(Last Updated May 2025)
Take a simple example: a popular Salmon O.G. poke bowl from Fishbowl in Sydney costs $15.90 in-store, but the very same bowl is listed at $19.90 on Uber Eats. Add a $5.99 delivery fee and a $1.99 service fee, and you’re handing over a bit under $28 for that bowl. The table below shows how quickly the costs stack up:
| Meal (Sydney) | Price if you pick up | Price via delivery app |
|---|---|---|
| Salmon poke bowl (Fishbowl) | $15.90 (menu price) | $27.88 ($19.90 + $5.99 delivery + $1.99 fees) |
| Flat white + banana bread (café) | ~$8 (in café) | $21 (with $3.99 delivery + $1.60 service fee + app markup) |
Even a humble coffee run can turn into a wallet-buster. One Sydney writer noted her $8 coffee and banana bread habit ballooned to $21 delivered, once a $3.99 delivery fee, $1.60 service fee, and inflated app pricing were factored in. And that’s before any tip for the driver. In other words, you’re paying a premium of 150% or more just for staying on the couch.
It’s not just these one-off examples. Broadly, research shows that ordering from a restaurant is almost five times more expensive than cooking at home. Of course, not every delivery is that extreme – but by the time you’ve paid a 10% service charge (Menulog caps this at $4, Uber Eats often has no cap) and a delivery fee (usually around $5–$7 in major cities), the fees can eclipse the cost of the food itself. What started as a $20 pad thai can easily end up costing $30-$35 delivered. In Sydney or Melbourne, those fees tend to be on the higher side of the range, but even in Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide you’ll shell out a similar ~$5 extra per order on average.
For us Aussies living on tight budgets, this “convenience tax” on food is a real worry. Every $10 in fees is $10 not going toward groceries, rent, or savings. To put it in perspective: Aussies who regularly order takeaway spend about $71 a week on it – around $3,700 a year – and using delivery apps for all of that would add roughly another $1,200 on top in fees. That’s over $5,000 annually drained by takeaway, much of it thanks to delivery mark-ups. In 2025’s cost-of-living crisis, those numbers are confronting.
A Nation Hooked on Home Delivery
Despite the costs, Australia’s appetite for food delivery is huge – and still growing. More than 60% of Australians had used Uber Eats by 2022, with New South Wales and Victoria leading the pack in usage. By 2024, nearly half of Aussies (49%) had ordered food delivery in just the past month. In fact, 68% of consumers were ordering as often or more often than they did the year before, showing that convenience is a hard habit to kick even as budgets tighten.
Who’s tapping “order now” the most? It skews younger – the largest group of users are 25–34-year-olds, who make up over half of Uber Eats’ customer base in Australia. Slightly older millennials (around age 30–39) are spending the most, averaging about $40 per week on food delivery – likely because many are in their prime working years, juggling careers and young kids. Interestingly, Australian mothers have been identified as some of the biggest users of food-delivery apps, with 4 million mums using them in 2023. That makes sense – after a long day of work and wrangling children, the allure of a no-cook, no-cleanup dinner can be irresistible. Gen Z and Millennials have also normalized app-based meals to the point that two-thirds “rely on” food delivery regularly as part of their lifestyle.
Usage isn’t limited to Sydney or Melbourne, either. Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide – all major cities have embraced app delivery culture. In fact, one report found South Australians spend slightly more on delivery apps (about $34 a week on average) than any other state, thanks in part to their penchant for midnight snack orders. And nationwide, Saturday nights around 6pm are peak ordering time– the new takeaway night in Aussie households.
The big players in the market are well known: Uber Eats dominates with around 38% market share as of late 2022, while Menulog and DoorDash make up most of the rest. (Deliveroo exited Australia in 2022, narrowing the field.) Fewer competitors can mean fewer generous promos than in the early days – remember when delivery was subsidised and cheap to hook us in? Those days are gone; now these companies are pushing towards profitability and we’re footing the bill for it.
Yet clearly, we haven’t been scared off. Convenience is a powerful drug – once you’re used to dinner arriving on demand, it’s tough to go back. Even in 2025, with grocery prices soaring and budgets stretched, many people are choosing to cut other expenses before they cut their Uber Eats habit. As a nation, we’ve gotten hooked on the dopamine hit of “ding! your delivery has arrived”– and we’re paying dearly for it.
When Takeaway Eats Your Pay: The Budget Impact
For someone living paycheque to paycheque, the casual $30 or $50 splurge on delivered dinner isn’t so casual – it can throw an entire week’s budget out of whack. Let’s consider a real-world scenario: say a couple in Brisbane orders delivery three times a week – maybe a curry on Monday, pizza on Friday, and burgers on Sunday. With delivery fees and markups, each order for two might cost around $40–$50. Over the week that’s roughly $120-$150, which in a month comes to $500+ on takeaway. That’s $500 that isn’t going to groceries or savings. In fact, $500 could cover a decent chunk of a monthly electricity bill or a week’s groceries for two, but instead it’s being spent on 12 dinners delivered to the door. Over a year, this habit could easily total $6,000 – $7,000.
Now compare: if the same couple cooked those three dinners at home, they might spend perhaps $60–$80/week on ingredients (even less if they meal plan carefully). Cooking at home can easily cost a quarter of what delivery does, so our Brisbane duo could save on the order of $4,000+ per year by limiting deliveries. That amount of money is life-changing for someone on a lower income – it could be the difference between sinking deeper into debt versus finally starting an emergency fund.
It’s not just hypothetical. Surveys show Australians’ takeaway habits add up. On average, regular users spend ~$3.7k a year on takeout, and as mentioned, using apps for it could push that near $5k after fees. To someone earning, say, $50k a year (just under the median full-time income), that’s around 10% of their pre-tax salary blown on takeaway. Little wonder many are finding there’s nothing left to save at month’s end.
We’ve all heard extreme stories too – like the young Aussie who discovered he’d spent $14,000 on Uber Eats in under a year. He shrugged it off as “zero regrets,” but for most of us that kind of spending is simply unsustainable.