UAE food delivery: Your 'just Dh50' habit could cost you over Dh10,000 a year – how to cut back

It's 8.30pm on a Tuesday. You've been at your desk since morning, the drive home crawled, and the fridge holds little more than a jar of pickles and noble intentions. The delivery app is two taps away. Twenty minutes later there's a knock at the door, and tada! Your food has arrived.

Don't shy away; you're not the only one.

For Zaid Barem, media relations director at YMM, it's a familiar routine. He orders takeaway once or twice a week, usually spending between Dh60 and Dh100 a time. "At the time, it doesn't really feel like a lot, especially when you've had a long day and just want something quick and easy," he says.

And that is precisely the problem. Takeaway rarely feels expensive because we never pay for it all at once. We pay in small instalments of hunger, spread across weeks and months, and it's only when the numbers are gathered together that the real cost comes into view.

Start with a fairly ordinary habit: Ordering in every other day, at Dh40 to Dh60 a meal.

Every second day, by the numbers

Orders a month: about 15

Monthly cost: Dh600 to Dh900

Yearly cost: Dh7,200 to Dh10,800

Put another way, a habit that rarely costs more than a decent lunch on any given day can silently add up to a family holiday, a chunk of school fees or a healthy start on an emergency fund.

"That's a serious amount of money for something that feels like a small daily expense," says Ali Alhamed, a licensed finfluencer and CEO of 97 Consultations.

Barem, running the same sums, adds, "That's quite a lot of money when you think about it."

If the figures are so stark, why don't more of us notice? The answer lies in how our brains file small purchases.

"If I spend Dh80 on food delivery, I don't really think much about it at that moment. It just feels like a normal everyday expense," Barem admits. "But if someone told me I'd spent Dh600 or Dh800 on takeaway in one month, I'd probably be surprised."

The gap between what we spend in a moment and what it amounts to over a month is something Alhamed also sees, among the people he advises. "Spending Dh50 today feels harmless, but spending Dh750 at once makes you think twice. That's exactly why small, repeated purchases are dangerous for your finances."

Zaid Aboobaker, founder and CEO of CompassPoint Consulting, describes it as a visibility problem, one he sees in household budgets and company accounts alike. It applies to 'subscription creep' and the same trap applies to food delivery. "We register the monthly number and forget to multiply. The spending is not hidden. It is just never gathered in one view."

Another blindspot is autopay. In fact, automatic payments reduce visibility for consumers, as consumers have no active involvement in each recurring purchase, explains Dr Kashif Farhat, assistant professor at Rochester Institute of Technology Dubai. "With a card saved in the app and a reorder button a thumb's width away, many of us barely approve a takeaway at all."

There's a second, more complicated layer to the cost: the gap between the price on the menu and the amount that actually leaves your account.

Barem knows the feeling well. "You open a delivery app, choose what you want, and the price seems reasonable. But by the time you get to checkout, you've got delivery fees, service charges and sometimes other additional costs."

By that point, he notes, we're hungry and have already invested time in choosing – so we usually just go ahead and place the order anyway.

Those extras look trivial on a single receipt. Over a year, they aren't.

What Dh10 in fees really costs

"My advice is simple: always look at the final amount you're paying, not just the advertised price," says Alhamed.

Even the menu itself may be marked up. Ahmed Sameh, chief marketing officer at Fortis Digital Solutions, which provides POS and business management software to F&B outlets and retailers, says app promotions are the single biggest factor in where people order – but price matters too, as menu items often cost more on the app than in the restaurant.

For Barem, the irritation isn't really about the money. "For me, it's not necessarily about the extra Dh5 or Dh10. It's the fact that you're paying quite a bit for convenience, and you expect the experience to be worth it." Sometimes, after all those charges, the food doesn't even arrive hot.

If it feels as though everyone around you is ordering in, the data suggests they are. Figures from Syrve, which tracks the restaurant side of the transaction, show delivery made up 36% of all orders at UAE restaurants in the third quarter, up from 30% a year earlier. Delivery orders rose 8% year on year, while dine-in orders fell 16%. While the figures offer a snapshot of changing dining habits among the restaurants tracked, they may not represent the entire UAE food and beverage market.

Alex Ponomarev, CEO of Syrve MENA, says the shift is happening venue by venue, not just across the market: two-thirds of restaurants that offered delivery in both years saw a bigger share of their own orders go out the door. Growth is cooling, though, and he sees a wider pattern behind it. "People are ordering less frequently, and a larger proportion of the orders are now for delivery."

Restaurants, meanwhile, have spread themselves across every channel they can. Sameh says it's now common to find a single outlet on Talabat, Keeta, Noon, Careem, Deliveroo and Zomato at once, while still taking orders by WhatsApp and phone. Of 30 F&B businesses his team spoke to in 2025, 28 offered delivery. More choice is good news for diners – but more channels also mean more promotions, more notifications and more nudges towards the order button.

Nor, according to Ponomarev, is the food itself getting pricier. "A delivery order is still worth around a third less at the till, so the delivery basket is smaller, not cheaper." In other words, if your monthly total is creeping up, the likelier culprits are the fees layered on top – and how often you tap 'order'.

That chimes with a warning Farhat gives about subscriptions: "Increases in subscription fees can add another layer to the total expenses, meaning overall spending may rise even when the number of subscriptions remains unchanged." Order exactly as often as you did last year, in other words, and you could still end up spending more.

How we pay matters too. Barem doesn't use buy now, pay later services such as Tabby or Tamara, but he does rely on a credit card, and he's candid about what that does to his awareness. "I think paying by card makes spending so easy that you sometimes don't realise how much you've spent until you check your statement."

Splitting payments into instalments can blur the picture even further. "Buy now, pay later doesn't make something cheaper; it simply delays the payment," says Alhamed. "When you're splitting multiple purchases into small instalments, you can easily lose track of your total commitments. The biggest mistake is confusing what you can afford monthly with what you can actually afford."

Barem agrees. "You might think Dh100 or Dh150 a month isn't much, but if you have several purchases on instalments, suddenly you're paying a significant amount every month."

It's the same arithmetic that inflates subscription bills. Dr M. Erdem Coskun, assistant professor at the School of Management at Canadian University Dubai, counts Noon One among the most common services people sign up for, alongside Netflix and Spotify.

As recurring payments are small and charged automatically, he says, "Consumers may not realize how much they are spending on subscriptions until they review their total annual expenses."

Nor do they arrive alone. "If not carefully budgeted, subscriptions can significantly increase a person's total monthly expenses alongside other recurring costs such as home and car insurance, DEWA, gas, utilities, phone bills, and groceries."

Farhat believes routine is what finally makes the cost disappear: "As such payments become part of a routine, they can gradually fade into the background of everyday spending." Takeaway paid on autopilot, by card or in instalments, behaves in much the same way.

The good news is that nobody needs to delete their delivery apps to make a real dent. Take someone who orders 15 times a month and trims that to five. Cooking at home isn't free, of course, so the sums have to include groceries.

Here are two estimates based on different spending assumptions.

From 15 orders a month to five

Barem's sum

Alhamed's sum

That's money you could put towards an emergency fund or long-term investments," says Alhamed.

Barem is realistic about the trade-off. "I do cook at home sometimes, but I also find ordering much easier, especially when I'm busy or don't feel like preparing anything." His conclusion is a reassuring one: "You don't have to completely stop ordering food to save money. Even making a few small changes can make a difference over time."

So where to start? On one point, everyone agrees: the aim is awareness, not abstinence. "I'm not against ordering food or enjoying your money; I'm against spending without knowing where it's going," says Alhamed.

For Barem, that balance is the whole point. "For me, it's not about giving up convenience or the things I enjoy. It's more about finding a balance and being aware of where my money is going, rather than being surprised by the total at the end of the month."

Aboobaker puts it even more neatly. "The goal is not to cut everything. It is to make every recurring charge a decision again, rather than a default."

So the next time the app pings at 8.30pm, ordering in may still be the right call. Just make sure it's a call you're actually making.