Just fyi, like 99% of food delivery via gig workers in nyc is done via e-bike

A lot of these are delivered by bike nowadays, no?

Edit: since people keep asking without reading below, I mean specifically in NYC.

It's kind of wild how the standard fare of pizza and chinese food delivery was absorbed by gig work. They used to be employees of the restaurant.

I've lived several places. In some, I could walk to get food, and I gladly did so. In others, I could not.

Should I have starved?

If your argument is "you should have driven," then you are depending on cars. Whether it's the buyer or an employee doing the driving has little effect on how much a car is being used. The environment doesn't care who's burning the gas.

More people need to learn about and think about externalized costs.

"This plastic cup is free! ... if I ignore the fact that it's going into a landfill or worse"

"This delivery is free! ... if I ignore the fact that the delivery guy is getting fucked by capital"

...if you think delivery is too expensive, maybe don't get your food delivered, then? Just a thought.

The cost of eating out alone is ridiculous now. There's no way I'm paying an additional $30 to have it delivered, and risk the delivery guy eating half the order, having it arrive late and cold, or not showing up at all.

What do you want to me to do instead? Cook myself all the time? Go outside? No thank you.

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.

other countries deliver most things using motorbikes, it always sounded ridiculous to me to use a car to deliver food

I don't get it either. That shit is so much more expensive. Not only are they charging you delivery fees and "convenience" fees, the base prices of what you're ordering at are also inflated through apps like Doordash and Uber Eats. Something that is only $5 if you went and got it yourself is now $8, plus a delivery fee, plus other fees. And then there is also a chance that the person delivering it is a piece of shit who just steals your food.

It absolutely baffles me that people are willing to spend that kind of money on low-quality takeout food that often arrives cold. I live just five minutes away from several five-star restaurants. If I wanted to, I could call ahead and pick up a fresh, high-quality meal in half the time it takes for a soggy, lukewarm fast food burger to show up at my doorstep—and I’d pay only a third of the price.

I genuinely don’t understand the appeal.

NYC tipped worker minimum wage is like 13 an hour. Not that The food delivery services are paying minimum wage ...

In one of the most expensive cities in the world, an on-demand courier is not going to be cheap. Even if they're on a bike.

What we're actually suffering from is that the cost of business and minimum wage has increased but the middle and upper wages have not. That, and the delivery services are a bit out of control. They're taking $10 out of every transaction to connect a web page to a mobile app.

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.

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.

Isn’t most delivery in NYC done by bicycle?

Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility