it feels similar in egregious price to getting room service, and you don’t even have to talk to the guy, and you can convince yourself it’s nice to treat yourself you’ve been working hard etc etc. you don’t have to do any dishes or think about all the rotten shit in the fridge. it can feel like a legitimate mental break, horribly
i’ve worked too too many years doing delivery and honestly on good days it feels like being on vacation , just out there driving around somewhere peaceful without a boss over my shoulder
but whenever i actually order the garbage myself too much it can lead to a crazy period of overspending. i already spent $30 on a burrito that sucked why not spend $20 on a film i know is good, etc etc
Ever since COVID that crap just got way too expensive. Back in 2016-2018 used to be Deliveroo and UberEats would sometimes straight up have better deals than just going to the place, there was no service or any other charges and delivery fees were £1.99 for most places, when you consider Europe has no tipping it was decent and living off McDonalds alone was often parity in price to cooking nice food yourself. Never been on a vacation so have no idea what that’s like but it’s a nice time/money tradeoff.
The only better value was dominos/papajohns where £10 could get you a large pizza, I think in the US those are supposed to be bad according to some people, but here they’re actually some of the best most consistent comfort food money can buy.
Now it feels like you can’t even get a burrito for less than £20 at a place it costs £12 and it takes way longer as well and the drivers are all shitty, I’ve even seen some people here tipping just to make sure their food actually comes. Crazy.
That was mostly in the early days.
I remember hearing a podcast tell a story of a pizza shop owner, back then, who didn’t even know he was on any delivery apps. But for the app to build a market in his area, they were offering food below cost and paying the restaurant the full amount, without even telling the restaurant.
Once he caught wind of this, the ended up processing a bunch of pickup and dine-in pizzas as if they were customers in the app, and pocketing the difference. Who could blame him?