Food delivery apps

[Lsgandhi20]

food delivery apps reasonable spend

just wondering what an average spend is on food delivery apps in London excluding groceries, for family of 3 .
thanks

Maybe watch some videos re cooking that show step by step to demystify it? I agree with starting with ready meals, but if you spend a bit of time at the weekend, you can batch cook, freeze in portions, and then it is easy in the week.

The food and drink forum here would be happy to advise baby steps, I'm sure.

£0 - we do not have food delivered, that’s a luxury service we cannot afford.

We are ok to cook but over a period of time we just became too reliant on food apps.

but of course will look at the videos too.

there is no excuse not to cook regularly !

thanks

It is a waste

1 or 2 per month, except in months where there's been an unusual big bill like the car MOT&Service, in which case zero.

Ordering seems like more hassle than cooking to me - we've done it a handful of times over several years and that's been because my adult son wanted to show it off to me.

Tonight's meal took 12 minutes, and 5 of that was waiting for the air fryer to warm up. Salmon fillets with a bit of seasoning on top takes 7 mins (or 5 if you prefer it less done). Baby corn, asparagus and green beans in a steamer for 4-5 minutes. Either have a dip/ ketchup or easy mix sauce with it if you need.

Healthier, cheaper, quicker and probably easier than ordering online. And in this heat it's relatively cool to cook - you don't have to stand over it, just set a couple of alarms for time and stay out of the kitchen.

We've been living on quick-cook, low-effort meals for about 8 weeks now due to this heat. Ordering online has never occurred to us, though we have walked over to the chippy a couple of times.

Well done for identifying the issue and trying to tackle it. As you have identified, delivered food, alongside bought lunches, coffees etc are very expensive and often something to look at when budgeting.

For alternatives, even supermarket equivalents like pizzas, curries, meal deals will be cheaper, so you could try those for the 'too tired, CBA, no time to cook' nights? Or have quick, easy food like omelettes, egg or beans on toast etc.

We always have a stock of canned lentils, pasta sauce jars (Heinz do a good non UPF one that is often on offer), spaghetti and cheese for a low effort quick bolognese, and just the right amount for 3 people. You could add cherry tomatoes and bagged salad if you have it.

Ive never used a delivery app and never will because it's a very exploitative business model, charges huge fees to the restaurant, low pay and lack of employment rights to the delivery person and even more expensive than ordering direct.

To be honest , our reliance on take aways has been higher than average especially for some complicated Asian hot meals .

We normally tended to order direct from the restaurant w.

Since we moved home , we started using food delivery apps which compounded the problem .

Delivery apps. do use an exploitative model

None, we do have our normal food shop delivered though.

Cost wise how does that compare to going into the store yourself

0 can’t remember the last time I used one. They are very much a luxury

How is it an exploitative model?

Overall about the same I'd say as we do the monthly payment of about £6.

Please see the previous comments by users

I don't have any food delivery apps and I don't use take outs. I cook everything fresh. I buy from the supermarket or occasionally will get it delivered if I have heavier items.

We get 4 meals delivered once a week from Hello Fresh. It’s cheaper and healthier than takeaway and has easy to follow recipes Most meals take 25 minutes or less to cook. That’s less time than it would take to have food ordered and delivered using an app.

£0 here too.

I don’t use them at all, the one time I did I was very disappointed with the food. My reason is healthy eating and taste rather than cost.

The trick to not using them is to batch cook meals for the times where you would reach for an app and also have quick cook meals in your repertoire to prepare each week. Eg batch cook curries eg I make a lamb, chickpea, butternut squash and spinach curry, one batch (300g lamb, 1 can chickpeas, 1 butternut squash and half a bag of spinach feeds 4 very generous portions or 6 normal ones, so the extra goes into old takeaway tubs, rice I always cook a full rice cooker and freeze into 2 portion sized amounts, make a curry sauce with coconut milk which is ideal for fish or prawns which I freeze just as a sauce then add to prawn or white fish (you can buy cook from frozen) as needed.

for English food I will make 8 portions of stews eg chicken or beef including dumplings and freeze, just remember to pull from the freezer in the morning.

for fresh food have noodles, couscous etc in the cupboard as they cook super fast. I’ll grab veg on my way home along with maybe fish or chicken but I also always have carrots, onions, cabbage, mushrooms, spring onions, peppers, lemons and limes etc in my fridge and prawns and chicken that is in pieces that cook from frozen for speedy meals plus jars of pesto.

False self employment to deny employment rights to the workers.

Punative fees and unfair T&Cs for the restaurants, eg they lose money if there's a problem outside their control.

Significantly more expensive to the consumer.

Shady financing and tax arrangements.

YY to batch cooking. Also Mae Ploy Thai curry pastes are excellent and very cheap in the big tubs (don't worry about the use by date, they don't go off, some of mine have been years out of date when Ive finished the tub). Make a Thai curry very quickly with little effort especially if you use prawns or ready sliced meat.

@Lsgandhi20 I would suggest that as a first step towards being more independent from delivered food, you get a temporary deal with stockedfood.com/ and start using those on a daily basis for a few weeks - each bag contains 8 frozen sticks of the dish, so you can choose whether you are hungry enough for 2, 3 or 4 sticks and they are easy to defrost and combine with either a sachet of microwave rice, or some other carb, that you cook separately. Fill one section of your freezer with them, and keep a subscription going to keep it full. Stocked is expensive compared to home-made food but cheap compared with delivery app food.

Step two - gradually work out how to replace the Stocked foods you like with your own versions. For some, you can start easily with supermarket recipe jars to which you just need to add meat or other protein, and perhaps a few extra veg and mire spices/herbs. You can even buy similar sized freezer trays and make batches at the weekend that you freeze some of for quick midweek meals. Step 3 would be to work out how to replace the recipe jar sauce with starting from scratch.

Just for an example - for a great but very easy multi-meal curry - I bought 2 packets of ready-to-cook butternut squash pieces, 2 aubergines and a cauliflower, 200g ready-to-cook sliced onion and 2 jars of a simple curry sauce. I cut up the aubergine and put the aubergine and butternut squash on baking trays having tossed them in a little olive oil then roasted them till they start to brown (about half an hour). Meanwhile I cut up the cauliflower and boiled it for 10 minutes and fried the onion to a soft silky texture. When the oven veg were ready I combined it all with the sauce and froze it into stocked-style portion sticks and its enough for several meals. Because we have a mix of preferences including some vegetarian, when we are having curry I can easily fry up a pan of prawns or chicken or quorn or whatever and add the appropriate amount of curry blocks from the freezer, but if you all like the same thing protien-wise you could make it even easier by cooking that up and adding it at the same time as doing the veg.

@Lsgandhi20 I think you may have been asking me to clarify. That is twice in total over 3 years.

Insanity? Honestly this is so judgy. Why are you so judgy? If someone has the cash to splash, is time poor and is ordering healthy choices then why not?

It sounds like the OP does want to cut down. OP I’d start with something like Stocked cubes and merchant gourmet sachets - quick an easy but cheaper than uber eats and less prep / clean up than cooking from scratch.