Against Delivery

In an ideal world, I would cook two meals a day. Yes, even if I was a millionaire living in a villa on the French Riviera, I would preside over the kitchen until old age forced me to retire to a comfortable chair nearby. My third meal would be cooked by Michael, or there would be leftovers, or we would grab a bite from the cafe down the lane. Cooking two meals a day is already luxurious to me because the labor is shared. 

So when I hear about people who order the same breakfast from Starbucks every morning, or DoorDash three meals a day, or spend thousands on Instacart every month, my brain glitches. I wonder how long their budget can sustain this lifestyle as food costs rise. I think of the innumerable tiny plastic bags of nuts and raisins that come with oatmeal at Starbucks clogging the ocean. Rather than envy them, I feel they’re being cheated out of something valuable.

The cosmic joke here is that ordering meals at an everyday pace is presented as the ultimate convenience. Modernity: You don’t even have to cook! Just InstaCart it. And I become a stick-in-the-mud who won’t embrace progress. DoorDash quotes a National Restaurant Association report, saying, “more than half (51%) of US consumers believe that ordering delivery and takeout from restaurants is an ‘essential part of their lifestyle’ — and even more Gen Zers (67%) and Millennials (64%) feel this way.” 

I may be in the minority but I protest on solid ground: I can make oatmeal faster than it takes me to order it from the coffee shop, it costs less money and tastes better. Because I don’t eat out daily I can afford ingredients that make me extra happy, like Tart Vinegar and spices from Burlap and Barrel. But – not everyone knows how to cook or is comfortable in the kitchen. Rather than an upspring of efforts to fix this issue through teaching people to cook or increasing the amount of community kitchens to share the workload, this gap is exploited. The food delivery companies try to make cooking an unessential part of life.

Of course, this is only attainable for people with the disposable income to not mind extra fees for delivery or the general higher cost of ordering food. It’s not a real solution for most people. I read Monday’s issue of Dense Discovery where Kai writes about the era of Web 2.0 “when everything felt possible and most things felt harmless” and how disruption was favored over caution. He quotes Ida Persson, who says, “Good design is a dance between curiosity AND criticality.” Kai continues, “Alongside our existing creative approach of ‘How might we?’, we should be asking ‘At what cost?’ with the same conviction.” It’s clear to me that the food delivery companies aren’t asking “At what cost?” It’s left to us, the consumers, to ask that question for ourselves.

If I subtract the villa, my ideal is already my reality, because I don’t count spooning yogurt into a bowl and topping it with fruit, granola or oatmeal, and Mesquite powder as cooking a meal. I’m an experienced enough home cook to have systems, ingredients, and batches of granola around to make life easier, saving the cooking for lunch and dinner most days. Cooking isn’t a zero-sum game for me because I enjoy the process and the product, keeping me in the kitchen by choice. Even if I had millions, my delivery budget wouldn’t increase. There would be signs, though: Look for the Duparquet sauté on my stovetop and Cézanne’s Bouilloire et fruits hanging in my kitchen.

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The Good Enough Weekly comes out on Wednesdays with new writing about the art and politics of food, and the beauty and reality of eating regionally. Rooted in the Sonoran Desert.