05/09/2026
I ordered a bowl and a cheesesteak today. $28 worth of food. $47 out of my pocket. The $19 difference didn't go to my driver.
All because it's storming and my dog is about to have a heart attack, I can't leave her half crippled self alone or she'll re-injure her back in weather like this.
So... let's talk about what delivery apps actually are, because most people don't think about it past "I'm hungry and don't want to drive."
You are being charged three times for the same service.
1. The delivery fee. $3-7 depending on the app's mood and how busy they claim to be. This goes to the platform. DoorDash. Uber Eats. Grubhub. Not your driver.
2. The service fee. Another 10-15% tacked on. Also goes to the platform. For what service exactly? The privilege of using the app you already downloaded for free.
3. The menu prices on the app are inflated. That $9 sub in the store is $11.50 on the app. Why? Because the platform charges the restaurant a 15-30% commission on every order. The restaurant has two choices: eat the loss or raise the prices. They raise the prices. You pay the difference and don't even know it.
So the platform collects from you on the delivery fee. Collects from you on the service fee. Collects from the restaurant on the commission. And the restaurant passes that commission cost to you through higher prices.
Four revenue streams. One app. Zero food prepared. Zero miles driven.
Now, how about our delivery driver?.
The person who got in their car. Drove to the restaurant. Waited for your food. Drove to your house. Used their own gas. Put miles on their own tires. Wore down their own brakes. Paid their own insurance. Got no benefits. Got no hourly wage guarantee.
Their base pay from the platform is $2-4. Per delivery. Not per hour. Per delivery.
Your tip is not a bonus. Your tip is their paycheck. Without it, they made less than minimum wage to bring me food in a thunderstorm.
The platform built nothing. Cooked nothing. Drove nothing. They built an app that stands between hungry people and food, and they tax every single person in the chain.
The restaurant loses margin. The driver loses money on their car. You lose $19 on a $28 order. The only entity that profits is the one that never touched your food.
But.. here's the part that should bother you more than the money:
These platforms operated at massive losses for years to kill local delivery infrastructure. The pizza place used to have their own driver. The Chinese place had a guy on a bike or moped. Small restaurants had relationships with their delivery people. The apps undercut all of that with venture capital money, ran at a loss until the competition died, and then raised the fees once you had no alternative.
That's not innovation. That's a protection racket with a tech valuation. Al Capone would honestly cap these guys knees, he protected the local businesses and his people, not capitalist scum.
What you can do:
Pick up your food when you can. You save 40-60%. The restaurant gets full price. Nobody takes a cut.
If you do order delivery, tip heavy and tip in cash if possible. Cash tips can't be skimmed, tracked, or used by the platform to subsidize their base pay calculations. Unfortunately a lot of drivers for these services refuse to pick up 0 tip orders, even if it says "Will tip in cash" -- because they have no guarantee you will.
They've been goated into false hope too many times to believe the honest folks like me who will gladly leave a $20 in cash on the table for them.
Call the restaurant directly. Many still do their own delivery or will for less than the app charges. That $5 delivery fee from the restaurant goes to an actual person, not a shareholder in San Francisco.
Stop normalizing paying $47 for $28 of food. The convenience isn't worth building a system that exploits everyone except the people who built it
