This has been one of my strongly held beliefs and pet peeves - the fact that you need fast food delivered tremendously increases the human cost of making that food.
For example, making a pizza is what, 10 minutes, or less, when adding up all the labor involved in a restaurant setting.
In comparison, taking said pizza, even around the block, with the courier having to arrive take it somewhere, is I'd estimate at least 15 mins.
Someone has to pay for that human labor, and considering how expensive it is, and not only that, VC funded food delivery startups want to take a huge markup on that. Something has to give. Crap wages for couriers, restaurant staff, skimping on raw materials etc.
It's much better for everyone involved to cut out the middle man, have restaurants on every corner (considering in most apartment blocks, nobody wants to live on the ground floors anyways), with the upper floors used for apartments or offices.
This is hardly an original thought, tons of European cities I've been in do this.
A city I lived in had this, but when the restaurant owner retired, they explicitly forbade the ground floor from being used for some food-related business. It turns out the residents upstairs were always complaining about the smell. NIMBYism won.
A better solution would have been some mandatory grease/odor filters.
Just to point out that "restaurants in every corner" is not always easy to do, especially in residential blocks. I honestly think that "cooking your own food" (with the help of modern kitchen utensils, time-saving equipment, and the exception being collective canteens/cafeterias for specific groups such as students) is economically advantageous. Because even today in many European cities, many of those tending to restaurants are immigrant labor or somewhat disadvantaged groups who are implicitly pushed towards such jobs due to lack of alternatives.
I used to rent an apartment exactly like this in Vienna, the only problem was the somewhat loud and lively crowd late in the evening, never had any smell issues, and this was a 100 year old building
For example, making a pizza is what, 10 minutes, or less, when adding up all the labor involved in a restaurant setting.
In comparison, taking said pizza, even around the block, with the courier having to arrive take it somewhere, is I'd estimate at least 15 mins.
Someone has to pay for that human labor, and considering how expensive it is, and not only that, VC funded food delivery startups want to take a huge markup on that. Something has to give. Crap wages for couriers, restaurant staff, skimping on raw materials etc.
It's much better for everyone involved to cut out the middle man, have restaurants on every corner (considering in most apartment blocks, nobody wants to live on the ground floors anyways), with the upper floors used for apartments or offices.
This is hardly an original thought, tons of European cities I've been in do this.