How food delivery is reshaping US mealtimes, as some users spend thousands; NRA data shows nearly 75% of 2024 restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant
Almost three of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren't eaten in a restaurant, according to recent data.
New York TimesPriya Krishna
Context & Ripple Effects
Off-premises restaurant consumption has been building for years: online ordering was already poised to eclipse phone ordering in the U.S. in 2015. The new NRA figure indicates that the shift now reaches the large majority of restaurant orders, not just a delivery-app niche.
Restaurants must treat takeout, delivery and other off-premises fulfillment as a core operating channel when nearly three quarters of orders are consumed away from the restaurant.
For frequent delivery users, spending can accumulate into thousands of dollars, making convenience a more consequential part of the household food budget.
Second-order effects
Restaurant operators face greater pressure to optimize packaging, order accuracy and pickup handoffs, since the customer experience increasingly occurs outside the dining room.
Delivery platforms and restaurants have stronger incentives to compete for repeat off-premises orders, while diners may become more sensitive to the total cost of convenience.
Third-order effects
If this mix persists, restaurant formats, labor allocation and unit economics will increasingly be designed around fulfillment rather than dine-in traffic.
The pattern points to a broader unbundling of the restaurant experience: preparation and consumption are separating, giving intermediaries and logistics capabilities more influence over customer access.
The trend: U.S. restaurants are shifting from dine-in-centered businesses toward off-premises food fulfillment networks, with delivery as one important channel.
It is interesting that consumers are increasingly willing to pay for more leisure time (i.e. not making dinner or traveling to pick up a meal). Not necessarily irrational if people value their time more than we think!
I figure this is mostly a The Discourse problem, but every now and again some zoomer will be like “What they don't understand is that as far as we're concerned food delivery is a necessity not a luxury” and I grow a little more boomer every time I hear it.
I saw an Instagram reel where a guy made a song about he doesn't look at his friend the same way after learning he had a biweekly cleaning lady but the reality is that, despite being a more stereotypical signifier of wealth, it's way, way less expensive than this
You could also look at it in less moralistic terms as a question of relative price. Groceries so insanely expensive that at the margin it makes relatively more sense to eat out. In NYC home cooking is borderline vanity project.
Few things alienate me from my fellow Americans more than reading about their spending habits in general and food delivery in particular https://www.nytimes.com/... [image]
This NYT article on food delivery can encourage discussing several society/policy topics, incl transportation...who uses the road, who pays to cover those costs, impacts to other road users in traffic/parking, environment, etc. Roads are still geometry. https://www.nytimes.com/..…
idk if anyone would say they don't value their leisure time but we should be real that a lot of the time gained from DoorDash is used for more time on phones/watching TV https://x.com/...
One thing you notice in much of Asia (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, etc) is how often people eat out, rather than cook, so much so that their kitchens are usually very small, relative to the U.S. So there is an abundance of inexpensive street food/casual dining (carts, izakayas,
My private theory for what has happened since 2000: mid-range restaurant food has gotten far far tastier since then, meaning that there is a much larger gap between the quality of food people can cook at home \ quality of food they can by *relatively* cheap.
I think a lot of younger people never learn how to budget, are seduced by Klarna and other BNPL apps that let them “worry about it later,” and then when it's time to check in on where the money went, it's like opening the old yogurt in the fridge.
I love when people go for the complicity argument re: food delivery. “Are you saying you never get food delivered from DoorDash??” Yes, I am saying that. I live in South Philadelphia, why would I need someone to drive me takeout food from down the street?
Growing up the only food that delivered was Pizza and Chinese. Delivery that my parents always refused to pay for. Somehow I inherited that stinginess and thank god for that.
People get angry at this point but aggregate American spending on eating/drinking out or having that food delivered is at a record high, and the proportion spent on store-bought food is at a joint-record low with the peak housing bubble era. [image]
This is true. A decent delivery of Chinese or Indian food in for two people in NYC is basically a couple of meals for two or three days for around $80. Even better value if you pick it up yourself.
I think it's way deeper than affordability, especially for millennials & down. It's a completely faceless & 0 social contact way to eat. Even going to the grocery store requires you to be around other people & (maybe) even interact. A huge % of folks will gladly pay a 100%
Part of the affordability crisis is pretty clearly people just refusing to be thrifty — you should not be spending a quarter of your salary on DoorDash. [image]
You're never going to build wealth if you keep hiring a cab for your hamburger. You might not be rich on $50,000 a year, but spending 25% of weekly income to hail a taxi for your falafel ain't helping. A frustrating read: https://www.nytimes.com/... [image]
I think the real story here is that the woman spending a third of her 50k income on DoorDash is probably severely depressed. I've literally lot thousands of dollars over my lifetime because I was too depressed to fill out a form [image]
My gas & electric bill is $200-250 more than it used to be in the winter ($100-150 more in the summer) and my property taxes and home insurance is $1200 more annually and health insurance is $150 more than it used to be and that's with me downgrading from a gold to a bronze plan
About 10 yrs ago I was on a multigenerational family vacation and my Gen Z cousins DoorDashed Dunkin coffee to the hotel. The hotel had free coffee, but it wasn't iced and it was “gross”. That's when I knew that generation was cooked.
what does the democratic party have to offer someone who spends $300 a week on food delivery, probably loses at least that much on Kalshi, and is permanently enraged at our political system because they never have enough money?
the new NYT piece on our national burrito taxi addiction offers a fascinating glimpse of the mentality that fuels a certain someone's hideous empire of endless scamming — www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/d... [images]
“In 2024, almost three of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data from the National Restaurant Association.” A lot of people are focusing on the cost in this story but I want to focus on something else: the intangibles and a culture that's …
i get doordash maybe once a week so im not innocent but the article opens with someone doordashing PASTA with MARINARA???? MULTIPLE TIMES A WEEK? at least get shit you can't make at home goddamn