Food delivery - a sort of boy kibble postscript
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
"Australians are now spending billions of dollars every year on food delivery apps." Australian Financial Review
There were a couple of kind of related items in yesterday's AFR weekend and they both sort of connected to the boy kibble thing - and in addition, coincidentally, an item in my Happy Foodie (Penguin's cookbook publishing) newsletter this morning also fed into the whole thing. So herewith a few rambles around GenZ and Millenials, their eating habits and the way of the future. A Brave New World gone wrong. Why do Brave New Worlds always go wrong?
So first of all - the food delivery thing. Exacerbated by COVID, but preceding it too, has been the rise of Uber Eats and their like - takeaway on steroids if you like. Of course, during COVID it was a bonus for everyone. The restaurants could sell their food and people could 'dine out' at home. Not to mention the young unemployed who found work - which I shall come to. And, of course, as in any crisis, the canny made money - nay fortunes from it. According to the AFR, food delivery apps boomed from 3.6 million to 7 million during COVID. But pandemic over, we did not return to 'the good old days':
"According to Uber Eats, Australians were spending 210 per cent more on food delivery in 2021 compared to before the pandemic, even as in-venue dining returned to pre-pandemic levels." AFR Weekend
Even more alarming, most of this rise went to the fast food sector who started opening more stores across the country. Nevertheless it's not necessarily a boon for the restaurants which have to pay Uber Eats - and probably the others too - a 33 percent cut from all sales. For the customer there is a mark-up of 37 per cent once service and delivery fees are factored in.
Now, it seems the health experts, and the socially conscious are becoming increasingly alarmed. On the health front - it's not just the fact that the food tends to be of the unhealthy kind, the real problem seems to be that the users of these apps are becoming addicted to them. In the article there were alarming stories of people getting deliveries several times a day - not just for dinner, which of course meant they were spending literally thousands of dollars on them - they quoted one lady spending $1000 a month and ex footballer Brendan Fevola -$35,000 in one year. Of course these are random - and possibly extreme examples, but nevertheless ... The experts put this down to the gamification of the apps:
"gamification can increase people's engagement with apps, gets them to spend more money and time on the apps, and tap into reward pathways in the brain" Dr. Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist
It's all to do with dopamine if you really want to look into it. And algorithms, which "allow food deliviery companies to provide food recommendations tailored to each user". Just like the information the supermarkets collect from your buying history. And according to more university research 73% of the most popular food outlets on those apps were classified as 'unhealthy.'
A senior researcher at Deakin university was quoted as saying:
"It's not just food now either. There are convenience stores on the app. There are alcohol stores on the app. So it's really a growing problem, and before we know it, it is going to run into a massive public health issue."
I'm guessing that most of the Uber type food delivery is to the younger generations, although the article did not mention this. However, it's not just the young who are into food delivery - it's housewives as well who, it seems are increasingly doing their shopping from home and either having it delivered to home, or do the Click and Collect thing. My sister, for one, does it. But in her favour, she also buys a vegetable box from a nearby farm.
On the next page of the AFR in the Business section there was a report on Coles CEO Leah Weckert talking up her company's six month results, amongst which was the information that online sales now make up 13.1% of sales.and that e-commerce sales surged 27%. Weckert expects this to rise to around 20% in the next few years, and is already prioritising:
"the infrastructure required for a world where customers expect they can go from thinking about purchsing a product to having it delivered in 60 minutes."
Which may result in a larger portion of your local supermarket being consigned to the Click and Collect people, than the people actually wandering around the store. Although the store itself will not get smaller.
And how does this all relate to boy kibble? Well I was very alarmed by the take-away addiction thing. Does my solo son do much of this I wondered? So many bad things associated with take-away delivery - and I didn't even mention the plight of the delivery guys and girls - at least 23 delivery riders have been killed in the last eight years. And there have been many disputes about pay.
However it made those sad, boy kibble makers go up in my estimation, for at least they were aiming at a healthy diet regime that not only provided them with all the nutrients they required but also helped them lose weight. Without the aid of drugs. Such a shame there was no attempt at really making their rice, vegetables and meat tasty as well. And also such a shame that it was all made in one big bash so that the same meal could be eaten every day by simply heating it up in the microwave. It's a kind of amalgamation of youthful messiness, social media, fast food, with health aspirations which almost gets it right, but could do so much better with very little extra thought and work.
Vegetables, rice and some kind of protein is a very worthy ambition. The guy whose video I linked to, had a whole variety of vegetables in his basic mix. From a health point of view, one could probably not criticise it too much, but really it would be so monotonous. Maybe I'm being unfair and he varies the dish by adding different spices and proteins, sauces and flavour boosters to his base. But I think not.
And then up popped 7 Ottolenghi must-try rice recipes in my Happy Foodie newsletter, reminding me how just a tiny little bit more work in the kitchen would result in something as glorious looking and tasty as this. Why don't they do this? Surely it's not a time thing.
I began with the AFR and their examples of those suffering from food delivery app addictions - the first of which was a lady, who eventually managed to get herself off the addiction and into the kitchen of which she said:
"We're in a world where we have to be in front of a screen all the time. It gets tiring, so when you spend 30 minutes preparing your meal, in that 30 minutes you don't look at your screen, you're just cooking. That activity is very comforting. It brings you so much warmth, so I would rather that pleasure than getting my meal order."
Also coincidentally - sort of - I have leftover rice for dinner tonight - which will just be thrown into a wok with this and that - some sun-dried tomatoes, zucchini, the inevitable onions, some thinly sliced pork and I'm not sure what else at the moment - flavours anyway. It will probably take about half an hour to cook. Now where's the pain in that? David washes up after all - and there will only be one pan anyway.
YEARS GONE BY
March 1 - first day of autumn and a big storm brewing
2025 - Nothing
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2019 - A bottle of Coke
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