How Food Delivery Apps Are Changing the Way We Eat In – And Out

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When mealtimes come, more and more people instinctively reach for their phones and open up an app. Many customers now want restaurant food, often delivered contactless to their door step, without the actual restaurant experience. In a report last year, the National Restaurant Association found that nearly three out of four restaurant orders were for delivery or takeout. This shift has fundamentally altered the way many restaurants do business and how many diners eat, socialize and spend money. We’ll talk about the rise of food delivery apps and why people keep ordering in despite the added cost and risk of cold, soggy food. Guests: Corey Mintz, food journalist; author, "The Next Supper: The End of Restaurants as We Knew Them, and What Comes After" Michele McQueen, owner, Town Fare at the Oakland Museum of California and cocktail bar Lucy Blue Tony Gemignani, chef, owner, author and pizza instructor, Slice House Pizza Laurie Thomas, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association; owner of two San Francisco restaurants Arzsebet Saucedo, shift lead, Aburaya Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:44.3	From KQED.
0:48.3	Welcome to Forum, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:51.3	If I think about my own life, food delivery used to be associated with two things.
0:57.0	Chinese food and pizza, especially pizza.
1:01.0	One of the teenage jobs of record was pizza delivery driver,
1:05.0	some kid bombing all over town and a Datsun with a funny magnet on the top of the car reading Pizza Hut or whatever.
1:11.6	But the food delivery apps, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and many smaller players that have been consolidated or eliminated really did change everything.
1:20.6	Right at the cusp of the pandemic, they were poised to challenge traditional restaurants, business models, and then boom, the pandemic hit, and everything was takeout.
1:30.3	Now we're in this strange period where pandemic restrictions are gone,
1:34.3	but like a torrent resetting the channel of a creek,
1:37.3	the way the restaurant industry works would take out
1:40.3	the way people think about restaurant food has been totally transformed.
1:45.6	So here we are.
1:47.0	We've got some folks to talk to us about this.
1:48.8	Corey Mintz is a food journalist.
1:51.5	He is the author of The Next Supper, The End of Restaurants as we knew them, and What Comes
1:56.7	After.
1:57.2	Welcome, Corey.
1:58.5	Morning, Alexis.
	...

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