Welcome to Nibbles, my new weekly food newsletter. Look for Nibbles every Tuesday around lunchtime for a buffet of Boulder County food and restaurant news, restaurant recommendations and practical cooking tips.
Please help spread the word about this free, one-of-a-kind community culinary resource. Friends and family can sign up for Nibbles right here. Forward this email so they can sign up.
Today’s edition looks at the high cost of getting dinner delivered for diners and restaurants via DoorDash and other third-party delivery services. Plus: how my delivered meal actually tasted, along with news about local restaurant openings and cool food events.
Chef Dan Asher and I will host a special broadcast of Kitchen Table Talk, KGNU’s monthly food talk show, live from the Boulder Eats exhibit at the Museum of Boulder from 8:30-9:30 a.m. on Dec. 4. A limited number of audience seats are available. Learn more and RSVP here.
Send comments and information about Boulder County restaurants, food classes, events, tastings and tours to nibbles@boulderreportinglab.org.
— John Lehndorff
Your donation = 3X the impact today
It’s Giving News Day! For a limited time, your gift to Boulder Reporting Lab will be tripled thanks to a $10K board match and NewsMatch. That means more support for independent, local journalism that Boulder relies on.
Every few days I ignore an Uber Eats email offering “$15 of free food.” One reason: It is not free. As Uber Eats notes, “Restaurants with limited tracking excluded. Taxes, Delivery Fee, and a Service Fee still apply. New users only.”
I prefer eating in restaurants or getting takeout, but sometimes necessity forces me to use a delivery app. I hate all the unrecyclable plastic that delivery produces. I’m stunned by the price tag, and the delivery ETAs are almost always wrong.
Next, I expect these third-party apps to start charging higher prices for delivery during peak hours, just like the ride-sharing apps.
That’s why a recent announcement from Boulder’s Big Red F Restaurant Group caught my eye:
“As of today, you will no longer find Big Red F Restaurants on DoorDash, UberEats or GrubHub. Delivery platforms are bad for small independent restaurants. Their fees are simply too high.”
That means you can’t order enchiladas from Centro Mexican Kitchen, seafood chowder from Jax Fish House, the West End Tavern’s barbecue or fried chicken from The Post on any ordering app.
According to chef Dave Query, Big Red F’s owner, the company had no choice.
“We really went hard into third party delivery this year, especially at The Post, on DoorDash and GrubHub. At the end of the day, it’s just bad revenue. We were up to 30 percent fees per order and it was just not sustainable,” he says.
“Door Dash and Uber Eats lost billions of dollars until the last year or so. They climbed to profitability on the backs of their restaurant clients and all of their guests.”
Big Red F is now offering delivery through the websites of its individual restaurants. “Guests order everything in the same way they always did. It is delivered by DoorDash, but it’s not ordered through their platform. We offer a flat-rate fee for delivery. Whether they order $10 worth of food or $1,000 worth of food, it’s $4.99,” Query says.
“It’s a good thing for everybody. You’re going to save money and it helps restaurants find ways to cut costs during this incredibly hard time.”
For Query, Big Red F’s announcement is more than a little ironic.
“We are big DoorDash customers at home because we are so busy all the time. I like to order from China Gourmet, Ginger Pig and Barchetta Pizza,” he says.
Bee’s Thai Kitchen is ‘fishing for customers’ on DoorDash and GrubHub
At Bee’s Thai Kitchen, the larb salad, Khorat grilled chicken, pumpkin curry, crab fried rice, drunken noodles, Thai shrimp omelet and tom yum soup are prepared in a food truck parked outside the Lafayette restaurant. Diners can get takeout or enjoy their meals inside a quiet, relaxing dining room or in backyard cabanas.
Like many Asian eateries, Bee’s relies on delivery business, according to Kevin Kisich who co-owns the eatery with his wife, Thai-born chef Bee Rungtawan Kisich.
“We are sending out orders to Westminster, Erie, Louisville and Lafayette. For delivery, we have relationships with Grubhub and DoorDash,” Kisich says.
“It’s a fairly seamless, trouble-free way for us to get our restaurant in front of new audiences. Fishing for customers in a big school of people on DoorDash or Grubhub gets Chef Bee’s food onto the palate of these diners who wouldn’t come to the restaurant.”
Delivery always comes at a cost. “We have our entire menu priced at plus 12½ percent for DoorDash, plus 15 percent for Grubhub. If we didn’t, we would lose money on every order,” Kisich says.
“Restaurants have to manage these increasing costs without the customer saying: ‘Your food’s too expensive, I’m going to quit ordering.’”
From Kisich’s perspective, the use of third-party delivery services is good for the neighborhood, too.
“When a mom realizes that Johnny has football practice and Sally has dance lessons, what is she going to feed everyone that’s nutritious, that they’re actually going to like, and that she can afford?”
When I ordered food recently from Double Happy through Uber Eats, my cookie fortune advised:
“Trust your instincts; they’re often right.”
Double Happy, Downtown Louisville’s longest-operating eatery, has been doing takeout and delivery for nearly 40 years. On a cold, dark weeknight, I was craving the comfort of familiar Chinese American fare with that iconic white cardboard container of steamed rice.
The chow fun was a tangle of thin rice noodles loaded with thin, silky slices of beef. I also ordered moo shu vegetables, but the nice folks at Double Happy called immediately to say they were out of moo shu crepes. I enjoyed the crunchy vegetables in a savory-sweet hoisin bean sauce over rice.
The bill came to $46.36, including a 12% tip. That’s pricey for two simple entrees, but the substantial portions gave me several tasty leftover meals, including some killer breakfast fried rice.
I’m happy I trusted my tastebud instincts.
Boulder’s own 21st-century ‘Greatest’ eatery, Denver diners cut back and three tasty places open
Boulder’s Frasca Food and Wine has been awarded just about every culinary honor available in recent years, but this one is epic. In the Robb Report’s recent ‘100 Greatest American Restaurants of the 21st Century,’ Frasca is included at No. 27. The magazine notes:
“It would be fine dining, but not French. Instead, they created a destination restaurant with food and wine devoted to the Northeast corner of Italy that would still use Colorado ingredients.”
Denver diners are spending much less at restaurants compared to other U.S. cities, according to credit and debit card data collected by Bank of America. In September, spending for dining in Denver was down 6.7% from last year, the largest decrease among the largest U.S. cities. Are Boulder diners also cutting back?
Openings
Bada Bing Pizzeria is open at 1389 Forest Park Circle in Lafayette.
Carw Gwyn Mead Hall is open at 1509 N. Marion St. in Denver. The medieval-themed bar spotlights a wide range of meads, or honey wines, paired with sausage plates and pasties.
Nana’s Dim Sum & Dumplings is open at 125 Ken Pratt Blvd. in Longmont. Nana’s also has locations in Boulder, Denver, Aurora and Parker.
The annual Ukrainian Christmas Market on Dec. 6 in Morrison features Ukrainian food, gifts, music and a visit from Saint Nicholas. Proceeds benefit Ukraine relief efforts.
Get the little ones out to Longmont’s Ollin Farms on Dec. 6 for Kids Day on the Farm. They can take a hayride, wander the fields, hang with the farmers and feed the chickens. The farmstand will be stocked with winter “keeper” produce.
“To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomat — the problem is entirely the same in both cases: To know how much oil one must mix with one’s vinegar.” — Oscar Wilde, author of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
Want more Boulder bites?
Bars and breweries across Boulder County expand nonalcoholic options as drinking drops
From tiki bars to taprooms, non-alcoholic beers, spirits and cocktails are becoming staples rather than afterthoughts. Continue reading…
Nibbles: New cookbook celebrates Colorado’s immigrant chefs redefining local cuisine
From “Sazón & Liberation,” an immigrant-led cookbook highlighting Colorado cuisine, to a secret chicken takeout spot and new food pop-ups, here’s what’s happening across Boulder County’s food scene this week. Continue reading…
