Even delivered groceries are significantly cheaper than eating out. That difference is mostly the income of restaurant workers.
Basically if you want anything less popular than Sam Adams-level of popularity, you have to get it from a restaurant.
There are also all the local micro-breweries...
[1] edit: See section 203 photographed here: https://twitter.com/mitchryals/status/1239938801839099905
[1] http://www.icontact-archive.com/archive?c=653228&f=109&s=277...
[0] https://ny.eater.com/2020/3/17/21182052/new-york-state-liquo...
Unlike your average delivery joint the numbers kept getting worse the more you added, too—no "two large two-topping pizzas and breadsticks at 70% menu price" deals or anything like that.
[1] actual text from email: "As stated in our Terms and Conditions, the prices for menu items on DoorDash may differ from the prices on the restaurant's own menu. For example, our restaurant partners are responsible for setting the price of their menu items on DoorDash, and some restaurant partners choose to set different prices than they offer for in-store diners."
I used the app once because I had a free delivery (that's the 1.99 waived), ending up costing a lot more than just picking it up myself.
If DoorDash or Uber Eats charges 30% (which is fucking insane if they do), where do you think that comes from? Restaurants aren't making 30% profit.
Compounding the problem GrubHub, and presumably other "gig economy" delivery services, preemptively adds non-partner restaurants against their will:
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-star-SF...
Restaurants lose margin on those orders with the expectation that it's made up by more people ordering.
Protip: call in your orders, those take-out apps often take a cut that's just added to the restaurant's list price (last night I saw a $12 half-duck = $16 phone-in takeout or $25 Caviar take-out)
It literally wasn't worth it, and his drivers all switched over. He tried to find other folks to deliver, but, well, delivery folks aren't exactly known for being long-term employees and most of them deliver for the apps.
I still don't understand what a multinational adds to local pizza delivery. Prices went up, pizza doesn't taste any better or get here faster, and my local restaurant makes less. Do not want.
If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.
I don't know what Uber pays their drivers, but I happen to know the place in question pays a good wage, comparably. I seriously doubt it driving Uber beats it.
>If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.
And yet, here we are. Econ 101 only takes you so far; why do you choose to ignore the other pressures? Once the econ brain worms take hold, people stop thinking.
And where's your evidence that restaurants are profiting off of Uber Eats / GrubHub / Door Dash / whatever? Restaurants are suing to be removed from these services. Presumably it's not profitable for the restaurant.
Let's not forget that in most states these "gig" jobs hire people as contractors who are then ineligible for unemployment and social security and are not guaranteed a minimum wage. Restaurants typically hire folks as employees.
Insufficient knowledge of the wear and tear on ones car.
Desire to "work for themselves" (despite the fact it really isn't).
TL;DR actors in an economic system are often not fully informed.
and whenever there's a knowledge gap, the "market" exploits it for arbitrage. But eventually (which may be a long time), this exploit would stop working as more people try to exploit it causing the profits from it to go down, or the lack of knowledge for which this exploits exist starts to disappear.
There's no rule to say that the market is super efficient at all times - just that it tends towards efficiency.
Seriously, though - we do. But regulations take time to catch up. As they should.
You'd be surprised how cheap individual portions of food are for restaurants.
cost of raw materials in restaurants are a very small portion of the overall bill the customer pays. A large portion is rent, and an even larger portion is labour/wages. I hear the margins are razor thin at around 5-10% (which is low considering the risks). Not to mention capital expenditure (of which the value, i guess, isn't gonna disappear overnight, so there's that).
Cooking at home also tends to be food that you get in season and/or on discount. You don't have a menu at home, and hence, costs at home are both lower in raw materials, and labour costs are zero (assuming you don't pay yourself, and your time isn't able to be spent productively anyway so zero opportunity cost).
I agree that it definitely is cheaper for restaurants to cook large numbers of the same meal, and they have many other expenditures which raise the price of your meal. But for a single meal, the question is whether you can cook it for less than the price at an equivalent restaurant. In many cases, this isn't the case unless you're cooking in large quantities and eating the same meal for several sittings. Yes, using seasonal ingredients is a good idea -- but a lot of restaurants also do that, and their groceries are still much cheaper than yours anyway.
For example (in Australia), if you want to make just one portion of Thai curry you need at least $60 worth of ingredients (your protein, chillies, lemongrass, galangal, palm sugar, shrimp paste, fish sauce, peanut oil, coriander, coconut milk, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, limes, lychees if that's your thing, and so on). So if you're only making one meal it's seriously not worth it (you can buy a decent Thai curry for a fraction of that price). But if you make 10-12 portions of curry (or you make a large batch of curry paste and use it for different dishes) then it starts to become cheaper per-portion.