A lot of these are delivered by bike nowadays, no?

Edit: since people keep asking without reading below, I mean specifically in NYC.

Just fyi, like 99% of food delivery via gig workers in nyc is done via e-bike

More people need to learn about and think about externalized costs.

"This plastic cup is free! ... if I ignore the fact that it's going into a landfill or worse"

"This delivery is free! ... if I ignore the fact that the delivery guy is getting fucked by capital"

other countries deliver most things using motorbikes, it always sounded ridiculous to me to use a car to deliver food

I've lived several places. In some, I could walk to get food, and I gladly did so. In others, I could not.

Should I have starved?

If your argument is "you should have driven," then you are depending on cars. Whether it's the buyer or an employee doing the driving has little effect on how much a car is being used. The environment doesn't care who's burning the gas.

...if you think delivery is too expensive, maybe don't get your food delivered, then? Just a thought.

Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility

It was always obvious that the shared delivery model would result in massive delivery fees. Store employees doing deliveries were always at least partially subsidized by sales. Going third party means another company needs to suck more profit out of each delivery.

What's more ridiculous? 10 people each driving to the fast food joint individually or one delivery driver making a round trip to 10 people?

We pay other people to do the things we can't or don't want to do all the time, this isn't different.

Why does OP think every delivery is made by car? Often times they are made by bike.

Do delivery drivers in NYC really use cars? 🤨

I don't disagree that it's stupid but my problem is the stacking - Delivery fee and Service fee? The service is delivery! Why are they two fees? Either the cost of the delivery is being itemized in real time ($1.99 for gas, the rest for the human) or the delivery isn't $1.99! If the cost to deliver an item is $20 and I make $50/hr working a project, maybe having food delivered makes sense.

But also, I know the delivery guy isn't making all that and he's delivering five orders so don't charge me a service fee when I'm already subsidizing you paying him a shit wage.

Everything is shitty either way.

I don't get it either. That shit is so much more expensive. Not only are they charging you delivery fees and "convenience" fees, the base prices of what you're ordering at are also inflated through apps like Doordash and Uber Eats. Something that is only $5 if you went and got it yourself is now $8, plus a delivery fee, plus other fees. And then there is also a chance that the person delivering it is a piece of shit who just steals your food.

Isn’t most delivery in NYC done by bicycle?

It's kind of wild how the standard fare of pizza and chinese food delivery was absorbed by gig work. They used to be employees of the restaurant.

Obviously we can't pretend that VC funded services like Uber are sustainable nor are the environmental and economic costs. But this aren't new concepts. Pizza delivery has been a thing my entire life (I'm in my 40s) and services for the elderly, disabled, and needy like Meals on Wheels have also existed for a long time.

We should be having a lot of discussions about support for services like meals on wheels, or on sustainable means of making small courier businesses viable (via bikes or scooters maybe). Instead we constantly get sidelined into this "only the Treatler Youth use Uber Eats to feed your hamburger addictions, why can't you just cook healthfully for yourself for every meal?!" version of discourse that doesn't help anyone and doesn't advance the needle on any actual solutions.

Of all the modern capitalistic irritations (to put it mildly), this one I really detest. And not least because of how ridiculously popular it is, wtf people? I watch folks I know, who can barely afford the food itself in the first place, then inflate the price by like 40%, just to eat the already (very!) mediocre food...cold. Solely so that they don't have to leave the house. Just completely unhinged from my POV, and honestly produces almost a sense of alienation in me, I find it so bizarre.

Disclaimer though - I will acknowledge both that I happily enjoy various different foolish things myself, so the point about glass houses is worth my keeping in mind, and also there are some great reasons to use it (limited mobility for one, as another user pointed out).

But sheesh folks. Restaurants largely hate it from my understanding, the drivers doing it hate it (cuz the job - oh excuse me, the preferred exploitation-hiding euphemism is "gig" - is utter shit, a literal minor improvement over straight up homelessness), the environment hates it, the wear-and-tear on a likely broke person's vehicle and the wear-and-tear on already struggling infrastructure...I mean what the fuckity fuck, seriously. How is this so popular, we're all insane and just conveniencing our way to oblivion. SMgoddamnH.

Aside from the aforementioned reasonable uses (largely edge cases, let's be honest), there is precisely one group of people who truly benefit in any serious way from this amazingly destructive nonsense - and wouldn't you know it, it's the exact same group fucking us in every other way! Weird!

Sorry. This one really gets me.

"I have to order Doordash because I live in a food desert"

"Can you taxi to the grocery store and back for about the same as the delivery fee?"

"No"

I assume that most deliveries in NYC are by push bike couriers and vesper type scooters. Thats more typical than yank tanks for this sort of thing in most densely populated cities I've seen.

Afaict it's 22$, you tipped 8$. That's a pretty wide margin.

Regardless, still too much, I just pick stuff up with my bicycle when I can.

This cuts both ways actually. you can have 10 guys going through a drive thru or one 1 making 10 stops. The one guy making ten stops results in less traffic and fewer emissions.

It's not ridiculous. Time is the most precious resource.

Americans are too lazy to travel to their lunch. However, for the vast majority of the people, you’re not 15 minutes of walk away from a healthy assortment of food. Even in NYC, depending on where you are, it may not be possible to always go to your food. The idea of your lunch being paid is also not common, and you’re expected to be back to working (not done eating) within 30 minutes or less. In many cases, your lunchtime is timed and unpaid. Nurses and hospital staff? Eat the shit downstairs in the cafeteria or nothing; if you’re late coming back from lunch, it’s almost as bad as being late to work itself.

I only demand the raw ingredients to be grown halfway around the world, shipped by climate-controlled container in giant cargo boats, trucked from the port to the backstore, kept in refrigerated display cases, and sold in disposable containers.

But it's the last mile that's going to change the world, you see.

Back in the day they’d have free delivery and a free pizza if it took more than 30 minutes.

I find it funny that the tip is already there before you get your food. I mean, did the driver make the burrito? He might be late and you get cold food, he might be a dick.

Isn't NYC one of the most walkable cities in the US?