Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery Is Reshaping Mealtime.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/dining/food-delivery-apps-doordash-uber.html?smid=url-share

Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery Is Reshaping Mealtime
Almost three of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren’t eaten in a restaurant, according to recent data. We spoke to readers who are devoted to delivery but question the costs.





There’s pasta in the pantry and jarred sauce in the refrigerator. So what compels Kiely Reedy to keep having spaghetti with marinara delivered from the restaurant down the street, for several times the cost of cooking the dish herself?

It’s not that the restaurant dish is particularly good, she said. “It’s the instant gratification.”

From her roughly $50,000 annual salary as a data processor in San Diego, Ms. Reedy, 34, spends at least $200 to $300 a week on food delivery. Ordering in has eaten away at her savings, she said, and led her to socialize less.

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Many readers said they had impulsively ordered a single item for delivery: a coffee, a milkshake, a scoop of ice cream. Erin Molnar, a marketer in Ferndale, Mich., once paid about $15 for a tiny chocolate lava cake.

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Many Generation Zers who came of age during the pandemic can barely recall a life without delivery, and their social lives now revolve around it.

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Still, such an on-demand lifestyle can keep consumers from developing critical skills like problem solving, planning ahead or making tough decisions, said Huy Do, a research and insights manager at the market research firm Datassential. That’s why so many young people are “choosing to make financial and food-based decisions in the moment that feel good now,” said Mr. Do, even though it can prevent them from making longer-term financial investments.

[Warpy]

1. I know some people who are true menaces in a kitchen

because they can not or will not follow a written recipe and feel compelled to make ridiculous substitutions (salt and sugar look alike, right?); rendering good food totally inedible.. Eating prepared food is a big step up for them.

I also have a great deal of sympathy for people who just get tired oif cooking, delivery is great for those "I don't wanna cook" periods.

My only real complaint about delivery is that it starts to run into serious money. However, if the two career yuppies out there want to oiverspend, that's their problem. I'm not going to guilt trip them.

In fact, the only people I can pissibly dis for ordering their food rather than cooking it are the idiots who squander tens of thousands of dollars on a granite and stainless caterer's kitchen and only use it as a place to open clamshell containers from local restaurants. Face it, that's just plain dumb.