NYC primarily does not use cars for food delivery, there's a 99.8% chance they will deliver it via bicycle.

Americans are too lazy to travel to their lunch. However, for the vast majority of the people, you’re not 15 minutes of walk away from a healthy assortment of food. Even in NYC, depending on where you are, it may not be possible to always go to your food. The idea of your lunch being paid is also not common, and you’re expected to be back to working (not done eating) within 30 minutes or less. In many cases, your lunchtime is timed and unpaid. Nurses and hospital staff? Eat the shit downstairs in the cafeteria or nothing; if you’re late coming back from lunch, it’s almost as bad as being late to work itself.

Of all the modern capitalistic irritations (to put it mildly), this one I really detest. And not least because of how ridiculously popular it is, wtf people? I watch folks I know, who can barely afford the food itself in the first place, then inflate the price by like 40%, just to eat the already (very!) mediocre food...cold. Solely so that they don't have to leave the house. Just completely unhinged from my POV, and honestly produces almost a sense of alienation in me, I find it so bizarre.

Disclaimer though - I will acknowledge both that I happily enjoy various different foolish things myself, so the point about glass houses is worth my keeping in mind, and also there are some great reasons to use it (limited mobility for one, as another user pointed out).

But sheesh folks. Restaurants largely hate it from my understanding, the drivers doing it hate it (cuz the job - oh excuse me, the preferred exploitation-hiding euphemism is "gig" - is utter shit, a literal minor improvement over straight up homelessness), the environment hates it, the wear-and-tear on a likely broke person's vehicle and the wear-and-tear on already struggling infrastructure...I mean what the fuckity fuck, seriously. How is this so popular, we're all insane and just conveniencing our way to oblivion. SMgoddamnH.

Aside from the aforementioned reasonable uses (largely edge cases, let's be honest), there is precisely one group of people who truly benefit in any serious way from this amazingly destructive nonsense - and wouldn't you know it, it's the exact same group fucking us in every other way! Weird!

Sorry. This one really gets me.

Why was the subtotal of the actual food being ordered omitted?

Likely because it would give meaningful context to the amounts of the fees, and the ragebaiting OOP wants to avoid that.

Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility

Do Americans really get their shit delivered by car?over here it's motorcycles 99% of the time (and bicycles the other 1%)

Seems rather.... Sluggish and inefficient for delivery drivers to go by car.

Funny how Chinese and pizza places could do this all day everyday and it cost 5% of the cost of the food. Not double it. Delivery food has been hit with inflation and market 'innovation' just like everything else. But let's pretend working people wanting convenience services is somehow the problem...the avocado toast on wheels argument.

I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that their food be cooked for them.

I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that their food items be prepared and packaged for them.

I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that that the animals they eat are slaughtered for them.

I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that their grain be milled for them.

Society evolves buddy. I don't churn my own butter, but my grandmas did, and would find it ridiculous I have 247 access to a supermarket selling some. And it's even being kept at an exact temperature, all the time? Packaged without any sweat on it? Ridiculous!

I assume that most deliveries in NYC are by push bike couriers and vesper type scooters. Thats more typical than yank tanks for this sort of thing in most densely populated cities I've seen.

When you build infrastructure that requires you take cars everywhere you minimize people going to get things for themselves

Why does OP think every delivery is made by car? Often times they are made by bike.

People really, really need to learn to cook for themselves. Nothing wrong with the odd takeout, or even delivery but I sense a lot of people live on deliveries all the time and waste a fortune

I find it funny that the tip is already there before you get your food. I mean, did the driver make the burrito? He might be late and you get cold food, he might be a dick.

this is some quality ragebait right here

I don't disagree that it's stupid but my problem is the stacking - Delivery fee and Service fee? The service is delivery! Why are they two fees? Either the cost of the delivery is being itemized in real time ($1.99 for gas, the rest for the human) or the delivery isn't $1.99! If the cost to deliver an item is $20 and I make $50/hr working a project, maybe having food delivered makes sense.

But also, I know the delivery guy isn't making all that and he's delivering five orders so don't charge me a service fee when I'm already subsidizing you paying him a shit wage.

Everything is shitty either way.

This is dumb, hating for the sake of hating just shows a low level of thinking. Cars are very useful tools that have practical applications that aren't going away any time soon, and delivery services are an example of that.

The issue with cars is that we decided to designed our cities and towns around them at the expense of pedestrians, culture, and the environment. This has spawned societies that are plagued with long commutes, inactive lifestyles, dangerous infrastructure, smog, and an arms race to get comically huge cars. Criticizing the car industry, the car lobby, specific aspects of cars, or our urban layouts is perfectly valid. Blindly hating on cars just because they're cars is counterproductive.

Rodney Cheng did a comedy skit on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs

This cuts both ways actually. you can have 10 guys going through a drive thru or one 1 making 10 stops. The one guy making ten stops results in less traffic and fewer emissions.

What's more ridiculous? 10 people each driving to the fast food joint individually or one delivery driver making a round trip to 10 people?

We pay other people to do the things we can't or don't want to do all the time, this isn't different.