Why do people need those delivery services? Why can't they just cook meals at home like most people do?
my options now are either buy a car, pay insurance, maintenance etc. north $1,500/mo for the convenience of going to the grocery store or, get a subscription for all these services ~ $200/mo. and save myself the time spent back and forth doing grocery shopping. I cook 90% of my food.
not all solutions involve owning a car.
Huh? Decent car payment at $300-500/month, insurance at $200/month, and I'm wondering what $1,000/month of car "maintenance" looks like, considering $250/month will get you a full tank of a gas a week.
not to mention the tolls.
my point is, ~$1500 is grocery for a month for us. why would i spend that much on just a car?
But if people are going to get judgy about food delivery then they can rather put the effort in to explore why they feel that way.
But there's nothing efficient about hundreds of people making short distance car trips to restaurants, which is what was proposed as an alternative that is somehow "better".
And when you factor US style urban construction in, it's pretty likely a lot of people also don't have walkable access to local outlets anyway.
Which is again, incredibly inefficient on every possible level and actually pretty damn expensive.
Yes. I live in NYC so I don't have a car because we have the subway, street parking is a nightmare, and paid parking is $500-$1000/month.
I don't have a bicycle because it would either waste _significant_ space in my apartment, or I'd have to leave it outside where it would be promptly stolen (regardless of locks). If I decided against having my bike stolen, I'd have to carry it up and down narrow interior stairs every time I wanted to use it since I live in a walk-up. I also am not a fan of needing to find a place to store the bicycle at my destination. Whereas if I just take the subway then I am completely liberated: I can go anywhere, stay as long as I want, change my plans on a whim, and never fret about whether or not my bike has been stolen or if there will be a place to store and/or lock my bicycle.
Assuming everyone has cars or bicycles is a very suburban mindset. None of the people that I know in this city have a car, and the people I know with bicycles are the kinds of people who take cycling very seriously. Most people have neither.
The downside is food: If I go pick up food then I am limited to a very small radius from my apartment, lest my food get cold on the walk back. There's only ~3 restaurants I order from within a 15 minute walk radius of my apartment, and for those restaurants I walk. Delivery people can cover much greater distances within reasonable food freshness times, significantly increasing the variety of restaurants available to me.
I live int Toronto which is hardly suburban. It is however choke full of bike-share. Go outside, walk a bit and grab a bicycle. NY obviously does not care.
I was in no way asking you. To each their own. I just simply pointed that you are wrong about "suburban mindset".
Because they can do it from the smartphone, and they only know how to live via their phone.
I've gotten takeout in my life--basically never delivery.
ADDED: Not feeling like they can sounds like learned helplessness to me. Might not be a bad interview question.
Because they don't want to and don't have to justify their wants and preferences. (Also, historically, most socieities had a communal element to food preparation. Every household cooking everything at home was for the rich.)
Just had some nice betasuppe[1], a vegetable soup with meat sausage if you like. Just chop some sausage and vegetables (or easier use a bag of frozen stew vegetables), cook in pot with some stock, done. Minimal cleanup, no mess. Great tasting meal for a few cold days.
Before that I had pan-fried salmon with broccoli, pasta and pesto. Just put the salmon in the pan with a dash of oil and season it, cook Fussili (rotini) pasta and toss in frozen broccoli once the pasta is nearly done. Serve with decent pesto. Done in ~15 minutes, no prep, just a pan and a pot to clean, no mess, lots of taste.
Before that I made some Ceasar-ish salad. Fried some bacon and a seasoned chicken breast, meanwhile rinsed and prepared the Romain lettuce, I cheat and use some cherry tomatoes cut in half for flavor, dry bacon on paper towel on the plate I'll eat from while I cut the chicken. Skipped the crutons this time, served with a good Ceasar salad dressing from the store and some fresh grated Parmesan. Just a pan and the cutting board to clean up, no mess, lots of flavor.
Just a few examples for illustration. I do make more elaborate meals, but mostly I'm lazy and don't like to clean up. But I find it easy to make great tasting meals at home, and doesn't have to be very involved.
[1]: https://northwildkitchen.com/norwegian-betasuppe/ (I added some pearled barley, more fiber and adds texture and taste)
Also, sometimes some meals are arguably not worth the labor of cooking. Making proper pho takes at least a whole day. Pad Thai really doesn't function without the kind of intense heat of specific equipment. Etc etc.