12 April 23 - 29, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents “Discounts are reshaping the third-party de- livery business” explores how promos are a big business driver for the platforms, but for restaurants, the impact is more complicated. As restaurants get squeezed on every aspect of their budgets, they’re taking a closer look at the bottom line and see that delivery fees and promos are literally eating their lunch. “It’s one of those things that if you don’t re- ally know what the numbers are about, and you’re paying 25% in fees to Uber Eats, that’s your profit margin,” says Perkins. “Well, you can charge more, and people will pay a pre- mium to have it delivered. They do every day.” Perkins has an advantage in being a well- established restaurant. Maple and Motor has objectively earned a great customer base through a consistent product, which allows Perkins to set his prices. A new restaurant trying to get established might not have the luxury of that option. But there is still hope. Smart Pricing C hef Nikky Phinyawatana founded Asian Mint in 2004 and has expanded to five locations across North Texas. She says you have to be smart about pricing. “The third-party delivery platforms had a big boom and helped a lot of our restaurants survive, even us, during COVID,” she says. “So I mean, it was a good thing; DoorDash, Uber, Eat, Grubhub, we use all of them. They can take anything from 15 to 30% commis- sion. That’s a lot. So you have to, as a restau- rant, look at your pricing of what you’re doing online versus for dine-in. You kind of have to be smart and adjust.” She sees many restaurants charging the same price for dine-in and takeout, but she knows that won’t work in the long run. She also mentions the added costs of packaging and an extra employee to handle takeout. These are good problems to have as a restau- rant, but you have to understand and per- haps buck the rules. “As a restaurant, you use it to your advan- tage,” she says. “It’s a great way to get your name out there. They have a large platform. They do amazing, but you’ve got to just uti- lize it correctly.” Phinyawatana recently invested in a pro- prietary platform for Asian Mint. “We’ve always had our own online order- ing system, but we kind of took it to another level, really honed in on being innovative in this area because half of our clientele comes from online ordering,” she says. She’s using the system to help with her profit margins, but more important, it’s to communicate with her customers. Perkins does the same thing: You can call his restau- rant or use the “order for pickup” option on his website to work directly with him. “When you’re using a third party, you can’t communicate with customers because all of the guest information is with the app. I get a direct communication line to say, ‘How is your order?’ Things like that. I want to be able to continue to give that service level in our voice,” she says. Taking control over this aspect of deliv- ery is catching on. According to a Market Leader survey of 450 restaurant operators, 53% plan to ditch apps. Fifteen percent are on the fence and only a third (32%) are stick- ing with platforms. To reduce their third-party dependence, 34% of restaurants in the survey are invest- ing in a direct online ordering platform, and 38% in a proprietary app. Almost 60% are linking loyalty rewards to direct orders. A DoorDash spokesperson told us they know operators are looking closely at every part of their business to protect margins. “That’s why DoorDash offers flexible ways to partner — including tiered commis- sion plans, [and] flat-fee delivery fulfillment for first-party orders,”the spokesperson wrote us. They listed several other tools mer- chants can choose from that “makes the most sense for their digital business.” But, restaurants are ready to take back half their customers. Because it’s about people: Restaurants bring people together. Breaking bread face-to-face is a cornerstone of who we are — not to be disrupted by some company far off taking a bite out of our pad see ew. ▼ OPINION GRANNY GETS GIGGED DOORDASH GRANDMA DOESN’T NEED TO SAVE 4 CENTS ON TAXES, SHE NEEDS A LIVING WAGE. BY JEFF SIEGEL I n 1974, I made $1.90 an hour working at a Burger King in Highland Park, Illinois. The only expenses I had were buying a pair of ugly black shoes and even more ugly black polyester pants. I used my parents’ car to drive to work, so they paid for gas and insurance. That $1.90 is equivalent to about $13 an hour today, which, sadly, is about the aver- age wage for a successful DoorDash driver. In other words, in the most powerful and richest country in the the world, the person delivering your Thursday night takeout is worse off than I was in 1974, what with pay- ing for gas and insurance, and to say nothing of the genuine danger involved in delivering food at 2 in the morning. The worst thing I had to worry about was mopping up vomit in the restroom. So how did we get to the point where President Donald Trump thinks he can score political points with the DoorDash Grandma foolishness? Trump, if he really wants to be the savior of the working class, shouldn’t worry about taxing Granny’s $4 tip (based on DoorDash averages); that’s 4 cents, since Granny is probably in the lowest tax bracket. Which is why she is driving for DoorDash af- ter all, yes? Instead, Trump could try to fix a problem that has been getting steadily worse for ev- eryone in food service. Jobs that used to be a summer gig for high school students are now central to the post-modern economy, used by working people to support their families, and, somehow, on the 2026 equiva- lent of what I made so I could afford to take a girl to a movie. Is it any wonder so many of them have to have second and third jobs? Even the “good” jobs, like a lead Starbucks barista, pay about the same $13 an hour. Ironically, there has been a fair amount of debate around this subject over the past de- cade or so, and the Federal Reserve reports that the net worth of America’s top 1% pos- sessed almost one-third of total U.S. wealth in the third quarter of 2025, setting a record. The bottom 50% of Americans accounted for just 2.5% of total net wealth. And if that’s not enough, there’s an eco- nomic statistic called the Gini Index, which measures income inequality and illuminates the problem in a way no politically moti- vated video can. The lower the Gini number, the less income inequality exists; the higher the Gini number, the more income is con- centrated in the hands of the wealthiest peo- ple in the country. In 1974, when I worked at Burger King, the Gini number was 35.5, about as low as it has been in the past 50 years. In 2024, it was 41.8, the highest level in the past 50 years. In other words, the rich have gotten richer since then, and the rest of us have muddled along, wondering why it’s so hard to get a paycheck ahead. Saving the DoorDash Grandma 4 cents on her income tax isn’t going to make a bit of difference as long as she earns 1974 wages. It’s all about getting a piece of the pie, to quote Randy Newman. And that’s some- thing no one in Washington or Austin seems interested in. In all of the talk about the various crises facing the restaurant business, there’s one question no one has been able to answer. Is it any wonder restaurants have trouble keep- ing good employees when the employees can’t afford to work for them? Win McNamee/Getty Images President Donald Trump receives a DoorDash delivery from Sharon Simmons. City of Ate from p11
