I have always preferred to sit in my car to eat at a park or some relatively peaceful place in the shade without too much activity. Sitting in a big dirty room with a bunch of people watching me eat has never been comfortable.
I agree. I can listen to a podcast in my car, there's no chance someone will cough or sneeze near me, etc.
My first time being into a McDonalds since I was a kid was earlier this summer when I gave my 3 year old the option of going in or staying in the car. I was pretty shocked at how barebones it was now. There weren't even napkins available and none with our food...which, when you have a kid with, is an issue.
> “meeting other people in person” as a tiresome chore.
Someone linked the short story The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster the other day where this is an element. A character makes a big deal of having to meet her son in person, opposed of through the machine.
Written in the 20s, gets a lot of things uncannily correct for a society 100 years later. Video calling, silence/do not disturb mode, notifications, air conditioning, people no longer wanting to look at real things with their eyes, etc.
Pre-COVID, I used to go to a small kabob restaurant in Silicon Valley. During COVID, I'd order from them via Doordash. The food wasn't as good cold, though, even if re-heated. After COVID, I started going back in person. Often, I'd be the only in-person customer, despite a steady stream of deliver drivers going in and out. Now, they're out of business.
>Pre-COVID, I used to go to a small kabob restaurant in Silicon Valley. During COVID, I'd order from them via Doordash. The food wasn't as good cold, though, even if re-heated. After COVID, I started going back in person. Often, I'd be the only in-person customer, despite a steady stream of deliver drivers going in and out. Now, they're out of business.
Because DoorDash/GrubHub/UberEats/etc. charge the restaurants more than their gross margins. In such an anvironment, unless a restaurant raises prices 25-30%, they're eventually going out of business.
I'd say that these companies are most certainly not providing 25-30% value add. Rather, it's just leeching off restaurants and their customers.
It's disgusting and has killed many, many restaurants where I live (NYC), even though we already had a culture of delivery before these parasites came along.
This reminds me of the Sonic fast food chain. The first (and so far only) time I've visited Sonic was some years ago, I was staying at a motel across the street, walked over there to order, and was surprised there was no place to sit or even a normal counter to order at. The ads they run on TV give no indication that Sonic is strictly a drive-thru operation.