At Table 87, the Gowanus Coal-Oven Pizzeria, Uber Eats Charges the Exact Dine-In Price — and the Kitchen, Not You, Eats the Commission

10 min read · 2,253 words

TABLE 87 COAL OVEN PIZZA (Gowanus, 473 3rd Ave, Brooklyn) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #29. Prices compared between Table 87’s own current Gowanus menu and the same restaurant’s Uber Eats storefront, both for the 473 3rd Avenue location, captured the same day — and cross-checked against the store’s DoorDash page.

Order Table 87’s 20-inch coal-oven Margherita — the charred, blistered pie this Gowanus room has built its name on since 2013 — off the menu printed on the restaurant’s own website and it is $29.00. Order the same pizza, from the same coal oven, delivered on Uber Eats and it is… $29.00. The 12-inch Margherita is $17.00 either way; the Chicken Parmigiana is $26.00 either way; the big 20-inch Calabrese ‘Nduja, the priciest pie on the board, is $46.00 either way. We priced 31 of Table 87’s items side by side, across both pizza sizes, pastas, entrées, salads and sides, and every single one carried the same price on Uber Eats as on the restaurant’s own menu. The average markup was zero.

And it was not only Uber. The same 31 prices appear, unchanged, on Table 87’s DoorDash page too. A restaurant sets its food price once, and here that one price is identical in three independent places at once: the dine-in menu, the Uber Eats storefront and the DoorDash storefront. Table 87 does not raise its menu for the delivery customer — which means, as the numbers below show, that the restaurant is the one absorbing the platforms’ commission.

The markup

Across the 31 matched items the delivery markup was 0% — mean, median and range all zero. A basket of all 31 items costs $807 on Table 87’s own menu and the identical $807 to have delivered on Uber Eats. There is no gentle treatment for the cheap items and no steeper one for the expensive pies: a $14 side of broccoli rabe, a $17 twelve-inch Margherita, a $29 twenty-inch Margherita and a $46 Calabrese ‘Nduja are all listed at exactly the counter price on the app. This is the same pattern this series has found at Emily, Motorino, Boqueria and Van Leeuwen — a flat, honest transfer of the menu to the app with nothing added on the food.

What the restaurant nets

Here is why a 0% markup is the whole story. When a customer orders delivery through Uber Eats, the platform keeps a commission on the sale. To come out level with a walk-in, a restaurant would need to mark its delivery menu up by about +42.9% at a 30% commission — or about +17.6% even at New York’s capped 15%. Table 87 marks up nothing. So the math runs entirely against the restaurant: apply a 30% commission to the $807 delivery basket and Table 87 keeps about $565 — roughly $242 less than the $807 the same food brings in at its own counter. Even at New York’s capped 15% rate it nets about $686, still about $121 less than the counter. On all 31 of the 31 items — every one — the restaurant nets less selling through Uber than selling the same dish across its own counter. This is the pattern this series calls absorbing (Type B): the customer pays exactly the restaurant’s price, and the restaurant quietly eats the commission out of its own margin.

Why it still lands on Uber

Table 87 sets its own menu prices; Uber does not. But Uber sets the commission, and a restaurant that chooses not to pass it on is choosing to absorb it. Many restaurants in this series lift their delivery menus to recover the platform’s cut, in whole or in part; Table 87 has declined to, holding its Uber prices at its own menu prices to the dollar — and its DoorDash prices with them. That protects the delivery customer and squeezes the kitchen. It does not make the fees disappear: on top of these identical menu prices, Uber still charges the delivery customer a delivery fee, a service fee and tax at checkout — none of which appear in the figures above, because they require a logged-in order to see. Uber also reports to merchants a “Menu Markup” metric measuring the gap between a restaurant’s in-store and in-app prices; at Table 87 that gap is zero, which means the commission comes almost entirely out of the restaurant.

The New York context

New York City caps the core commission a delivery app can charge a restaurant at 15% for delivery, plus 5% for other listing and marketing services and 3% for card processing — limits the City Council first made permanent in 2021. A 2025 amendment, signed into law after the platforms sued and settled, now lets restaurants opt to pay an additional up to 20% for “enhanced services” such as wider delivery zones and top-of-search placement, which can push the total a restaurant chooses to pay toward roughly 43%. None of those caps require a restaurant to raise its menu prices — and Table 87 has not raised a single one. One place New York’s cap does reach the customer is on the rival app in this comparison: DoorDash layers a consumer “NYC Regulatory Response Fee” onto its checkouts, a surcharge it added to offset the commission cap — a mechanism worth flagging wherever it appears, though it is DoorDash’s and is charged at checkout rather than in the menu prices matched here. The Mayor’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees.

By the numbers

• Items matched: 31 (same description and portion, same 473 3rd Ave location; build-your-own toppings, wings priced by add-ons, drinks, alcohol and any item we could not confirm to the dollar on both platforms were excluded)
• Delivery markup: mean 0%, median 0%, range 0% to 0% — every item priced identically on the menu and the app
• Basket: $807 on Table 87’s own menu, $807 delivered on Uber Eats (identical)
• Cross-platform: the same 31 prices also appear unchanged on Table 87’s DoorDash storefront — the food price is set once and identical across both apps and the dine-in menu
• Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% — Table 87’s 0% is a long way below it
• What the restaurant nets: about $565 on the basket at a 30% commission (~$242 less than counter); about $686 even at New York’s capped 15% (~$121 less)
• Items on which the restaurant nets less than dine-in: 31 of 31 at a 30% commission; 31 of 31 at New York’s capped 15%
• Story type: B (absorbing) — the customer pays the counter price; the restaurant absorbs the platform’s commission

Method

On 16 July 2026, USA Times captured Table 87’s own prices from its current Gowanus menu published at table87.com — the restaurant’s own site, actively maintained rather than an undatable menu image — and treated those as the counter price. The same day, we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same 473 3rd Ave store from the rendered storefront and matched them item by item against that menu; every one of the 31 matched items was priced identically. As an additional check on the baseline, we compared both against the store’s DoorDash page, where the same prices appeared — three independent, current sources in agreement to the dollar. We matched only items with the same description and portion (12-inch and 20-inch pies are treated as the distinct items they are), used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded build-your-own toppings and condiments, wings priced by add-ons, drinks and alcohol, and any item we could not confirm to the dollar on both platforms. Because a logged-in checkout is required to see them, this automated audit did not capture the delivery fee, service fee, any New York regulatory fee, tax or tip a customer pays on top; the Uber figures reported are the storefront’s list prices for the food. The “shop nets” figures are an analytical estimate that applies a 30% (and, separately, New York’s capped 15%) commission to the Uber Eats price; they are our interpretation of the economics, not figures disclosed by Uber, and the true commission tier for this store is a private contract term that is not public. Prices can change and can vary by address; figures reflect the moment of capture.

Right of reply

USA Times contacted Table 87 and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Table 87 was told plainly that it is not the target of this story — and was asked the one question that decides it: after the platforms’ commission, does it net more, less or the same as a walk-in, and is holding its Uber and DoorDash prices at its own menu prices a deliberate choice. Uber was asked about its commission tiers in New York and whether it tracks the gap between in-store and in-app menu prices (the metric it reports to merchants as “Menu Markup”).

Sources

• Table 87 counter / dine-in menu prices — Table 87 Gowanus menu (table87.com), captured 16 July 2026.
• Table 87 Uber Eats list prices — Table 87 – Gowanus on Uber Eats, captured 16 July 2026.
• Table 87 DoorDash prices (cross-check) — Table 87 Coal Oven Pizza on DoorDash, captured 16 July 2026.
• NYC delivery fee caps and the 2025 amendment — NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, delivery fee caps, reviewed July 2026.

This report is part of a USA Times series auditing food-delivery pricing. Prices were collected by USA Times on the date noted, compared item by item against the restaurant’s own current menu, and reviewed by an editor before publication.