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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a dishwasher and I watch Technology Connections. No I don’t!
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.
Paper plates are a thing.
Millennial here. I cook most of my own food. Have never and will never use services like door dash, cuz I don’t want to pay extra to give some stranger unmonitored access to my food. I will tip when I eat out, even though I hate it - for fuck’s sake just factor the tip into the price of the food… my whim as a customer shouldn’t determine if someone else’s employee gets a fair wage.
Anywho, I don’t think that’s horribly uncommon for my generation - most of us can’t afford to eat out more than once or twice a month, if that.
I stopped tipping for take out or if it’s a self serve place. If I’m doing 80% of the work, why should I tip you for pressing 3 buttons on an iPad. Fuck that.
If it’s a place I’m sitting down and have an active wait staff taking my order and bringing my food and then taking the dishes after, then yea I’m gonna tip.
I’m done with the bullshit that puts the consumer on the lowest rung. If you can’t afford to pay your staff then I hope you go out of business.
I’m not actually sure what the normal etiquette is there. The only time I ever get take out is from a mom-and-pop Thai restaurant that’s one of those hole in the wall places, and I tip the fuck out of them cuz I want to support them.
If you’re talking like a fast food burger joint, then yeah fuck that.
Please. Gen X proudly warms up cans of Chef Boyardee.
Meh. I like to cook and it’s far better than the uber eats slop that I need to reheat that I just spent $35 plus tip on which would have cost me $14 to just eat at the restaurant but I wanted the free fries and bogo burger when I spent $30.
were the fries any good
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 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.
I remember during covid we decided to try a food delivery website and was watching the person on the map so I could be ready. Then they just drove straight past our street and got on the highway and just kept going. We ended up getting a refund and just driving to a closer restaurant.
When people tell me they get food delivered that isn’t a classic range of delivery foods (plus Ethiopian) so they can not be disturbed doomscrolling or binging TV, I immediately think less of them. Especially when it’s food that very obviously doesn’t travel well.
In the time it takes to pick something and get it to you, you can cook 1 of 900 million things that will be better. Even when drunk. Even when high AF. FFS, even frozen pizza is faster then delivery. Let alone the cost. Soggy-ass fry eating MFers deserve the cold sad food you eat.
Sometimes, I just want to be a potato and wallow in self misery while someone brings me kebab and makes my life instantly better.
Vegetarian
(Vegan Optional)
(Carnivore Optional)US Measurements
3 cups flour (get the most generic looking bag possible, bonus points for bread flour)
1 cup water full to the brim
2 tbsp olive oil
1.5 tsp Active Dry Yeast (Instant works too but you will get a different texture)
1 tsp saltOptional: 2tsp combined weight Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Rosemary, Sage, Thyme, Parsely
Mix thoroughly, kitchen prep gloves can keep it out from under fingernails. Do not ingest any of the dough, the yeast is a bacteria which can turn the food in your belly into alcohol and cause serious damage. If dough stratifies, you didn’t add enough water. If dough is too sticky, you didn’t add enough flour. Dough should have smooth slightly shiny texture and be stretchable and fold able easily. Cover with wet cloth, I have a lot of cheese cloths at home for this purpose. Knead again in a couple of hours, if the cloth won’t release you need to get it wet again. After a couple hours, put parchment paper on a pan and generously oil, knead and roll dough into final shape on pan, cover again for a short rise while preheating oven. It may at this step be filled with mozzarella, jalapeno, and/or other toppings of choice. Sometimes I precook some vegan blackbean patties and corn to shove inside.
Mix one egg with water in a cup or bowl and beat with a fork or small whisk. You will apply the egg wash before baking and then 3 times while, such as every 10 to 15 minutes.
Bake between 350F for 45min and 425F for 30min, or until it begins to darken to a caramel color on the top. Remove from oven and place another wet cloth over the top for 20 minutes. The egg wash and wet cloth will make a thin soft crust, but are completely optional.
If you bake a couple of loafs on the weekend you can safely package and freeze them and thaw throughout the week or month.
Gen z and I’ve never used a food delivery service in my life
Bot account. AI slop.
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.
