Refusing Delivery

The owners of Karaage Burger in
San Mateo are happy to see us.

With so many eateries struggling to survive, we began taking delivery at least four times a week from restaurants that were old favorites as well as a few we had never tried before. (To be sure, it wasn't much of a nudge.) We loaded the Doordash and Uber Eats apps on to our phones, and the rest--and our former waistline--was history.

However, it's become clear that the delivery apps, which reimburse the food providers 20-30% below their menu prices, are only a temporary lifeline for the restaurants. (For those familiar with cost accounting, it's like charging just above marginal cost to stay alive. The restaurant covers its material and labor but not the rent, maintenance, taxes, legal, accounting, loan interest, etc.)

The potential damage to restaurants by the food-delivery apps — three of the four largest are centered in the Bay Area — has been well-documented in The Chronicle and beyond.

Delivery apps have created shadow websites to compete with their own small-business partners, which were already being charged up to 30%. Bay Area restaurants that wanted nothing to do with delivery apps were being added against their will, in at least one case with fake menus.

Then COVID-19 hit, and the weaknesses of the system were blown wide open. San Francisco lawmakers capped the delivery fee at 15% in city limits, a rule that was quickly violated.

“It was impossible for restaurants before COVID to survive with all of these apps and their fees,” SF Chickenbox owner Christian Ciscle told The Chronicle’s Justin Phillips in July. “If you’re giving 25% to 30% to an app, there’s no way you’re going to survive, or even get ahead.”

Despite the slightly increased risk of catching the coronavirus, we now order take-out as much as we can. Frankly, we want the restaurants to get our dollars, not the delivery services that are worth $billions on the stock exchange.

Whenever we pick up an order, the owners smile and wave. And I always add a tip, which I didn't used to do on take-out orders. At the end of 2020

We are grateful our family survives
And savings have remained intact
We took this chance to look at our lives
And distinguish the muscle from fat.