“Use this service [aplicaciones de comida a domicilio] can affect your finances”, says the Federal Consumer Protection Office (Profeco) in its September issue of the Consumer Magazine.
Oh! This is not a secret to anyone. However, the agency breaks down what are the components that increase prices when you consume food on this type of platform, and also compares them with how much it would cost to prepare them at home.
What are the factors that increase the price?
Some of them are very obvious, but others not so much. Among the components that increase the price when ordering food at home are:
- Shipping Costwhich will vary depending on the location of the restaurant, weather and demand.
- fees or commissionswhich sometimes depend on the size of the order.
- gratuities or tipsthe fee you pay to the delivery person, it is charged to you apart from the price of the food.
- inflated pricesrestaurants sometimes raise the price of their products in order to transfer the commissions that the platforms charge them for using them to the pockets of their consumers.
- product differentiationsome of the businesses deliver less food and may even charge extra ingredients.
In fact, in the publication, Profeco breaks down how much it costs to prepare a chicken salad at home and how much it costs to order it through an application of delivery.
In this exercise, the salad you order can cost around 227.35 Mexican pesos without including the tip, while a homemade one can cost around 22.64 pesos.
Another example was a sandwich, which in the application could have a price of 64.90 pesos without tip, while preparing it yourself you can only spend 25.92 pesos.
Food at home: What solutions does Profeco propose?
The clearest solution is to prepare your food at home. However, we are clear that not all of us have the same availability of time to do so.
For this reason, the public body proposes that before ordering at a restaurant you look for their phone numbers or social networks in order to find out if that business has its own home delivery service, which is usually free of charge.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.