Zoom out a bit and there’s higher item prices if you use a delivery service, as well.
sometimes I “window shop” delivery apps to figure out what to (try to) cook for myself
this habit evolved from getting to the final checkout screen, looking at the total, and saying “oh fuck that”
I only order delivery if it’s in-house delivery and not DoorDash, GrubHub, or any other middle-man service.
I strive to cut out as many middle-men as possible. They’re fucking parasitic and don’t usually offer anything more except fees when compared to going straight to the source of the thing you’re trying to get yourself.
Agreed. I don’t know why people use these apps. They’re a complete and utter ripoff.
Hell, these days I rather just go pick up the food myself than order even in-house delivery. Times are tough and I just can’t afford to tip anymore.
yupppp, I completely stopped third party delivery a few years back. sometimes that means I don’t get to submit to my urges, and inst ad order from somewhere closer (if I don’t feel like driving), or just not at all. so be it.
It makes me irrationally angry when Uber Eats defaults to a tip higher than the delivery fee. Motherfucker, they’re not my workers.
I was at a place where you had to pay extra fees for actually eat/drink there instead of taking it with you
Don’t forget where the prices of the food are higher on the apps than on the menu in the store.
This pissed me off today. My girlfriend asked me for McDonald’s, the cart total was $18.76. Then 13.99 for a delivery fee. Then 6.87 for “taxes and other fees”. Plus a tip to the driver. It was over 40 dollars for less than 20 dollars of food.
What the fuck?
We had it so good with food delivery apps before covid
And that’s how you learn how profitable it can be as the middleman.
And after all that, you get cold/slightly warm food! Yum, cold McDonald’s fries…
They’re not bad reheated in an air fryer mind, especially with a bit of extra oil.
Still considerably substandard though, especially for the money.
If you’re going to the trouble to reheat fast food fries with a fryer you might as well just make your own.
Blame other consumers. I’ve worked food service my entire life and when these delivery “services” were implemented I knew all it was gonna do was raise prices and drop food quality and make my job harder but everyone acted like I was crazy.
Now all I hear is people complaining about the higher prices and lower quality and I just laugh because you fuckers made my life 10x harder and you have no one to blame but yourselves.
Fucking hear hear
While I respect the struggle, I really truly do, this is a multi-faceted issue.
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I don’t think it’s unreasonable that in the 21st century, we have accessible delivery portals. Disabled people really benefit from delivery services.
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Businesses generally chose not to adapt to this development in a way that was best for themselves and especially their employees. Yes, consumers did support these services and disregard the real effects on employees that they had. I can only imagine the horrors of days where Doordash/Uber Eats/etc. has delivery promo codes for certain items - especially in a seasonal context. I can’t even fathom just having an organic spike of orders come in, especially before closing or right at opening.
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If we had an open delivery platform (like the yellow pages) that businesses could freely list themselves on and use their own drivers to facilitate delivery for, that would likely be ideal. As a consumer, it’s very annoying accessing and using terrible restaurant websites to order delivery. There’s a chance the domain doesn’t resolve, that there are expensive credit card processing fees, and there are usually restrictive delivery distance maximums (which could be solved by third-party drivers).
There are ways that this all can be resolved, but it’s entirely unreasonable to, as you say, increase your workload 10x as much. I can only imagine having to serve one app, but most businesses choose to serve multiple and even have their own apps sometimes - in addition to taking orders via phone call. I can’t imagine how much there is to juggle, truly.
Major delivery apps need to go the way of the dodo, they are an unnecessary middle-man and they fuck over everybody - drivers, employees, consumers, and businesses if they had the ability to realize the effects on their employees and result on the quality of their product.
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Don’t forget the actual item being priced higher in the delivery apps as well a lot of the time. Even before you get those fees tacked on.
The prices are higher across the board because of delivery apps too even the food you order inside the restaurant is now more expensive to help subsidize the delivery fee costs. These delivery services take like 30% off the top of each order. It’s stupid
I would be livid if apps did that in my area. Here you can get even supermarket food delivered and other than the delivery fee (and tip if you decide to give one but they aren’t usual here) the cost is the same as in store.
The price hikes come after all local competitors or alternatives have been run out of the market.
Not sure exactly how things are setup now for the various apps, but a few years ago some of the apps would charge the restaurant for their delivery service (sometimes a set monthly cost, sometimes a set cost per delivery, sometimes a percentage) so the restaurants would often recoup that cost by increasing prices in the app.
Heck, Doordash has an entire support page for merchants about setting prices in the app and whether to have them marked up.
https://help.doordash.com/merchants/s/article/How-to-Maximize-Visibility-and-Order-Volume-on-DoorDash?language=en_US
I started a door dash order the other day and it ended up being like $110, so I made the same order on the restaurant website and it was only $60.
Whenever I’m using my maps app to find somewhere local to get food from, it is all ready to provide me with Doordash or Yelp. If there’s a “website” attached at all, it’s usually a frickin’ Facebook page.
But I can usually plug the name + town into DuckDuckGo, and wouldn’t ya know it, they do have their own website! With lower prices!
I’ve submitted corrections to the map app before, listing the correct websites. I’ve done it numerous times for my favorite places, over the course of years. Nothing ever changes. I’m 99% certain it’s all part of some grift - Doordash et. al. probably have some kind of deal to make their pages the main/only options. I have no evidence of it, but nothing else makes sense.
why even use door dash in the first place when the restaurant has a website?
that’s always the first thing I check
no website = no order from me I’ll even pick up the phone and call if I absolutely have to, but I’m not paying third party delivery apps that can’t even pay their staff
Most restaurant websites I use just end up delivering via DoorDash, so I don’t always check. But I don’t use it often, just every once in a while when I’m in a real pinch
The success of those apps is adding to my pile of reasons to be pessimistic about the future of humanity.
Service fee is probably what their infrastructure costs. Delivery fees are to pay the driver. Tips are the bonus if they are really nice or are very fast.
Is it different in other places because where i live that’s only a few dollars extra on top of my order and it’s worth it since a whole person just got my shit to me in 20 minutes instead of me moving my lazy ass off the couch.
Says right ony receipt the deliver fee is not for the driver. 1
Not where I live. The delivery fee goes to the driver. Hence my asking if it’s different in other places.
