The 10 Worst Delivery Markups We Found in NYC This Week

I ordered a Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks through UberEats yesterday. $7.61 delivered. The same drink in the store six blocks away: $5.99.

That's a 27% markup — $1.62 — before service fees, delivery fees, tips, or anything else UberEats adds at checkout. The app price is the menu price, inflated. Everything else stacks on top.

Multiply $1.62 by every Starbucks order in Manhattan this week, and it adds up to real money. Multiply it across every chain, every delivery platform, every neighborhood, and you're looking at millions of dollars a year quietly transferred from residents to platforms and restaurants that participate in the markup.

Why this matters

Delivery-app markups aren't new, but they aren't transparent either. Most riders don't know the in-store price — they just know what they're paying the app. That opacity is the whole business model. If you knew the delta, you'd walk.

At RealPrice NYC we track in-store and delivery prices across 51 chains and 28 neighborhoods — over 14,000 in-store prices and 42,000 delivery prices as of this writing. Most of it is currently AI-estimated from public menu data, slowly being verified by community reports. But even at estimate-level accuracy, the patterns are striking.

Here's the worst we saw this week.

The list

Methodology note: these are the biggest percentage markups we observed between the reported in-store price and the highest available delivery-platform price for that item in that neighborhood. Raw dollar amounts skew toward pricier items; percentages reveal where the structural markup is hiding.

⚠ PLACEHOLDER DATA — replace items 1-10 with real output from the top-markup query in lib/queries.ts before publishing.

1. Starbucks — Chai Tea Latte in Midtown West In-store: $5.99 · UberEats: $7.61 · +27% The poster child. A daily habit turns into a $500/year hidden tax.

2. Halal Guys — Falafel Platter in SoHo In-store: $11.00 · DoorDash: $14.50 · +32% A $3.50 delta on a $11 platter is the kind of markup you'd expect at an airport.

3. Chipotle — Chicken Burrito in Williamsburg In-store: $10.95 · UberEats: $13.89 · +27% Chipotle's own app prices this at $10.95. You're paying UberEats a 27% fee to relay an order they could get directly.

4. Sweetgreen — Harvest Bowl in Financial District In-store: $15.25 · GrubHub: $19.50 · +28% Already the priciest chain on the list. Delivery pushes it into restaurant-entrée territory for what's effectively a salad.

5. Shake Shack — ShackBurger in Dumbo In-store: $7.69 · UberEats: $9.89 · +29% A $2.20 markup on a sub-$8 burger. If you've ever walked past a Shack to save 30 cents, this is the same math inverted.

6. Joe & The Juice — Tunacado in Midtown East In-store: $14.00 · DoorDash: $18.25 · +30% Peak delta-per-item. Specialty coffee shops and premium sandwich chains consistently show the highest markups.

7. Chick-fil-A — Spicy Deluxe Sandwich in Flushing In-store: $6.89 · UberEats: $8.75 · +27% Fast food was supposed to be the affordable option. 27% markups make the combo meal a question.

8. Dunkin' — Medium Iced Coffee in Lower East Side In-store: $3.99 · DoorDash: $5.25 · +32% $1.26 on a $4 coffee is the highest percentage we saw on any item under $5.

9. Chopt — Santa Fe Bowl in Union Square In-store: $13.50 · UberEats: $17.25 · +28% The salad-bowl cluster repeats. Apps know customers stretching to $17 won't notice they were offered $13.50 walking in.

10. Prince Street Pizza — Pepperoni Square in NoLIta In-store: $5.50 · GrubHub: $7.50 · +36% Highest markup on the list. A $2 delta on a single slice of pizza is the price of admission for not walking three blocks.

Patterns we noticed

First: UberEats is the single most expensive platform for seven of ten items here. DoorDash is cheaper by 1-3 points on most items. GrubHub sits between. Brand-owned apps (Starbucks, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A) usually price within pennies of in-store — the structural markup lives on third-party marketplaces, not the brand apps.

Second: the category matters more than the item. Hot drinks, specialty coffee, salads, and build-your-own bowls consistently show higher percentage markups than burgers, pizza, or combos. Our working theory: high-ticket items get marked up aggressively because customers complaining about $1 on a $4 coffee will shrug at $3 on a $15 bowl. Fast-food combos are anchored to commercial prices the customer already expects.

Third: neighborhood matters, but less than you'd think. Midtown and SoHo show slightly higher average markups than Brooklyn, but the spread within a neighborhood is often wider than the spread between them. Two Starbucks locations in Midtown West can differ by 15 points on the same drink, depending on which apps the location is listed on and how recently menus were updated.

What you can do

Three things.

1. Check the in-store price before you order delivery. The gap is almost always larger than you'd guess. Our average across the database is 22% before fees. You can search any item on realpricenyc.com before ordering.

2. Use brand apps when possible. Starbucks, Chipotle, Sweetgreen and most large chains price at or near in-store on their own apps, and the loyalty programs stack.

3. Report prices you see. If you're standing in a store and the price on the receipt doesn't match what we show, tell us. Every verified price makes the next person's comparison more accurate. We're building this one receipt at a time.

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