularity.
Yeah like i said, people are using them, but it’s almost guaranteed to be an even spread across the population.
I’m a millenial. I kind of use those services. Not really.
2 years ago I moved into my apartment. I would come home, and see a bag of food delivery in the lobby.
So I would go up to my apartment, think nothing of it.
Then I’d take out my trash at 6am, and see it still sitting there. One day I checked the tag. Delivered 8pm the day day before.
It kept happening. Different apartments, delivery anywhere between 3pm and 10pm. I’d come home from work at 1am, and it still would be there.
Eventually I just started checking the tag, and if it’s been more than 2 hours, fuck it. Free dinner for me!
I still don’t get why these delivery drivers won’t deliver to the apartment door, always leaving food in the lobby. I also don’t get why the customers who paid for their food don’t come get it.
Either way, roughly once every 2 weeks, I have free dinner.
They have atrict time lines for delivery. Some apartment buildings are an absolute maze, and others have highly restricted access to the living spaces.
There’s usually a method for the delivery person to contact the recipient. All it takes is 3 second to shoot off a text saying the food is in the lobby.
You think they don’t get a push message that it was delivered?
Freakin’ sweet
Seems to be unpopular to admit in this post, but I use food delivery apps. Yes, the fees are ridiculous, but I can afford it. I don’t do it every day, but I do at least once a week.
I hate cooking and I hate dishes. It’s never pleasant. No, I can’t personally make something at home “better than most takeouts”. If you can, good for you. It’s not for me and I’m lucky that I am able to get takeout.
Honestly, I don’t know how in the world one human is able to keep up with working 40 hours a week, cook, dishes, laundry, clean, etc. It’s all too much for me. Hell, the state of my laundry has been insane the last several weeks.
I’d rather use a laundry that picks up and delivers folded clothes than get food delivered.
You’re allowed to use paper plates and throw them away after one use.
There is a gig service for that. Hampr or Poplin
[off topic]
There’s a fascinating history of laundry in America.
During the Gold Rush, they’d ship laundry from San Francisco to Hawai’i because that was the cheapest option.
“Chinese Hand Laundry” was ubiquitous for decades in American cities. Back in the day, laundry was ‘women’s work,’ and men would rather work in sewers than lower themselves to do it. The Chinese immigrants were happy with any work, and created their own niche.
Around 1950 they polled American men and women about the greatest invention of the 20th Century. The men mostly picked the car; the women went for the washing machine.
Now I’ve cleared out my brain for a while…
Pro tip. Go to the laundromat. They have 75gallon machines. You can do a whole months worth of laundry in 1 go for a whole family. 30 minutes wash, 30-60 minutes dry. 1 afternoon, clothes for a month.
Or do drop off service, which costs 10x more, but you don’t have to do anything. Some even pickup/deliver
You need to actually have enough clothes to last a month without washing, though. I’d last 10 days, maybe. Washing machine capacity is definitely not the limiting factor for me.
The best place to get clothes is the local uniform supply/restaurant supply/hardware store.
Work type clothes are designed to be worn every day. Even if you have a small place you can store clothes in a box under the bed or at the bottom of the closet.
What if I don’t want to wear those types of clothes?
Have you gone to one of those places?
Restaurant supply places have very chic options; lots of upscale places use tuxedoes. Security guard blazers and slacks look pretty good.
I don’t wear any clothes that could (traditionally) be part of a suit.
Once you learn how to reduce a lot of that, there is less waste and less cooking and waiting and yes the food is better than food delivered to your door. Even the cheapest frozen pizzas are better than the majority of pizzas delivered to door and pizza companies are the best at delivering fresh food to your door.
If you don’t want to do dishes then use paper plates. Like, you can both simultaneously generate less trash and have better food.
I agree that it’s impossible to keep up with chores. I do just a little every day and that helps keep the number down but it’s still impossible. But like if I’m going to get food from a restaurant (which i do) i go pick it up. It will get to me faster, I’ll eat it fresher, it will taste better, and it will be cheaper. Like the only upside to the food delivery apps is that you don’t have to go outside, which honestly is a downside for a lot of people in this day and age. We need people to interact more.
Even the cheapest frozen pizzas are better than the majority of pizzas delivered to door and pizza companies are the best at delivering fresh food to your door.
Man you must have some absolute shit pizza places near you, I’ve had lots of frozen pizza and lots of pizza delivery. Frozen pizza can beat out the bottom tier chain pizza places (e.g. Little Caesars), but that’s about it
With covid, pizza places stopped cooking their pizzas fully. We get a soggy mess, with a soft crust, and way too much cheese every time. On top of that you’re still waiting for the delivery on a route of x other pizzas. It’s faster and better to just pick it up yourself. And then you can check it and tell them to cook it properly when they inevitably don’t cook it all the way through.
This is more of a problem with the pizza places around you and I’m sorry they’re doing your area so dirty :(
But across 3 states for me, the pizza places you expect their quality to be is the quality I’ve generally gotten (like little Caesars is bottom tier and then local good places are top tier etc)
I hope your pizza joints get their head out of their asses so you can get good pizza delivered again lol
I really don’t think it’s my area. I’ve traveled all around the world the past few years, three countries in Europe, two coasts of Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and 9+ different US states. After Covid every pizza place just stopped cooking their pizza as long. Don’t get me wrong! The flavor is still fantastic at all my local pizza joints and the high end pizza places I’ve tried elsewhere. But they’re cutting corners with cook time, even if you tell them well done. And it started with Covid and raising prices because they could. They were selling more than they could cook so they normalized short cook times and people got ok with it. Except me and my wife. We’re like the only people that noticed this crazy decline in pizza quality.
Start ordering well done
I do. Every time. They still barely cook it. Which is why going in to pick it up is still better, cause i can see and tell them to fix it which you can’t really when it’s delivery.
It’s so weird to me. I live in a place where people like their meat cooked to total destruction of flavor and tenderness, and that’s how it’s done. You can order a rare steak and get medium. I still like thin dough well done when it comes to pizza though, New York pizza basically.
Please. Gen X proudly warms up cans of Chef Boyardee.
