Most people in Toronto have cut back significantly on their usual spending since inflation rates reached peaks not seen in decades last year, with skyrocketing prices for essentials like food and rent weighing on people the most.
Although there are clear ways to save unnecessary costs, there are also questions about the quality of life and which luxuries you would like to forego.
For some it’s vacation and eating out; Others can be specific foods, brands, or even current address or living conditions.
One of the things that may be obvious to Millennials and Generation Z, who are most affected by the rising cost of living, is food delivery services like Uber Eats that offer convenience (especially for those who don’t have time to prepare food ), but at a hefty price.
And it seems that people are noticing that these costs are becoming more and more exorbitant lately and the financial impact of using these apps is much worse.
One resident took to Reddit to report the huge price hikes he was seeing on Uber Eats for food at his favorite eateries, which were so high that he gave up the service altogether.
“I stopped using Uber Eats due to cost and wondered if it was all in my head, so I did two comparisons with my favorite places two years ago and today,” they wrote in a post that caught one’s eye last There was a lot of traction on the social media platform this week.
I stopped using Uber food due to cost and wondered if it was all in my head… so I made two comparisons to my favorite places two years ago and today. What I found was a 33 to 40% price difference. Some items were up as much as 56 percent.
byu/okantos intoronto
As screenshots of the app show, they found a price difference of up to 56 percent for some items at two specific restaurants – Banh Mi Boys and MaMa Chef Korean Restaurant – which is shocking even given how inflation is accelerating the overall cost of living in the city the last two years.
Hundreds of people flocked to the comments section to complain about food delivery apps and the prices associated with them, as well as pointing out how successful restaurants that sell through the apps are.
Many companies called for these fees and vowed to boycott Uber Eats during the extremely difficult COVID years. They noticed that the low profit margins quickly went into the red and 20 to 30 percent of sales ended up in the pockets of these apps, a chef noticed this in 2020.
Then there are the sloppy deliveries — for which restaurants face backlash — losses from outages, fraud risks, problems receiving payments and an overall business model that some restaurant owners have described as “predatory toward restaurants and drivers.”
Even during the height of the pandemic, when Ontario capped delivery app commissions after widespread complaints, they weren’t as low as restaurants had hoped, and they rose again shortly afterward as indoor dining returned.
With this in mind, many often increase their prices on Uber Eats, and customers are now deciding that is more than they can afford in this economy.
Here’s how much commission each food delivery app charges Toronto restaurants: https://t.co/HyEfFejGUJ #Toronto #deliveryTO #UberEats #SkipTheDishes #DoorDash #Foodora pic.twitter.com/uGDhfN0t7a
– blogTO (@blogTO) April 28, 2020
Uber tells blogTO that the expansion of app usage during the lockdown era has resulted in people getting used to the convenience of using such apps, which have “become an important part of their weekly routines.”
They also note, without addressing specific price increases that users may have noticed in recent months, that “Merchants on Uber Eats set their own prices,” which may or may not be the same as in-store prices.
Retailers must weigh the potential costs of owning their own delivery fleet (or foregoing delivery, which would be entirely possible these days) with the negotiable fixed-price options offered by brands like Uber Eats and the promotions these apps can offer.
The Uber representative says the fees charged help cover operational services, delivery driver wages, insurance, marketing, payment processing and other support.
But as some of the financial pressure on restaurants amid the ongoing cost of living crisis is passed on to consumers, it seems to many people that the price of using such apps is becoming too high compared to the benefits they offer.