Delivery is killing restaurant culture

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/10/food-delivery-america/684700/

by gausswho • 9 months ago

20 56 9 months ago

robthebrew• 9 months ago

The crazy tipping "culture" is forcing people to order out. State the price, pay your staff adequately and serve them well. They will return. It's that simple.

MangoToupe• 9 months ago

I don't think this is entirely true, particularly when delivery sources that take a percentage cut are a large factor. Furthermore the tips would just be absorbed into the cost of the menu items.

I think rising wealth inequality is also a problem. The top 10% of america can only eat out at so many places at once.

tpmoney• 9 months ago

They're going to have to fix their food quality problems too, especially if they're going to bake in (pun not intended) a wage hike for their staff. The last handful of times I've gone out to standard faire American restaurants (think Outback, Applebees etc), the price for two people before tip was anywhere from $30-$50 / person. $100 for Outback would have been a pretty steep ask even before "delivery" became a thing, but since the pandemic there has been a noticeable drop in quality across the board. The places are under-staffed and over worked and the need to cram as many bodies in as possible combined with "industrial chic" has made most of them noisier than a school cafeteria. The food is not only anemic in looks and quantity but the quality is barely better than a frozen dinner from the grocery store. I'm not avoiding the restaurants because I have to tip, I'm avoiding them because I'm being charged high end steak house prices for microwaved frozen food.

hooverd2• 9 months ago

The price floor on the middling chain restaurants has gone up but the prices on the higher end haven't as much. Now it's a better deal to just go to the local, nicer restaurant.

Klonoar3• 9 months ago

If the phenomenon was people ordering take out and picking it up themselves, I might be inclined to agree.

It's not, though - you still have sticker shock of fees/tips/etc on DoorDash (etc.) orders. Tipping is an issue in America today but I doubt it's the cause of this particular problem.

hooverd2• 9 months ago

"forcing people to"? it's still more expensive in money or in time if you're getting anything more than replacement level fast food.

pavel_lishin4• 9 months ago

The crazy tipping "culture" is forcing people to order out.

Have you seen the delivery fees? You're not saving any money by ordering delivery.

seanmcdirmid3• 9 months ago

They are free if you pick up your own order. I know this is about deliveries, but take outs are basically the same thing with the person ordering acting as the delivery walker (I live in Seattle/Ballard, so at least we don't have to drive to get food). I've recently discovered a local grocery store's salad/hot bar, and its basically my go to for lunch now (they grocery store doesn't even ask for tips).

runnr_az• 9 months ago

I definitely see a steady stream of Dashers come into the coffee shops I work out of... I'm still sort of shocked at how many people use these services, given how expensive they are: "More than half of adults under 45 use delivery at least once a week, and 13 percent use it once a day. Five percent use it multiple times a day. But the delivery boom isn’t confined to young people or to urbanites: About one in eight Baby Boomers uses delivery once a week, and so does about one in five rural dwellers."

foxyv6• 9 months ago

Our cities are so messed up that just leaving the house is stressful and time consuming. I can't walk down the street without seeing at least one car do something monstrously stupid. I've witnessed accidents, screaming, near misses, people driving on sidewalks, blowing through stop signs without looking, and endless drunk/high drivers weaving around.

I can totally understand why people are holed up in their houses. It feels like a war zone out there.

add-sub-mul-div2• 9 months ago

People who actually live in cities aren't afraid of cities. People who live in the Midwest are told by cable news that cities are war zones because they like hearing it for culture war points, and then the sentiment gets further spread in comments sections. But they're not driving down restaurant business. I'm not an exceptionally brave person, but I feel much safer in cities than cable news wants me to feel.

pavel_lishin4• 9 months ago

That doesn't sound like the city I lived in to me, that sounds like my suburban neighborhood.

nick_• 9 months ago

Yep same experience here. And I'm in one of my city's most walkable neighborhoods.

torginus2• 9 months ago

I think delivery is horrible - it strains the infrastructure with these couriers dashing about, most of whom are paid terribly and have little prospects or job safety.

These middlemen delivery companies are abusive and rent-seeking, contributing very little to the product but taking an immense share of the profits.

It also destroys every restaurant's natural advantage of closeness - if you run a pizzeria and your food is not horrible, you can naturally expect people from about 2 city blocks over to eat there - now, they're competing with every pizzeria in the city.

Pet_Ant• 9 months ago

Honestly, I think it's more the fault of city planners. There are almost no places to eat within 10 minute walk of where I live, and I live downtown. If more apartment buildings had commercial first floors that would go a long way.

pavel_lishin4• 9 months ago

May I ask what city you live in? I've lived in three boroughs in NYC, and I've never lived more than 5 minutes away from a local eatery. Hell, our first apartment was directly above one.

BobaFloutist2• 9 months ago

To be fair, ground floor retail sounds great to residents but doesn't seem to be economically justified, judging by the amount of it that ends up vacant. I think it's more financially complicated than you would guess.

balaz4• 9 months ago

I reject the entirety of your comment but this point struck me:

It also destroys every restaurant's natural advantage of closeness - if you run a pizzeria and your food is not horrible, you can naturally expect people from about 2 city blocks over to eat there - now, they're competing with every pizzeria in the city.

How is this a bad thing? You want businesses to compete, both in quality and price.

torginus2• 9 months ago

Food delivery reduces competition and increases price - now, instead of having a corner pizza shop, you have a couple massive chains supplying wide geographical areas - the food is not as fresh, the prices are higher due to the delivery markup and extra labor of bringing the food to you, so you likely end up paying more for a worse product, and said money will go to big corporations instead of a local small business

littlekey3• 9 months ago

devil's advocate: wouldn't you want the pizzeria to feel that market pressure so they either 1. improve their product, or 2. are replaced by a better pizzeria?

Klonoar3• 9 months ago

I dunno about you, but "improving the product" on food trends towards everything tasting the same, whether it's:

- Following the same trends/hype

- Changing the recipe so it suits a wider palate

- Narrowing the menu(s) to specific items most likely to move

It boils the ecosystem down to generic and less interesting by default.

Not everything needs to be some perfected ideal and frankly the world is more interesting when it isn't. I'd much rather live in a world where someone can try to build a restaurant based on their take on food and can subsist on their local community at first, maybe growing from there.

freejazz3• 9 months ago

Where do you live? I've never seen this happen and I'm in NYC... It does not seem to have occurred anywhere else I've traveled in the US

nachox999• 9 months ago

video killed the radio star

lsy• 9 months ago

Going to a popular restaurant that accepts app delivery orders (or a grocery store in a neighborhood where people prefer to pay for delivery) is an objectively bad experience. The kitchen or checkout line is backed up with delivery orders, there are a bunch of delivery drivers double-parked or loitering near the front, and due not to any moral failing but rather what must be a crushing grind, the drivers are for the most part rushed and inconsiderate of the staff or other customers.

The class of people who order delivery regularly are generally trading the short-term reward of convenient food for way more money than makes sense, too little of that money benefits the class of people who do the delivering, and as the article points out, it is essentially harming the business it's being ordered from.

I would love to see more restaurants and stores declining to support this kind of system. While there may be some marginal profit now, in the long run the race to the bottom is going to mean fewer sustainable businesses.

BobaFloutist2• 9 months ago

At the very least, I make an effort to pick up food in person these days. Saves me a lot of money, is better for the restaurant, and since it's not my livelihood I can just show up a bit early, park properly, and hang around, ensuring that the food will be as fresh as possible when I get home and avoiding any rush.

The animosity I sometimes see between the restaurant staff and the delivery drivers can be really uncomfortable. It's not shocking, they have competing incentives and I think there's a pretty stark class/culture divide, but it's unfortunate when a system like this pits workers against each other that are just both trying to do their job as best they can.

9x392• 9 months ago

Billions of dollars are being burned to keep taxis for burritos alive, along with any restaurants that fight it. For better or worse, it's hard to bet against human nature when we're offering making something easier.

Of course, cost pressures are insane on delivery drivers, delivery middlemen to make money, and restaurants to cut COGS. It's probably no accident there's videos like [1] about how every restaurant tastes the same when supplied by Sysco (national distributor versus buying fresh/local, which means higher prices...)

IMO, delivery is also killing peoples' finances [2]. I know multiple people who not well-off but effectively no longer cook and only eat premade delivered food. The lack of impulse control turns them into whales not for a gacha game, but for DoorDash.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXXQTzQXRFc

[2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/a...

I don't know if much literature is out there, but there's plenty of online discussions about this phenomenon.

llIllIlillIl• 9 months ago

I know multiple people ho not well-off but effectively no longer cook and only eat premade delivered food.

I see this too. It's so stupid because there are really cheap frozen meals you can get at the grocery store.

sojournerc• 9 months ago

Better yet, beans and rice are nutritional, can be cooked in a variety of ways, and are exceptionally affordable.

bsder• 9 months ago

It's probably no accident there's videos like [1] about how every restaurant tastes the same when supplied by Sysco (national distributor versus buying fresh/local, which means higher prices...)

Sysco is a secondary problem. Restaurants are so relentlessly focused on avoiding wastage that even if they prep their food, they coalesce around the exact, same cheap ingredients in a relatively small number of dishes.

For example, every single restaurant in Austin, TX used to have chicken-fried steak on the menu--to the extent that I used to joke about restaurants that you absolutely wouldn't expect to have it (the Chinese place that I knew served it eons ago made an excellent one).

Now, presumably because beef is expensive, chicken-fried steak is a relative rarity in Austin. And, even if you can find it, it's likely to be sub-par.

Sandwich shops are slightly different but prices are driving the quality decline here, too. The problem is that their primary meat ingredients mostly suck because they are getting the lowest tiers.

9x392• 9 months ago

It's secondary but I maintain it's related because from what I know from talking to local restaurants, as delivery grows, margins shrink, and it's a different animal catering to floods of online orders. One option is to go cheaper to grow that revenue especially if you're not full with dine-in guests.

It's primarily a trap when a restaurant doesn't command value relative to others in that segment, and their dishes are basically commodities (sure, food in general doesn't have great margins, but compare steakhouse vs fast food).

Chopped lettuce or sliced tomatoes from Sysco/distributor is one thing for sandwiches but maybe not salads, and then there's giving in and having entire dishes replaced from their catalog: pancake mix, gravy, premade frozen entrees, desserts. Enter the death spiral as floundering restaurants raises prices and cut quality, discourage customers, raise prices and cut more, losing more customers, etc.

FWIW regarding chicken-fried steak, I live in an area of people with "chicken nugget" palates and lots of diners. Most of the chicken-fried steak now is pre-breaded with canned gravy that is probably Sysco or Chef Store - I know I see the gallon cans walking through the aisles when I go. Yet, there's two local joints that still hand-bread and differentiate with home-made gravies, one spicy, one with herbs. Dinner-plate size dishes to boot which we split. They've resisted delivery and focus on dining in, but...mains start at $22 or so.

It's representative of the split between cheap vs quality. The chicken-fried delivery anecdotes might be a proxy for the class divide, too, hmm.

pavel_lishin4• 9 months ago

I swear I've read this exact headline before, possibly multiple times, over the past decade.

renewiltord2• 9 months ago

The transformation of all news and opinion into a steady stream of Everything Is Bad is something that I think we'll enjoy reading about half a century from now.

My experience is that everything is fine and better than ever. We went to a nice restaurant this last week, we ordered on Door dash for game night, I picked up from a chain (Zareen's) when I went down to the South Bay, and we will go to a restaurant we've been to many times that's across the street this week.

All of these experiences have been good. I know it is traditional in this genre of media to fire up a litany of complaint (the food isn't meant to be X, the delivery drivers aren't paid enough, etc. etc.) but I'm happy with the food I paid for and the delivery drivers are glad they've got the job.

There is a religious chanting aspect to the way people keep talking about things in the world. "Outrage culture in the media is ruining the world" while simultaneously subscribing to that. Take a critical look at yourselves.

cal_dent3• 9 months ago

I am also very interested in this change. Is it just a second order effect on engagement targeting on a wider scale?

Like it's always been the case news and the Internet slants towards the negative ends of things I think but the gap between the world represented there vs the world represented in actual real life seems so much larger now than I can remember it being.

There's also a small thought niggling away at me about if it's mainly because network effects have made the world mentally a much smaller place. All news is sort of global, rather than local, and you can always find something that's pretty shitty in the world at all times and that gets injected into everyone's narrative because whatever news you consume is all connected now to global,or at least national, consciousness if that makes sense?

It'd be interesting to see over time how much the content of news as transformed over time in terms of the local, national, global proportion of coverage/content in the average news media

homeonthemtn• 9 months ago

Unless you live outside cities

Delivery is killing restaurant culture

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