Getting food delivered is really expensive

Our world may be troubled, imperfect, tragic even. But isn’t food amazing? Ordinary people the world over have taken thousands of edible ingredients and made them into millions of rich, tangy, succulent, juicy, spicy, delicious things for us to eat. What’s even more amazing is that we can now get many of them delivered directly to the door in less time than it takes to decide what to watch on Netflix.

Anything that amazing must be pretty expensive, right? We wanted to find out, so we did an experiment. We compared 4 versions of the same meal, available at a restaurant about 5 minutes away. Here’s what we found out in the Potbelly test.

Food alone costs more

Our Potbelly order included one sandwich and all the extras—chips, drink, and one of those buttery chocolate chip cookies. Yum. At the restaurant, we spent $17.67, which seemed like kind of a lot for lunch. Then we tried ordering the same meal for delivery, directly on the Potbelly site first, and finally through Uber Eats and GrubHub. What we found really surprised us.

The total food cost from our order was $14.56 at the restaurant. It was the same on Potbelly’s website. But with GrubHub, the food total was $18.36, and Uber Eats charged a whopping $18.76. For $4 more, we could have gotten two more cookies and saved them for tomorrow or shared them with friends (besties only).

Inflation is way up lately, as we’ve all noticed. That directly affects the price of food. A sandwich and extras might cost $14.56 right now. That’s plenty, but paying for more on top of that is…. well, extra. Check out the cost breakdown below. We saw similar results at other restaurants too. Delivered food costs more, sometimes a lot more.

Even the fees have fees

Already salty about the cost of lunch, we started peeling back the onion layers of fees in our order. Potbelly’s direct delivery costs $3.99 (two cookies). We added a 10% tip, plus taxes. That brought the total to $21.66. The delivery apps were much more complicated.

Uber Eats and GrubHub have a mix of fees. There are service fees, which is what those companies charge to operate their businesses. These fees were included even when we chose “pickup.” (Dislike!) To get it delivered, there were additional delivery fees. The delivery fees were not consistent across other nearby Potbelly locations, and depending on what screen we landed on in the process of searching or browsing, it wasn’t always clear whether the delivery fee would apply or not. Uber Eats also included a fuel surcharge.

We haven’t even gotten to tax and tip. Lest we forget, those are also costs to pay. Both taxes and tips are calculated as percentage costs. So since we paid more for the food itself, we paid proportionately more in taxes. The tip was calculated on top of all the fees and the taxes. Can we call this compounding? It felt like it.

Also it was raining, and a 10% tip for delivery in the pouring rain made us feel like cheap jerks. How much of all this money do you think the drivers get? Do you think it’s a lot? We sure don’t.

Cost breakdown from our Potbelly test

Cleaning the plate

In the end, our $17.67 calorie binge cost $21.66 with delivery from Potbelly, $26.60 with delivery from Uber Eats, and $27.88 with delivery from GrubHub. That’s more than $10 extra for exactly the same lunch, probably 30 minutes later and cold too.

Both delivery apps cost +50% more in the end. We thought about this compared to buying something like a pair of shoes. Would we pay 50% more for those if we thought there might be a cheaper price somewhere else? Obviously not. That’s halfway to a bogo! Research pays.

Food delivery services know how amazing they are, and they are desperate to show us. They spend lots of money on advertising, SEO, promotions, and freebies. They spend lots of effort creating a “frictionless” experience that keeps us hordering (hungry ordering), so that our food is already cooking before we have time to think about how much we’ve paid. The ease is real, and yes, it’s real expensive.

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In 2006, I was working in an office on Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s shopping mecca. People said, “Michigan Avenue! Watch out or you’ll spend all your money! Haha!” And I thought, “What money? I make less than thirty grand a year and I wear old shoes.”

I didn’t like my job or my shoes, but one thing I knew I enjoyed was stepping away from my desk for lunch. I knew every meal I could get for less than $5—a bowl of soup and bread at Corner Bakery, two cheeseburgers at McDonald’s, two chicken tacos at the place around the corner. And water, thankssomuch. I could have spent less by bringing tuna salad and eating at my desk, but I tried that and it depressed the hell out of me. So I played my $5 game and went out to lunch every single day. I walked my old shoes all over Michigan Avenue, and for once I felt like I was winning.