Food Delivery-One year later

 

Today, I am going to follow-up on a subject that I talked about two years ago.  At this time, I was not sure if I like the idea of having meals from my favorite restaurants delivered or not.  My feelings at the time were, if I could take the time to order from them, I could take that same amount of time to go into my kitchen and whip up a meal or two.  After all, there were three advantages of cooking your own meal.  One, I know what goes into my meals, two, I can shop my grocery store for those meals and spend less money on those ingredients that the restaurants have to buy in bulk and keep on hand because the entrée is on the menu, and three, I can portion control my meals.  In order for the person to get their money’s worth out of a meal, restaurants feel that bigger is better.  Not if you are watching calories.

I still have those feelings, but I now have a soft spot for companies like Uber Eats, Postmates, Grub Hub, and DoorDash.  You can read the original post, and see my results.

What’s changed?

Covid-19, that’s all I can say.  Before March 15, I ordered my meals to be delivered every once in a while.  I really did not have an excuse for ordering out. I had two other people living with me at the time.  It was my nephew and his girlfriend, and sometimes we would have a family meal, and sometimes they would have their meal and I would have mine.  We shared the groceries.  On February 23, 2020, they welcomed a baby girl into their lives, and they went to live with my parents while looking for a place of their own. So now, they live 5 minutes from me.  I have their cat, but as soon as they move, the cat goes with them. She is the sweet little thing. I am talking about both the baby and the cat.

When we sheltered in place, I was not sure how I was going to get my groceries.   This was new territory for me.  Luckily, I did start to order out, but I started getting bored with it. By July, when the governor said it was okay to open up the bars and other eating place back up, It was my cue to start getting back to normal. I was getting tired of pulling up the Uber Eats app on my Ipad, then I thought to myself that I really like this.

Uber Eats pros

Naturally, when I start to think about the pros of using Uber Eats (or any other delivery service) is the convenience.  Sure, there is the “I’m too tired to cook”, and when you have to deal with kids all day and you are sick of cleaning, and you feel like unappreciated by these tiny humans, the last you want to do is to cook for them. This option is also a plus if you are a single person like me who has no kids and you now work remotely from home. I usually order something that I would normally not cook in the kitchen like poke or sushi. Both are easy to make (I have made them before) I do not have the proper skills to make them.  After all, it is not easy cutting up raw fish.

The next pro is no cleanup.  It is nice to get out your paper plates or eat right out of the container, with the utensils they provide, then throw away once finished with your meal.

The last tip is to save on gas.  Most of our lives are spent traveling in a car unless you are unable to afford one.   One of the problems I have especially in the winter months is the routine one must do to prepare to go to a simple place a drive-thru.  First, you plan where you want to go, put on shoes, 10 points if it is snowing really badly, then it is booted.  Next, put on the outerwear, another 10 points if what you are wearing is a double-layered parka, I bought one at Costco last year, that thing is so cozy, too bad I cannot drive in it.  I will have to explain to you my whole winter month ritual while driving when January comes around.  If there is snow on the ground and roads, retreat, or risk doing donuts on black ice. Get to the fast food place and you better have exact change or your debit card out.  At the moment, coins are scarce in the United States.  Put in 10 more points if they get your order right, another 10 for a nice teen.

Cons of using food delivery by Uber Eats

I already mentioned two of them:

Not a good choice for calorie counting.  If you are looking to see how many calories your favorite sandwich in your favorite eating place, this is not it.  Even though they are required by law to disclose that information, sometimes they do not. The best place to find out is to go to the restaurant’s website and look around.

Same with Macro counting, which I will be starting next week.

Budget:  Not good.  Listen, if you want to save money, cook it yourself.  Your card gets charged twice.  Once for the food itself, then the fees for the service.  You will see it on your statement.  It is a small charge but added up over time, it can take a chunk out of your budget.

Items can go missing.  Three weeks ago, I order a drink with my meal.  I do not order one that often because I am trying to stay hydrated and have water with my meals.  Not only that, but it is also easier to have this stuff at the house.  Like I said, I only order food that I cannot recreate in my own kitchen.  Anyway, I felt like having some iced tea.  I did not have any in the house, not even a teabag.  I had sugar, but no tea. So, with my poke bowl, I place a bottle of iced tea in my cart and paid for it.  When the meal arrived, no tea.  I stated that on the review site.  I hope I get my $2.00 refunded.  This was the second time this happened.

So, the question remains today, do I still like food delivery despite the pandemic.  Um, yes.  I love it.  Before I can put this post away, I want to talk about the other type of food delivery.

Shopping for groceries…

You heard me right, having your groceries delivered, more important, delivered with other items.

I have used Target’s delivery for two months.  I miss going into the store, but you know, Covid-19.  So far, I love it.  The first two deliveries, I paid $9.99 for the delivery charge, and the third time, I signed up for Shipt.  The one thing that I noticed about Shipt is how inventive the driver is. I had been tempted to use Shipt for a while, but I never had the nerve to use them before now.  The first is free, and then it is $99 annually.

Likewise, I used Kroger’s delivery, and I was not pleased with it at all.  I ordered at the store that I normally shopped at (which was the one near my doctor’s office, while the one near my house sucks), and they switched the order to the one by my house.  They did not get half the items I asked for.  I knew now all stores are the same, even if they are from the same company.  I thought that at least they would have the substitutions, and they did for a few, but not all of the items I asked and paid for.   

One of the food services I did not mention that I used was Walmart.com.  I used them when the pandemic started.  I never got out of my car, and yes, they do deliver, but the store they would have delivered from, is like the Kroger’s close to my home.  It is not in a favorable location, and they do not care about the products that I would be looking for.  The reason I stopped picking up from the location was they too had a lot of substitutions or were out.

I think that most of the time, it was when I had the groceries delivered or when I picked up.  They were later on in the day when products have been picked over.  I work at home and I need my beauty sleep, which is no excuse for not getting the quality of foods that I seek.  This is not a problem for prepared food delivery, but keep in mind if you use Uber Eats that each restaurant does have an inventory of entrees that made for delivery. 

 

Sites mentioned in this post:

 

Uber Eats

Kroger’s

Target

Walmart       

How To Have A Hot Meal In No Time

Disclaimer:  This is not a sponsored ad.  I bought all of my meals with my own money on my own debit cards. 

In a Follow-up to my story in October 2018 on food delivery services, I gave basic synapses on the services, and what you could expect from them.  I have tried all the services who deliver in my area except one, which I just signed up for.  For the most part, I was pleased with the services.  No one never got my order wrong, and it is a good way for me to be lazy on that day.

With that in mind, I will give a rundown on the following:

• Order process
• Fees and tips
• Places I ordered from through these delivery services
• Miscellaneous things

The services I ordered from were: 

• Uber Eats
• GrubHub
• Postmates
• DoorDash

The restaurants I ordered from over time were:

• Chipotle (Postmates)
• Red Lobster (GrubHub)(2)
• Jersey Mike’s (Uber Eats)
• Viiza (Uber Eats)
• Piada (Uber Eats)
• Starbucks (DoorDash)

Keep in mind a couple of things, I do know how to cook, in fact, it is my preferred method of eating, and it should be since I work at home. Sometimes life and work to get in the way of having to take the time to properly cook a hot, delicious meal when you are in the middle of a project, AND you have a deadline.  It does not happen often, but at least as long as I have the money to do so, and do not mind the delivery fees on top of that, having your food delivered is a nice back up to get a meal. So, I do not consider myself lazy at all, maybe just a little too busy, which is a misconception about ordering from food delivery services.

Ordering Process:

The first thing you do when you decide on ordering from a service like Uber Eats is to sign up for an account.  It is helpful to have the app on your phone, but in case you do not want to clutter up your phone (like I usually do), you can go through your desktop or another device.  Once you download the app or visit the website, you signup for an account.  Payment can be entered once the order has been made.  Once you created your account, you can then look through what each restaurant has to offer through that app.  If you find your favorite restaurant on that app, and you are familiar with the menu, all food items may not be offered through the app. You could order from more than one place, but I would not advise it.  Act as though you going inside and ordering from the restaurant and having a sit-down meal with the wait staff, only the wait staff is your driver.  Keep in mind like most orders, all delivery services take debit or credit card, even if you are going to pick up the order.

UberEATS:

I order from several places throughout 2018.  I have yet to order through them this year.  So far the service is wonderful.  For Jersey Mike’s, which is a local pizza place with several locations throughout Central Ohio (Not Sponsored), I made the order from my parent’s home.  Usually, any order is made to be delivered to my home.  We ordered two large subs and a salad if I can remember the order, and the driver had no problem finding the house.  (I had a problem with a GrubHub order I will mention in a moment). 

The food was hot (the Subs), which they were supposed to be. The salad was your average salad, nothing to write about.  In all my orders through UberEATS, I had no problems with the orders, the service, nor bad delivery drivers.

GrubHub:

Next comes GrubHub, and I must say that the first time I had food delivered by them, the driver did not know where to go to my front door. In fact, I had to open the garage to get the food from him, as he refused to walk to the front door in case he had to deliver food here next time.  I usually do not have to give instructions on where my front door is, but here was this guy who with no clue.  I am going to chuck this one up as this was his first day or he has never driven in this area before. 

Both orders were Red Lobster orders.  The first one was $19.52 and the second was $25.02.  More on pricing in a moment.

Postmates:

So far, I only had one order with Postmates and that was Chipotle for $19.90, and I did not realize until I just glanced at my receipt, but they will put a temporary hold on your card for the amount charged.  The food was hot and tasty as if I picked it up myself.  One tip, Chipotle does have an app that allows you to pick up the food, so if you are picking up, it is best to use their app then to use Postmates or any other delivery services mentioned in this article.

DoorDash:

Yes, I was reserving this one for a later post, but I could not resist seeing how my Starbucks Coffee comes.  Yes, Starbucks is using a delivery service.  Well, it just arrived as I was typing this.  Since I was a new customer to DoorDash, the delivery fee was waived.  It is normally $5.99, which is not worth it for a $4.45 cup of coffee, so I took full advantage of that.

The coffee:

I ordered a White chocolate Mocha in a Grande (medium), and it is still warm.  This was the reason I ordered from Starbucks to bust the myth of rather your food arrived at the temp that you ordered (hot stays hot or as warm as possible, cold stays cold), otherwise, I would have hopped in my car and drove for 5 mins to Starbucks.  It took 55 mins from the time I placed the order to the time it arrived. For those of you who have coffee machines in your homes, yes, I have one too.  This was just an experiment to see, and I do not order Starbucks that much anymore since having a coffee machine, so this was not the most cost-effective experiment I ever did. (the good news is I probably can write it off in my 2019 taxes, LOL).

Now for the breakdown:

Cost:

Your total food bill is going to be the cost of the food, plus tax, plus service fee, plus tip.  In the case of my Starbucks, I incurred a small order fee (probably the food order has to be more than $10 to avoid this fee).  It was $2.00.  Not worth it in my opinion.  Before you order from any of these services, I recommend that you take a look at the service fee to see if the worth the hassle or can you pick it up on the way home.  As I mentioned, many of these eating places have a separate app for you to order from, and it is cheaper to just go to that app, place an order and pick it up on your way home from work or a long day of running errands. 

Service Fees:

So far the service fees in my area are at a minimum of $5.99 with the maximum being $20.00.  Most of it depends on how close you are to that establishment.  The further out you go to get that food, the heftier the service fee.  Here is the breakdown of my little coffee from Starbucks:

Subtotal, which is the price of the coffee: $4.45

Tax: $0.00 (even though sometimes, Ohio will charge tax on beverages, in today’s order, nope, and I do not have a recent receipt to compare apples to apples on tax).

Delivery Fee:  Free for this round because I am a new member of DoorDash.  This would have easily cost me $5.99, which is the delivery fee on GrubHub since I made orders before.

Service fee:  $.67.  I am not sure if this is the norm for DoorDash or if it was because I was a new member ordering for the first time.

Dasher Tip:  On other services, it is just the tip for the driver.  One thing I have to note is this driver had her children with her.  I could have given her more, but I do not think that is allowed.  For all drivers, they get out of the car with the food, hand it to your customer, and get the heck out of dodge-type mentality, like the UPS and FedEx delivery services.  Mine was $1.00

Small service fee:  Like I said, I think because this order was under $10, they charged me this fee.  I am not going to contest that charge, but I need to watch what I order next time.  I think the idea behind that (and I do not know any other service that I used so far had this fee) is to encourage larger orders or group orders.  I am just grasping at straws on this one.

My total is $8.12 vs. a pickup myself fee of $4.45 (plus whatever tax Ohio decides to impose on people).  Yes, I could avoid that.  It would have been worse if I had the delivery fee, which the total would have been $14.11.  Save yourself the trouble and make yourself a big old cup of coffee in your coffeemaker, two points if the coffee does not come from a pod or K-cup.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my Starbucks and I love my K-cups but if you are on a budget, this should be a luxury, every other month item you need to indulge in and skip delivery unless you are very, very sick.

My Final Conclusion on Hot Food Delivery:

We all want hot, convenience food delivery.  This should be done on an “as needed” convenience.  A lot of people are opting to cook a lot of food and freezing it, which they are calling it meal prep. This is a healthier version of food delivery.  You cook what you like, freeze it for a rainy day, and everyone still gets what they like from the freezer.

I like food delivery, but again, I need to watch my budget.  I have been ordering a lot lately and the main reason is to show you what is out there, how much does it costs, and if it is worth the coins you are trying to save for that new car, house, or to pay down some debt.  If there is anything I have learned from this experience is to buy what you need for the month at the grocery store, and do meal prep, even if it is just your main course.  You can add sides later or add them to the meal and heat the whole thing.

One of the other points that I did not spend a lot of time talking about is time management.  If you have someplace to be at a certain time, food delivery will not be your friend on this one.  Like I said on my Starbucks order was that it took them 55 minutes to get this order to me.  Why it took so long?  Well, I made the order at 5:05 PM EST, they have to receive the order from my computer, make the order.  At that time, the driver has to get there, receive the order, find my house, and give it to me.  In that same time, I could have hopped in my car, drove to the place, put in my order, wait on my order, grab it and drive back home.  I also used the Starbuck App back in the summer.  I placed my order on the app from my location (I forgot where I was, which was not at home), drove to the store near my home, which I assume this current order came from, and the summer order was ready when I picked it up.  So, be wise if you are on a time crunch.

Last tip:  You can also use all the apps for pick up.  I had mentioned this earlier in this piece.  If you are on your way home, use the app to pick up the food.  It will save you a service fee, a driver’s tip, and in most cases, a small order fee.  Your food will be ready when you get there.

Note: Amazon Restaurants was not mentioned in this piece because it is Amazon doing too much and I have not tried the service as of yet.