undefined | Better HN

0 pointsn4r98mo ago0 comments

I was born in the 80s in the UK. When I was a teenager, my family had a takeaway meal delivered every Wednesday night. My dad would ring up the restaurant, tell them the order and our address, and pay the driver when they arrived. It cost us exactly what it would cost someone going to the restaurant, plus a small 5-10% tip to the delivery driver. Most places had a delivery fee only if you live outside a certain radius or your order was under £20 or something. This was very typical for families at the time, and restaurants would directly hire delivery drivers.

The problem here is not the concept of food delivery, which has been widespread for decades and used to be very cheap. It was not always a luxury service. The problem is that tech companies have become an established middle-man platform and are driving up the prices for a small amount of added convenience. And it's often a net-negative in my experience, having now sworn off Just Eat after some horrendous experiences and negligible customer service.

0 comments

physicsguy8mo ago

I really don't think that frequency was 'normal' in the UK at all. I'm a similar age and we had a takeaway maybe once a month (usually fish and chips, occasionally a curry or chinese). Meals out were a bit rarer, usually a pub but occasionally McDonalds. For the generation above mine, my grandparents on both side basically never ate takeaways unless it was fish and chips on holiday - culturally it just wasn't a thing. I just asked my wife who was much wealthier growing up than I was and she similarly reckoned she didn't eat out much / have takeaways often.

Looking at economic stats, spending on food and drink outside of the home grew enormously between 1992 and 2004 to overtake spending on food within the home: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-3010...

n4r9OP8mo ago

Thanks for relating your experience. Wow is it hard to get any concrete figures on questions like "how many takeaways did an average household get per week in 2004". Also pretty tricky to chase down the references from the article you linked.

I found an archived copy of ref ONS2006d "Social trends No.36" here - https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20151014074...

Table 6.2 (p90) says household expenditure on restaurants and hotels went from £167b to $202b between 1991 and 2004.

Table 6.6 (p93) says that households spent an average of £11.60 per week on restaurants and cafes. Not clear if that includes takeaways.

There's an Independent article from 2006 which talks about the study, still not much about takeaways but some interesting nostalgia about the rise of gastropubs: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/britain-spe...

Mumsnet (to the rescue!) with a thread about takeaway frequencies from kids born 60s-80s. A lot of variation from "only on my birthday" to "every Saturday night": https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5031860-did-you-have-many...

I've no doubt that my own childhood was atypical in many respects. Relatively well off, only two kids, dad was a first generation immigrant so perhaps had fewer financial and cultural constraints. When I was a teenager at home from 2000-2006 the data suggests that spending on takeaways and eating out had been surging up to that point.

Either way I will always fondly remember having a donner kebab on a Wednesday evening, sat in the kitchen watching Star Trek Enterprise on the telly on its spinning turntable.

I agree with you about grandparents though. I think the closest mine would ever have gotten was a microwave meal.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse