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

“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. She tips generously, but worries that the delivery drivers are poorly paid.

 

“I feel reliant upon it,” she said, “but guilt for using it.”

 

Food delivery, which skyrocketed during the pandemic as a practical necessity, has become even more entrenched in the years since as a convenience, an everyday alternative to cooking or eating out. DoorDash is now a verb. And the new delivery economy is transforming the way Americans live — reshaping budgets, mealtimes and social habits.

 

In 2024, almost three of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data from the National Restaurant Association. The number of households using delivery had roughly doubled from 2019, just before the pandemic, the group said. And in a survey last year, about one-third of American adults told the association that they ordered food for delivery at least once a week.

 

We asked New York Times readers to share their feelings about food delivery. Most of the nearly 900 who responded said they prized the extra time and freedom it gives them, but expressed misgivings about the costs for delivery drivers, the environment and their own wallets at a time when affordable living feels increasingly out of reach.

 

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.

 

“I remember feeling kind of crazy for having one single thing delivered,” she said, adding, “It is a blessing and a curse that we are financially privileged. There is not much of a financial pressure to not order out as much.”

 

Millions of Americans, of course, are struggling to put any kind of food on the table as grocery prices continue to rise. And for people who can’t leave the home, food delivery is essential. The three major providers — DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub — said in email responses that they’re proud of the extra time and countless choices they offer busy customers.

 

“You can find almost anything available for on-demand delivery,” an Uber Eats spokesman wrote.

 

That message has a special resonance for the working parents we heard from. Between raising two young boys and putting in long hours at a marketing job in Atlanta, Kevin Caldwell can almost never find the time to make dinner. So he spends about $700 a week to order in.

 

“I am so burned out and tired, I would rather just throw my credit card at the problem and delay that unhappiness until the bill comes,” he said.

 

His 4-year-old son doesn’t read yet, “but he can put together an order” on the Chick-fil-A app, said Mr. Caldwell, 39. “I am impressed, but I am also terrified.”

 

He frets about the waste he’s creating with delivery boxes and bags. He’s frustrated by the rising cost of ordering in, even though he'll often opt to pay extra to get faster service. And he misses entertaining guests as often as he once did. His formal dining table, he said, is “collecting dust.”

 

‘I Don’t Go Out Anymore’

 

Missy Auge, who recently moved home to Santa Fe from Los Angeles to work as a sommelier, has most of her food delivered. She no longer feels the social pressure she once did to meet friends for dinner.

 

“I still have friends here, but I don’t go out anymore,” she said. “So I randomly see people, and they’re like, ‘I didn’t know you were back!’ ”

 

Others said food delivery has actually made them more social.

 

Neha Kowal, an events director in Yardley, Pa., began ordering meals when her two adult children lived with her and her husband during the pandemic. But she has continued as an empty nester because it allows her to spend more time with friends.

 

“It has been a big forgiving act for myself,” said Ms. Kowal, 54, who commutes an hour each way to New York City for work three days a week. “I would rather sit and catch up with a friend over a drink than worry about what we are going to have for dinner that night.” She recently invited friends over, and “we DoorDashed dinner.”

 

“I would never want my mother to know how much we DoorDash,” she said. “She would be horrified.”

 

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.

 

Mercuri Lam, a Yale sophomore, said there’s almost always a delivery driver outside her dorm, even though undergraduates living on campus are required to pay for a meal plan.

 

She and her friends spend many evenings ordering food to share, which she says costs less than going out and takes up less time. To keep in touch, she and her long-distance boyfriend order the same meal and eat it together over FaceTime.

 

While Ms. Lam, 19, has concerns about the pollution caused by the driving involved, she said delivery has expanded her palate. The first time she tasted Indian food was when a friend ordered it. And because delivery apps offer more photos and detailed descriptions than restaurant menus do, she is more likely to try something new.

 

Not every customer has qualms about delivery.

 

Helena Kim, a stay-at-home mother in Chula Vista, Calif., decided that when she turned 59, she no longer wanted to cook. “I was getting groceries delivered anyway,” she said, “so if I am going to order groceries I may as well order the whole meal.” She tips well and gives drivers high ratings.

 

Ms. Kim, now 60, adores her automated life. “I get Amazon delivery, I get food delivery, I get grocery delivery, I get pet food delivery,” she said. When she does leave the house, “I drive a Tesla and I use self-driving mode. If I could get a robot housekeeper, that would be perfect.”

 

The View From Outside

 

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.

 

Ordering meals online also disconnects people from food and its preparation, said Yash Babar, a professor at the Wisconsin School of Business. Last year, he published a report showing that when food delivery platforms entered counties across the United States, residents spent an average of 9 percent less time cooking each day than they did before.

 

That disconnect extends to restaurants, many of which have accepted a trade-off: Delivery helped keep them afloat during the pandemic and expanded their customer base, but they now have fewer in-house diners.

 

Some of the people most affected by this disengagement are the ones delivering the meals, whose interactions with customers are limited because drivers are commonly instructed to leave food at the door. Even though these drivers don’t often see their customers, they notice plenty.

 

“It seems like everyone uses these delivery services whether they have the money or not,” said Mitch Drabenstott, 32, a driver in Allentown, Pa.

 

Steph Bazzle, a writer in Elizabeth City, N.C., who drives for DoorDash, said she’s often surprised by which customers are more welcoming.

 

“When you go to subsidized housing, the tips are better and the people are nicer,” said Ms. Bazzle, 42. “When you go to the more expensive houses, there will be a whole lot of instructions like, ‘Don’t park on my driveway.’”

 

She keeps doing drop-offs because it allows her to feed five children at home. The money she and her husband make from day jobs isn’t enough to cover routine expenses.

 

Austin Layne, 31, who drives for Uber Eats in Los Angeles, said he needs that extra income to supplement his salary as a data analyst. He said he is usually paid $2 to $4 per delivery, no matter how far he has to drive. Tips, if he gets them, are no more than a few dollars per order.

 

Like many drivers, he grumbles about the pay. The job can feel dehumanizing, he said, particularly when he sees delivery robots doing the work.

 

“It can certainly feel like I am one of those, and not an actual person who has to go to a restaurant, pick up the food and drive it to your house,” he said. But he keeps delivering because he likes the flexible hours.

 

Another reason Mr. Layne stays at it is to pay off his debt from ordering too much food delivery. He has since cut back on the habit.

 

Will Parks, 36, decided to pare back after looking at his annual credit card report in 2024 and realizing that he had spent about a third of his money on ordering in.

 

“Food delivery is a scam,” he said. “It is incredibly expensive, the quality has gone down precipitously and with costs being so high, I took a hard look at it and was like, ‘This is a waste of my cash and time.’”

 

“You feel kind of tricked,” added Mr. Parks, who works in strategy for an entertainment company in Los Angeles. “You have reshaped your life based on their business model.”

 

In weaning himself from delivery, he has discovered a new passion — something that allows him to step away from his phone, focus on a task and feel a sense of accomplishment: cooking.

 

Preparing a meal takes far more time than ordering dinner with the press of a button. But “it feels good,” he said. “It feels more adult, frankly.”” [1]

 

1. Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery Is Reshaping Mealtime. Krishna, Priya.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jan 30, 2026.