Delivery is killing restaurant culture(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
Delivery is killing restaurant culture
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/10/food-delivery-america/684700/
58 comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think rising wealth inequality is also a problem. The top 10% of america can only eat out at so many places at once.
> 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.
Have you seen the delivery fees? You're not saving any money by ordering delivery.
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).
There is a real argument in Seattle that tipping in most cases should not be required, and you shouldn't feel bad about just selecting "0" in many cases. We pay people a minimum wage here and the tipping arrangement that, unfortunately, exists in the rest of the country is inverted here as a result.
Also if you're in Ballard, I hope the store you're talking about is Town & Country. Their hot bar is good enough that my wife and I grab dinner there some nights.
Also if you're in Ballard, I hope the store you're talking about is Town & Country. Their hot bar is good enough that my wife and I grab dinner there some nights.
Yep Town & Country, I used to just ignore it out of bias, one of those yuppy grocery stores, but it turned out to be way better than QFC, and its not like they do salad bars here like Ralph's does in LA.
Tipping is crazy in Ballard, and the food options aren't that great anyways. If we drive, we just go to Bellevue or even Edmonds to eat (my wife is Chinese).
Tipping is crazy in Ballard, and the food options aren't that great anyways. If we drive, we just go to Bellevue or even Edmonds to eat (my wife is Chinese).
Take outs have always been there. The article is about delivery apps. Has the proportion of (non-delivery) takeouts increased much?
I've almost always done takeouts for decades, so nothing's changed for me.
I've almost always done takeouts for decades, so nothing's changed for me.
Takeouts had a huge increase during COVID and I don't think they've gone back down again. Heck, Starbucks entire business was boiled down to mobile ordering grab and go for a long time, which is how their stores lost so much appeal (they started getting rid of their lobby, and people just figured out there was no reason to go there anymore). You could argue that takeouts killed Starbucks, at least. My local Thai restaurant is 80% takeouts now, they have a dining area, but its just so small, most people are grabbing food and eating at home.
Yeah, really crazy how when you eat out of a trough, no one asks you for a tip.
"forcing people to"? it's still more expensive in money or in time if you're getting anything more than replacement level fast food.
I swear I've read this exact headline before, possibly multiple times, over the past decade.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I see this too. It's so stupid because there are really cheap frozen meals you can get at the grocery store.
Better yet, beans and rice are nutritional, can be cooked in a variety of ways, and are exceptionally affordable.
Unless you live outside cities
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.
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.
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?
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.
- 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.
I think you're making strong points that what generates revenue for these places isn't always quality but social media hype / overly broad appeal etc... but objective quality is still a huge factor. Some restaurants may have a 2/5 star score because they're too innovative, but many have that 2/5 because they're simply serving bad food. If a place is serving burned/undercooked/expired food, I'd like them to feel like they need to address those issues.
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
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.
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.
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.
A lot of midwest cities aren't really "cities". In the NYC sense. Usually it's a tiny shitty downtown surrounded by suburban sprawl. The places to eat are off of stroads in and around strip malls. In my town a lot of downtown closes not long after the business crowds that work downtown dry up. The zoning doesn't allow enough residential zoning near businesses to have many walkable options.
We're pretty "lucky" in that our subdivision is only about a mile walk to the nearest store and we have sidewalks the entire way. So if I wanted to eat at Subway or Marcos Pizza or pick up a Papa Murphey's take and bake I've got those options! There is also a diner that cannot stay in business. It changes owners every other year or so. If you go a mile from me in the other direction, then the closest place to walk to get something to eat is two miles away (hint, it's the same place) and you no longer have sidewalks the entire way. Guess what happens at five miles away from my house in that other direction? Now you've got to walk six miles one way! My "city" has a population nearing 300,000 and you could find a copy and paste of this design all throughout the city. Miles and miles of suburbs connected via stroads and separated by strip malls.
We're pretty "lucky" in that our subdivision is only about a mile walk to the nearest store and we have sidewalks the entire way. So if I wanted to eat at Subway or Marcos Pizza or pick up a Papa Murphey's take and bake I've got those options! There is also a diner that cannot stay in business. It changes owners every other year or so. If you go a mile from me in the other direction, then the closest place to walk to get something to eat is two miles away (hint, it's the same place) and you no longer have sidewalks the entire way. Guess what happens at five miles away from my house in that other direction? Now you've got to walk six miles one way! My "city" has a population nearing 300,000 and you could find a copy and paste of this design all throughout the city. Miles and miles of suburbs connected via stroads and separated by strip malls.
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.
>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.
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
That is only true if the chains are better than the local restaurants. Which, admittedly, is true far too many times. So maybe those local restaurants should improve or close. I'm not here to give handouts, and neither are the users of those apps. Cook food that is better than the slop that the chains serve, which is a tremendously low bar to clear, or close shop.
And what happens if the chains are also "slop" but have more capital to continue to dominate a location thereby stopping any potential smaller, but better, local competitor from entering the market? Is that better for the local community or, somewhat more grandly, society as a whole?
How will they stop local competitors exactly? Will they send goons to trash the place?
Large businesses can operate at a loss that small businesses cannot sustain. They do this to strangle out competition. Then, after they’ve established a monopoly or oligopoly, they price gouge customers, reduce COGS resulting in inferior product but higher margins, etc.
I’m surprised that this is news to you. This is basically the foundation of antitrust law. Like, this is extremely common knowledge to the point that it mystifies me that you are not aware of it.
I’m surprised that this is news to you. This is basically the foundation of antitrust law. Like, this is extremely common knowledge to the point that it mystifies me that you are not aware of it.
Come on mate let's be serious here. Monopolistic actions can stop local competition through completely legitimate means (such as temporarily selling products at a loss in a way which smaller competitors cannot due to access to more palatable capital funding for instance). After a certain level in size, competition is rarely about the product alone
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."
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.
I can totally understand why people are holed up in their houses. It feels like a war zone out there.
Yep same experience here. And I'm in one of my city's most walkable neighborhoods.
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.
Cable news is talking about gun violence and violent crime. I'm talking about traffic violence.
That still sounds much more dramatic than any reality that I've seen. I'd believe that an instance of a car hitting a pedestrian is on average more serious now than in the past, because people are buying such stupidly big cars. But your scenario sounds like dystopian sci-fi.
Much of the internet is highly neurotic people thinking their twisted conceptions of reality are shared by others. I'm not a fan of the bad traffic enforcement in SF, but our family walks everyday, we take bikes to the majority of our things, and only take the car rarely when we need to transport a stroller some distance (our child is not old enough for the bicycle).
Everything is all right but it can be much better. It was even better in the recent past so one could argue it's not at it's best but it's not a warzone.
Everything is all right but it can be much better. It was even better in the recent past so one could argue it's not at it's best but it's not a warzone.
Traffic violence has become so normalized that you don't even see it anymore. Twice as many people are killed by traffic accidents than are murdered per capita. Your ad hominem attacks do not invalidate the piles of evidence.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/marketplace/why-san-franciscos-st...
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-francisco-man-arrest...
https://abc7news.com/post/pedestrian-elderly-woman-killed-hi...
https://www.sfexaminer.com/marketplace/why-san-franciscos-st...
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-francisco-man-arrest...
https://abc7news.com/post/pedestrian-elderly-woman-killed-hi...
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Your gratuitous use of the word "violence" doesn't help your argument the way you think it does.
I have used the word "Violence" twice.
Gratuitious is: Unnecessary or unwarranted; unjustified.
If you think that is is unwarranted to describe crashing 2+ ton vehicles into human beings at speed as violence, I would wonder how you would describe it.
Gratuitious is: Unnecessary or unwarranted; unjustified.
If you think that is is unwarranted to describe crashing 2+ ton vehicles into human beings at speed as violence, I would wonder how you would describe it.
> But your scenario sounds like dystopian sci-fi.
Yeah, Dallas Texas. It's kind of getting there, minus the science.
Yeah, Dallas Texas. It's kind of getting there, minus the science.
That doesn't sound like the city I lived in to me, that sounds like my suburban neighborhood.
My old suburban neighborhood was way worse. People acted like I was crazy for taking a walk.
video killed the radio star
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.