Why some Australians are spending $35,000 a year on food delivery apps

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨hanrahan@slrpnk.net⁩ to ⁨australia@aussie.zone⁩

Paywalled version

afr.com/…/why-some-australians-are-spending-35-00…

Reddit forums are awash with people seeking help for their self-prescribed online food delivery addictions.

“It’s getting exhausting having to fight my mind every day to not buy something to eat. It feels like an intrusive thought – boom, I can’t stop thinking about ordering food for the rest of the day. Even if I eat something at home,” says one user.

“It’s been to the point where I would order two to three times a day,” another user wrote. “$50 orders each, for weeks on end.”

is this a wide spread thing ? or a beat up ?

is it this, or house prices causing cost of living concerns ? (sarcasm)

Declaring where I am at , I have never ordered online here in Australia. Way to lazy and they seem expensive. I have occasionally when OS.

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Comments

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SaneMartigan@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
My friend asked how often I got delivery. “More thna 5, less than 10.” I answered. He was surprised to find out that was my total, ever. Probably just over ten these days, less than 15 for sure.

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- Mac@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah, i got delivery a few times during COVID because it was free at a number of restaurants. I’ve probably gotten delivery less than 5 times since.
  
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osanna@lemmy.vg ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As someone on dsp, that’s more than I get a year :/

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- notgold@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  $35k is about what our household of 6 spends on groceries. Maybe we’re old fashioned.
  
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Ilandar@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I used to know a guy through online gaming who was like this. He was from country/outer suburbs (not sure how you guys qualify that) Victoria, moved to Melbourne for uni and then a career. He was in his early-20s and was a typical young Australian male with very poor financial literacy. We used to joke about his Uber Eats spending (AFAIK it’s no longer a problem for him), but for many people it could easily turn into a very serious addiction.

It’s not surprising to me that for people around his age, living in the city, this could become a big problem. You’ve just come into a lot of money (relative to your teenage life) with your new job, you’re surrounded by ways in which you can spend that money at all hours of the day, the choices are right there on the device you carry with you and use for 5+ hours a day, and they appeal to and are designed to target very primal instincts that can be difficult to control. Particularly when your brain is overwhelmed by long work hours and constant stimulation and wants to default to making easy choices. If you’ve gone from your parents house to life as a single adult, you’re suddenly in control of all your financial decisions and don’t have to answer to a partner or family member when you do dumb shit like waste most of your money on overpriced food.

The ease of access we now have to easy dopamine hits through shopping, food and even sex is very problematic when it’s tied to an addictive-by-design device that we carry with us 24/7. For younger generations that have grown up online and seem to be struggling with face-to-face social interaction more than previous generations, always being able to default to the equivalent of a dummy for adults to fulfill these base desires is another layer of the problem. There’s no friction to help reset your brain and think about the longer-term consequences of what you’re doing. It’s just constant, instant gratification via the phone.

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blind3rdeye@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve personally never used one of those apps, and I don’t intend to. But I’m a bit of an outlier for this kind of stuff. I could give my reasons, the response from ‘normal’ people would just be “yeah, but …”

I wouldn’t be surprised if “some” Australians are spending absurd amounts of money on… well… anything really. There’s a lot of people in Australia, and so if you look for someone with a trait like that, you’ll probably find someone. And I also wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people had allowed themselves to be deskilled in terms of meal organisation and food preparation to the point that they now are reliant on a service that has burrowed its way into their psyche. … Not sure how widespread that is though.

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certified_expert@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Is it the spiders? Scorpion spiders flying all over the country. You better let somebody else to the shopping

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Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There’s probably something to this. I haven’t touched a delivery app in quite a while, but I’d find it very surprising if they didn’t employ some kind of dark patterns to keep users coming back.

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zero_gravitas@aussie.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
De-paywalled link: archive.is/Emaug

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Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Wild to me.

I’ll stick to my poached chicken and salad.

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CTDummy@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I used to order somewhat frequently when I first moved to the city on a weekend before the pandemic and the prices became cooked. Going from a small city of 3 Chinese restaurants and one sushi place to an entire city you can order from was awesome and novel.

Gradually every other order just started getting messed up. I was home pissed one night and decided to order some food while gaming with some mates. It came hours late and Uber offered me like five bucks off my next order and that’s after bitching about it. That’s was pretty much the end for me. The food can arrive whenever, in whatever state and so long as it arrives, fuck you eat your hour cold slop. I can buy and/or make better junk food myself for far cheaper in most case. With one of their main competitors folding I doubt it’s gotten better.

It also felt like some of the stores didn’t want to do Uber. That management saw the dollar signs but then wouldn’t put more staff on Fri/Sat when the stores would get swamped with orders from boozers.

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- Ilandar@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  In terms of Uber Eats specifically, another rising problem is the lack of competition. Menulog is dead and there are concerns about DoorDash’s future too. Of course, the obvious answer is to not rely on these services at all but we all know many people will not do that. We are going to end up with another monopoly in the food delivery space and this will become an even bigger problem.
  
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