Not sure I’d put a lot of stock in that. My behavior has completely changed, why would I pay DoorDash or Uber Eats $30 to deliver some fast food when I can go to a real restaurant and get much better food for cheaper?

Delivery made sense when it was artificially subsidized by VCs, now that they’ve all jacked prices it’s not competitive at all.

> why would I pay DoorDash or Uber Eats $30 to deliver some fast food when I can go to a real restaurant and get much better food for cheaper?

Because you can eat it in the comfort of your own home, instead of the discomfort of an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers.

It may just be me but I really do not like eating in public.

Here in Spain the restaurant is actually part of the experience. Like a beneficial thing. It's nice to truly get away. With colleagues we eat at a restaurant for lunch at least once a week. It helps that pretty much all places have a three course daily menu with drink for around €12.

It's absolutely incredible how much you can learn about cooking from youtube.

My family rarely goes out to restaurants anymore, not because we don't love restaurants, but because it's more fun to cook at home.

You quickly realize that most restaurants serve terrible food and so it isn't worth eating out at all.

I pretty much only go out now for stuff I can't make my self, or as a social thing.

Most restaurant food needs to be simple and easy so they can get you in and out quick.

You are so lucky to have a family who cook together!

It can be fun but its literally a two hour commitment usually to prepare a big meal, eat it, then deal with the hellfire you created in the kichen. I don’t always have the energy for that at the end of the workday.

Eating out isn't uncomfortable. You get to people watch, make small talk with the waiter, talk with the person you are eating with, read a book if you are alone. You also get a chance to get out of the house for a while, I love eating out, and honestly only having a baby (which does add complexity) is the only reason I don't eat out more.

> Eating out isn't uncomfortable

That really depends on your personality. Not only is "people watching" not my thing, but the idea of other people "people watching" me is terrifyingly uncomfortable. Sends shivers down my spine level of discomfort. Please don't watch me while I eat. Some of us find the idea of "making small talk" with anyone, let alone wait staff, to be inherently uncomfortable.

For others, eating is a social activity, or an opportunity to socialize, and they like that. Some people feel "trapped" if they are cooped up inside their homes for too long, and need reasons to "get out of the house." That sounds like you, and that's great. Nothing wrong with it at all and you should enjoy eating out as much as you like. For others such as myself, who are introverted and find great comfort in the solitude of our homes, the reasons that you find eating out to be comfortable are the same reasons we find eating out to be uncomfortable.

> Please don't watch me while I eat

If it makes you feel any better, and maybe I'm only speaking for myself, but when I people watch, I'm barely paying attention, and I'm never really watching people actually eating. It's the activities around the eating, mostly just walking and talking (this is why I really like European sidewalk cafes, you get an endless river of people passing by to watch). I'm not taking detailed notes on anything, and definitely not bite sizes, how many times you chew, how messy you are etc. That's all too close for my own comfort. Couldn't care less about that stuff. Probably the most info I retain is new ideas on how to dress myself, outside of exceptional or weird situations that might arise in public. Which, OK, in the context of this thread, I might notice the people carrying two or more heaping mountains of food to their table at a time.

That’s certainly a very valid viewpoint but it sounds like some form of social anxiety. I’m pretty introverted and rarely make smalltalk with anyone unprompted but I still enjoy going to certain restaurants and kind of nursing a drink while zoning out. I usually avoid the bar while alone because some bartenders think you want to chat.

It's actually not social anxiety. Believe it or not, my wife and I are performing magicians, so I'm actually a part time entertainer on the side. I have no issues mingling, making small talk if I have to, and enjoying the company of others.

But it's when I'm not seeking those things, when I want to enjoy a meal or a private conversation, then I start to a) feel protective of my privacy (and yes I know, restaurant = public place) and b) I just have no interest in the type of socializing that we're talking about (making small talk with the wait staff etc.).

In other words I just want to be left alone, and I find the concept of people "people watching" me while I eat or go about my daily business to be, well, creepy. If I'm asking for attention it's different. If I'm enjoying a meal with my wife, leave me alone.

I will add, however, that the privacy element is probably a bit more "extreme" for me than others because of having experiences as a child where privacy and boundaries, when there was an expectation of privacy, was violated. And so I am more concerned with privacy than probably even the typical tinfoil hat wearing techie who is paranoid about Internet and device privacy. That's undoubtedly where the thought of people "people watching" me while I eat at a restaurant creeps me the hell out comes from.

Its interesting how a few positive or negative experiences can affect the way we feel about something for so long.

I am unduly paranoid about my privacy when working from my home office, and I absolutely hate anyone approaching my screen to look and ask what I’m working on. I always have to catch myself to avoid snapping at my wife when she barges in. In my case its probably that my father used to aggressively check our screens and say like “oh who is that girl you’re talking to on Facebook etc” (not in a fun way, kind of ridiculing or trying to embarass you kind of way).

Its completely irrational but the back of my head is yelling “an authority figure is about to come tease, ridicule, question you etc”. So I definitely see where you’re coming from.

You and I say that, but mistrusting strangers and being "anti-social" is the dominant paradigm - in America much more than in other countries, I think.

True. But it is more about trend like watching movie in multiplex is fun, there are those large butter popcorn containers, soda machine, bigger screen, better sound and so on. But more people are now streaming than going out for movie.

So now I think more people then ever will be having restaurant food at comfort of home and not worrying about traffic, driving, cabs, parking, crowd, one more beer or wine glass etc.

“Eating out isn't uncomfortable.”

For you. If a person says they don’t like eating out because it’s uncomfortable, you can trust they know whether they are uncomfortable or not.

I don’t like loud, busy places. It’s great when I can have a meal at a restaurant when it’s not packed, but you never know until you get there.

Don't forget the benefits of not having to set the table and not having to clean up, including doing the dishes. Also: not having to prepare, if you're cooking yourself.

Re: baby: If there's an Ikea near you, you might want to try that. Around here, they typically are very well-prepared for small children (say, 1+). Basically, all of the cutlery and china they sell for kids is available for use in the restaurant. And they have play areas integrated into the dining area - kids play and parents can eat.

For me, that completely depends whether I'm there alone or not.

With friends, family or coworkers, eating out is fantastic and a fun social activity.

Alone, it's awkward, uncomfortable and unpleasant.

If I'm not with someone, I'd rather it be delivered.

At which point its always better to just pick it up yourself unless you absolutely cannot go do that for whatever reason. Not only is it significantly cheaper, but the food is also significantly hotter.

> Because you can eat it in the comfort of your own home, instead of the discomfort of an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers.

People never ate out because of the food. They ate out because of the dining experience.

You can make better meals, cheaper, at home, in less time than it takes to go out. Yet people still dined out.

And, they pay a premium for it. There is no sense in paying a premium for home delivery, because you are getting substandard meals[1].

[1] Few dishes travel well in a bag, even if it's packaged properly and delivered quickly - steam rising off hot food that is not ventilated causes things to go soggy. If you do ventilate it, then it goes cold in minutes while traveling. Then reheating the food makes it less nice than it was when cooked. Hence, all delivered food tend to be slightly different to eating it off a plate when it is freshly cooked. Even pizzas suffer from being steamed while traveling.

I actually assumed eating at home increase wouldn't be because of doordash, but because of improved quality and variety of frozen meals. I remember what was available when I was a kid was mostly mediocre to outright bad. Now a lot of things like quite good frozen pizzas and lots of entrees you'd normally get at a sit-down chain are available in the frozen food section. I'm a pretty poor cook but I can't screw up following the oven directions on a box and I'd get the result faster and cheaper than doordash.

It isn't as good as a home cooked meal but it is a lot better than the awful TV dinners I rarely ate back in the 80s.

> You can make better meals, cheaper, at home, in less time than it takes to go out.

This is going to be highly dependent on your local restaurants and what you like to eat. I can't make better bbq or pizza than the restaurants near me. I can make either of those pretty well, but not faster. I can make a pretty good burger, competitive with almost all the restaurants near me, but I can't make French fries as good as a restaurant with a fryer.

Average HN work from home remotecel autist.

While this is a valid preference, I think it may be a rather unusual one; people tend to like going out.

Yeah and you don't have to do the dishes afterwards. And it's served hot and you can order more if you feel like it.

> why would I pay DoorDash or Uber Eats $30 to deliver some fast food when I can go to a real restaurant and get much better food for cheaper?

1. I don't have to drive

2. I don't have to listen to other people talking loud or being obnoxious while I'm trying to eat my meal and have a quiet private conversation with my wife

3. I can enjoy it in the comfort of my home, whether this means eating dinner in front of the tv, or enjoying a scotch or wine we have at home, or even just being able to get out of the clothes we've been in all day and enjoy comfort food in our PJs

4. I don't have to brave the cold or wet weather

5. I don't have to deal with wait staff interrupting my meal every 5 minutes to ask if everything is ok

6. I don't have to worry about music that I don't care for, or is distracting, being played while I eat

7. I don't have to worry about dirty dishes on the table, or the table itself being dirty (although to be fair I have no control over the dishes used to prepare the food and so some might consider this to be moot)

8. I don't have to worry about my home being crowded and busy with strangers, making for an uncomfortable dining experience. My mother once took me to a restaurant to celebrate my birthday, just the two of us. I'm a foodie and, despite listing several reasons I often prefer delivery / take-out over dine-in, I actually do love a great restaurant and the food at this particular place was supposed to be amazing. The two of us were put in a tiny corner in a crowded restaurant so close to the tables nearest us that the three parties (us plus our neighbours on either side) could hear every single word of each others' conversations. It was practically a communal table situation. Edit: I forgot to mention that we had a reservation which made this experience all the more frustrating. Which leads me to...

9. I don't have to worry about finding myself at a restaurant that has communal tables

10. I don't have to worry about people celebrating their birthdays receiving a loud and obnoxious group of wait staff bursting out of the kitchen to interrupt the entire restaurant's private conversations with an annoying song and cheer

I recognize that a lot of the above points can be avoided by choosing a different restaurant. But sometimes you still want the food of a particular restaurant but that restaurant's dining atmosphere is what kills it for you.

> 5. I don't have to deal with wait staff interrupting my meal every 5 minutes to ask if everything is ok

I'm sure you know this, but they're actually interrupting your meal every 5 minutes to minimize any possible delay in seating the next person after you. They just accomplish that by asking if everything is ok.

It's all about throughput.

(And it's a US thing. In France, among other places, you're expected to be the only group using the table for that meal. Which means they're in no rush for you to finish, but also that they are not happy if a group sits down but only a subset of people order food. Sometimes to the extent of asking you to leave.)

I'm not so sure it's just a US thing. I've been to plenty of places in EU that are very interested in feeding you and getting you out the door for the next people to come in. Some high end, in-demand places will even tell you up front what the time limit is because with their limited space, they need to be able to accommodate the next reservation.

And often, it just comes down to overcorrection, where the server is afraid of getting bad tips (so yes, that is US specific, and maybe related to throughput, though not exclusively), or incompetency, where they haven't learned how to read the table and predict their needs.

One big thing is take out. It is quite common in many countries. Maybe not in US yet. Lot of people grab food from restaurant or stores on their way home from work. Some people even pick from different places to have some combo meal at home which is not possible while eating in a restaurant.

It's quite common in the US.

I mean I never pay for delivery (except very rarely pizza) but I still do takeout over eating in the restaurant 90% of the time.

Yea it seems like western culture is obsessed with advancing hyper individualism. I can't judge, I'm a product of the culture myself, but our mental health seems to keep getting worse the more we keep our lives inside our own bubbles and move away from any aspect of community.

Coming from an eastern culture, I’m happy to judge. Luckily it’s a self-correcting problem. Hyper individualism makes having children both burdensome (lack of community support) and socially undesirable, and so these cultures are being replaced by less individualistic ones.

Are you claiming China and Japan are individualistic, or that people are hiding all the babies somewhere?

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fer... does not show eastern countries as having particularly high birth rates, and the largest eastern countries have the lowest.

The description on that page under Africa, which is the only continent remaining with fertility rate well above replacement rate, does agree with your assessment that it's about the society and its expectations.

(As a side note, I heard that Nigeria is on track to soon becoming the country with the 2nd highest number of English speakers after the US, which stunned me given that India is the most populous country in the world and—I thought—has a fairly high percentage of English speakers.)

> Are you claiming China and Japan are individualistic, or that people are hiding all the babies somewhere

No? A -> B doesn’t mean that B -> A. In the case of East Asia, it’s nearly a century of deliberate anti-natal government policy. China’s one-child policy is the most brutal, but pretty much all East Asian countries had softer forms of encouraging people not to have kids.

It's not like this at all. People aren't having kids in all developed nations, east or west, and also in developing nations as they become more developed, the birthrate falls dramatically. It's not "anti-natal government policy", it's various other factors: cost of living, expectations of how much resources/attention will be devoted to each kid, women's rights, etc.

China's one-child policy is long since over, but their birthrate is very low too. Government policy isn't the problem (if it's even a "problem"). People just don't want to have big families, and now that they have a choice, they don't.

The one child policy was only ended in 2016. Several generations grew up under it, changing the culture significantly. That’s been true in all Asian countries.

> People just don't want to have big families, and now that they have a choice, they don't.

But “choice” is individualism! There are American subcultures that are more educated and affluent than average, like Muslims and Mormons, that have much higher fertility rates than average. And that’s because those cultures exert strong social pressures to conform to expectations about family life instead of leaving it to choice.

It’s not just East Asia. India is under replacement rate at this point and it’s been a constant drastic decline. It’s just a function of kids being expensive to raise with the standards a developed economy mindset imposes. Children become less of a throwaway/what will be will be proposition.

Except such cultures inevitably morph back into individualistic ones, typically once educational attainments and female emancipation kick in.

It's not about culture, it's about economic conditions.

I think this remains to be seen. It's possible that certain less individualistic cultures exposed to individualistic modernity will adapt in a robust way.

Jewish culture, Italian culture, Greek culture, Spanish culture - all famed for big families, worshipping fertility, etc etc. They all fell to the demands of advanced-capitalism demands. A couple of generations and that becomes true of any culture: once women are free to decide their own destiny, and educated enough to know there is a world of life options, they want to dedicate less of their time to child-rearing.

It’s about culture, not economic conditions. A number of American sub-cultures that are more educated and wealthy than average (Mormons, Muslims) also have above-replacement fertility rates.

Maybe we ask Mormon and Muslim women what they think of their education, wealth and expected role in those above-replacement fertility rates?

Don’t forget that those societies also impose heavy obligations on men. Are secular women, many of who are stuck both working and raising kids by themselves without men supporting them, happier on average? I haven’t seen any data to suggest that’s true. Indeed, Mormons are happier overall than other groups: https://news.gallup.com/poll/152732/religious-higher-wellbei.... Maybe there’s a big gender gap there but I’m not aware of any data to support that notion.

It is culture but it's not the pro-individualism enlightenment parts of Western culture that made us great. There's so much anti-natalistic culture to fix (and a little bit of economics)

- make housing cheaper

- fix education so people can start their careers and adulthood earlier

- pass safe harbor laws so that parents and feel safe leaving their kids at home, or letting them take the bus

- also economic incentives help, beef up people's social security if they have kids

> fix education so people can start their careers and adulthood earlier

People can only learn so quickly; you're not going to give people a college-level education by age 15. Modern society requires more education to be productive than past societies, but this is at odds with human biology.

> pass safe harbor laws so that parents and feel safe leaving their kids at home, or letting them take the bus

This is only a problem in the US, but birthrates are low in all developed nations.

Some economic incentives might help a bit, but they're not going to have a dramatic effect: people simply don't want to have big families any more. Kids are a lot of work (and expensive, even with those incentives), so people like to have 1 or 2 and concentrate all their attention on those. They don't want 6 kids.

Their reach of wealthy economic conditions is too recent. Give it a couple more generations and you'll see.

There’s more community outlets than ever before. Try joining a makerspace or a slow pitch softball league in 1950. All you had back then was the church or beers at the elks lodge after work.

Americans' participation in community outlets has been plummeting across basically every category since the late 60s -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

The general trend is that people use money to buy "privacy," i.e. the freedom to not have to interact with "strangers."

It's a glaring example of local optimization at the cost of global (your own life, viewed in its entirety) worsening.

I’d bet tipping inflation has a lot to do with that. Delivery can often times come out cheaper with the apps suggested tip than dining in with 20-25% being expected.

Could be. Here in Spain dining out is the norm and 0% tip is expected (though some is highly welcomed of course)

While I agree that the suggested tip percentages are getting out of hand, I personally refuse to follow those and I would be surprised if most people did. I tip the same as I ever did: 10% (or less) for bad service, 15% for decent but unremarkable service, 20% (or more) for good service. There's absolutely no reason to increase the percentages one tips just because the people writing the POS software are putting in crazy values.

You can tip any amount. You chose if tipping inflation would affect you.

US tipping is sick, and it is not fair to people who are involved in preparing your experience. Why only servers receiving tip? Why not the cook? Or cleaning lady? After all, dirty toilet will ruin your dining experience.

some places do share tips across the whole staff, though sometimes waiters still get a larger cut

At least for my family, especially as delivery packaging has improved, restaurants have become an inferior experience unless they are fairly high end.

Grandparents used to take everyone out to dinner regularly. Now we eat at their house. They have more comfortable chairs at home. The environment is much quieter. You don’t have to wait for refills. They personally have better cutlery. We aren’t really the types to like being waited on.

So unless we explicitly want something social from the restaurant or we need a table as we are travelling, the reasons for actually going in one have disappeared.

The packaging might be better but it doesn’t solve the problem that the food arrives cold. Especially since the drivers pick up multiple deliveries and it can be 30-40 minutes before you get your food.

I've never had food arrive cold.

Above all, the probability of a restaurant being able to provide a meal with sufficient quality is too low.

If my family gets together, we can bang out a multiple course guaranteed high quality meal in one hour, having fun while we do it.

But a lot of that is due to cooking knowledge that the elders in the family pass down and refine over many, many decades.

That works if you have a family and enjoy cooking. For me neither applies.

And I'm sure restaurant chefs get some kind of training to replace the passed down knowledge :)

It also works for very narrow sets of dishes. Nobody is an expert in every type of food in the world. Parent poster was just humblebragging.

Well, restaurants, even on the high end, are increasingly getting louder and less comfortable. I thought that I was just getting older, but it's a real thing [0]. My favorite bars are the ones that are comfortable and don't blast your ears off with music.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/how-r... [0]

> This further cultural entrenchment of people into homebodies is really sad to me.

This is an odd take because the trend in new/remodeled homes is dedicating practically the entire first floor and back yard of every home as an entertaining space. The line between "at home" and "out" is getting to be very thin.

Going over to a different friend's house 4-5 times a week for dinner, games, movies, music, sporting events, swimming, spa, fire pit feels to me pretty darn out.

That does sound like unreasonable extrapolation; I'd be very suspicious of _any_ prediction that _anyone_ makes about consumer behaviour in 2030, because the track record for attempting to make long-term predictions about consumer behaviour is... not great.

At least in this country (Ireland) restaurants seem to be, if anything, fuller than they were before covid; deliveries are definitely more of a thing than they used to be, but no apparent evidence that people are giving up on going out.

My home is quiet, I can wear pajamas, it costs 20% less because I'm not tipping (I do tip a couple bucks for takeout), costs even less because I'm not buying drinks, alcohol isn't marked up 5x from retail pricing, and I can relax after my meal instead of spending 20 minutes trying to get my waiter's attention for the check and then having to drive home.

The only reason I eat out is it's a date and we're in the early stages of getting to know each other, I want to treat someone (including dates) to something nice, or it's a special occasion.