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
Well, as a non-neurotypical person, it can also happen because you get stuck in a negative spiral and the thought of leaving your house seems comparatively far more daunting and a much bigger pain in the ass than punching a couple buttons on your phone and then food appears in 45 or so minutes.
Source: 🫠
Waste money in this stupid way? Buddy I’ve wasted way more money on way dumber shit than this- this is nothin
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?
The delivery thing has never tempted me all that much. Microwaving some crap from the fridge is just as good as far as I’m concerned.
I do remember an awful but funny app, that would pick a random geolocation somewhere in your city, then simultaneously order a pizza to be delivered to that spot, and call an Uber to bring you there to receive the pizza. I wouldn’t want anyone to use it in real life, but as conceptual art I thought it was clever.
For us on a mental break…down, having delivery available is our chance at a decent dinner. Yes its expensive but im paying for not having to spend an hour making the dinner and not having to sit in a restaurant waiting for a to-go meal and not having to interact with people. Neither which I would do anyway. Its better than staring hungry at the ceiling but too depressed to do anything about it so when I finally is so hungry I can’t even sleep I go out to a night-open kiosk and buy myself a bag of potato chips and some soda or a frozen pizza.
Well, that was a very specific example for why the post-covid app delivery trend is awesome. Before it the only delivery was pizza around here.
Though I do wish there was more variation. Restaurants are too city-district grouped. Within my delivery area (where I can still get a meal still hot and not pay extra), Torshov in Oslo, there is mostly burgers, kebabs, thai, and sushi food restaurants. Fish meals, italian, or sandwiches needs to be shipped from centrum. Norwegian-food style restaurants don’t do delivery. Not that I’m complaining, I’m just suggesting improvements to some strangers on the web that can do nothing about it. 🫤
I can only imagine what it must be like to have enough money that you are not meticulously scrutinizing every purchase to see if it’s the most value and stretch your limited budget as far as you possibly can. When I first checked out DoorDash and saw what I would normally pay only $8 for was going to be $30 delivered, I was already over it.
What’s crazy is that all these food delivery apps are barely breaking even. They’re still in the “disruption” phase where they’re trying to offer the service at a really low cost to capture market share. $30 for an $8 item to be delivered is actually their introductory price!
