In most countries I’ve visited, alternative taxi services have been organized to present an alternative to Uber and Lyft. The reason driving services have been so disruptive is that taxi drivers in some areas were unreliable, unfriendly and just plain unpleasant. Likewise, restaurant owners aren’t all aware that serving food, even if it’s good, isn’t enough to make it a business that can compete with the convenience of sitting on your butt, having it brought to your door. They don’t call it hospitality business for nothing. If you don’t feel like a guest in a restaurant experience, why go out? Often to cut costs, servers are untrained, unsatisfied and not good at the job, making the entire experience not worth leaving home.

This said, I am lucky to have the time to prepare meals from scratch and I like doing it. When I can’t do that and don’t want to sit in a restaurant, I can go get takeout on foot and reheat it if need be.

There are some cases where it makes sense to use these services, and recently I saw an ad campaign showing a young woman alone at home late at night (looking wasted to me, but maybe they were trying for tired). I totally understand why a person wouldn’t want to go out alone at 1 AM to pick up food.

The experience of food being delivered is in no way the same as getting it served properly in a comfortable seat in a pleasant restaurant environment. Some people either can’t make the difference or don’t care.