I basically refuse to use the delivery apps on principal. If I do order delivery, which is very rarely, I order straight from restaurants that offer their own delivery services. It's just not worth the massive premium to have half-cold food delivered when I can go pick it up almost as easily for almost half the price. Plus these days I need an excuse to get out of the house with WFH so all the more reason to pick up.

They usually gouge local and independent businesses to the point where it's hardly profitable for the restaurant itself, to say nothing of underpaid gig economy workers.

I am not sure I notice better service at sit down restaurants than I get at stores, coffee shops, fast casual places, etc. Even if it is, I do not think it is worth the huge premium. Part of the reason for the fast casual boom (which has happened far more than in places without expectations of large tips) is saving the 15-20% right of the top for basically the same food.

As a point of clarification I think it's worth pointing out that in most (non-shady) restaurants tips are also distributed to back of house staff. Servers aren't typically pocketing everything that's given to them.

I tell this to my wife and kids all the time, to shame them out of ordering through these services.

A number of restaurant owners here have said this publicly, though they all seem to still use these services.

I suppose that making pennies on the dollar these days is better than no pennies at all.

Kids in Montreal play back alley hockey. Has the advantage of rarely being interrupted by cars.

Exactly... I go to bars and breweries pretty often, usually in the late afternoon. I finish up my work, have a pint of good beer that I can't get in a can, maybe read a book. The servers know me and chat a little bit. Sometimes I'll run into a friend who is passing by on the street outside, or who coincidentally decides to have a drink at the same time as me.

On top of that, meeting a couple of friends in a bar for a chat is a very different experience than going over to their house. Not better, just different, and when everybody has been spending 95% of their time at home, it's great to get out once in awhile.

I feel like, here in Montreal at least, there are fewer taverns/dive bars, but a lot more bars with decent food, good beer, and wine or cocktails that you can't easily have at home. Just off the top of my head, there's about 30 bars within a 2km radius of my apartment, which is probably the same or even more as five years ago. Some of them are places where you drink and dance, others places where you drink and eat, but they're all drinks-forward. The situation is definitely the same in similar parts of Toronto and Vancouver (although in Vancouver the bar scene is more of a brewery scene because of licensing restrictions).

One borough in Montreal, Verdun, had absolutely no bars until 2013 (they were banned in 1965) and now there's a dozen of them... so there's clearly still a big market for bars.

I Don't use them either. I place my order and go pick it up. Most places around here have figured the safest way to do things. Plus I have an insulated bag to use.

I did some research and yes, it does appear to be unsustainable (I didn’t realize it was that bad). If I were to guess, I think those businesses stick with it so they can have their name out there, and probably hope that some of those app users will become conventional customers down the road.

Please order directly from the restaurant.

Not only does your food end up cold from those delivery apps, the restaurant gets almost nothing due to all the fees, and the delivery driver gets paid shite by the app service as well.

I had a friend that did Uber, Lyft, and Uber Eats/Skip the Dishes on the side.
With ride-sharing he'd make decent money on a busy weekend, event, or driving to the airport.
For food delivery he made so little he said it was only worth it "for me and my wife to have time alone in the car away from the kids (teens) for a while"

Where I grew up (Waste Island) there were few back alleys.

I miss the days when air travel was actually something you looked forward to.
I miss the days when there was no such thing as "reality TV".
I miss the Bugs Bunny Road Runner show.
I miss the Eaton's catalogue.

me too.

At 52, I'm getting to be an old fogie.

I miss the days before smartphones.

I fucking hate my iPhone. I fucking hate email. I fucking hate the Internet.

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At least the internet gave us this forum. And Clockzilla. And something to distract us during lockdown. The iPhone is another problem entirely.

I wish smartphones had been invented in 1990 when I was a teenager nursing the anemic battery life on my Panasonic Walkman knockoff. That instead of biking 3 miles to the local library I could just search Google from the comfort of the back porch. Instead of sending letters twice a year to my grandma I'd been able to email her - so many questions I wish I'd asked!

My sister would be 52 ... do year of the roosters like to sit around and complain all the time?

I fucking like your insight, humour and contributions to this forum over the years.

Does that cancel some of it out :haha:
:cheers:

Same

I get nostalgia for old movies, where you can see obvious advantages to an era before everything was a sequel/reboot/soft reboot/remake, etc, but nostalgia for old TV is weird. Production values were usually terrible, the comedies weren't funny (and relied on canned laughter to tell you they were comedies), the dramas weren't dramatic, there were an obscene number of bad game shows and bad soap operas, and there was only a handful of channels so you had little choice in the matter.