At Prince Street Pizza, the Nolita Slice Shop, Uber Eats Charges the Shop’s Own Price on Nearly Every Pie — One Square the Exception — and the Kitchen Eats the Commission

10 min read · 2,331 words

PRINCE STREET PIZZA (Nolita, 27 Prince Street, Manhattan) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #34. Prices compared between Prince Street Pizza’s own online-ordering menu (on Slice, the first-party channel linked from the shop’s website) and the same shop’s Uber Eats storefront, both for the 27 Prince Street location, captured the same day.

Order the Spicy Spring — the pepperoni-cup Sicilian square that made this Nolita counter a tourist landmark — directly through Prince Street Pizza’s own online menu and a whole pie is $47.84. Order the same pie, from the same oven, delivered on Uber Eats and it is… $47.84. The $26.84 Original Prince round is $26.84 either way; the $53.85 Naughty Pie is $53.85 either way; the $41.02 Prince Perfection square is $41.02 either way. We priced 18 of Prince Street’s whole pies side by side — round Neapolitans, the Original Soho squares, and the gluten-free line — and 17 of the 18 carried the same price on Uber Eats, to the dollar, as ordering direct. The average markup across the whole board was under 1%.

There was one exception, and it cut the other way: the Houston Jalapeno square — spicy pepperoni, jalapeño and hot honey — is $47.84 ordering direct and $53.85 on Uber Eats, six dollars and about 13% more on the app. It was the only pie of the 18 priced higher on Uber; every other pie matched to the dollar (the burger pie differs by seven cents). So the pattern here is the one this series has found again and again at the city’s slice shops: the delivery menu is, with a single exception, the shop’s own menu — which means the shop, not the customer, is the one absorbing the platform’s commission.

The markup

Across the 18 matched pies the delivery markup was effectively 0% — a median of zero, a mean of about +0.7%, and a range from 0% (nearly everything) to +13% (the Houston Jalapeno, the lone pie marked up on the app). A basket of all 18 pies costs $699 ordering direct and essentially the same $705 to have delivered on Uber Eats — a difference of a single dollar per pie, all of it from that one square. There is no gentle treatment for the cheap pies and no steeper one for the expensive ones: a $26.84 Original Prince, a $38.50 Mercer Margarita, a $47.84 Spicy Spring and a $53.85 Meat Lover square are all listed at the shop’s own price on the app. This is the same near-flat pattern this series has found at Paulie Gee’s, Table 87, Emily, Motorino and Van Leeuwen — an almost honest transfer of the menu to the app, with one pie the exception.

What the shop 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 shop 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%. Prince Street marks up next to nothing. So the math runs against the shop: apply a 30% commission to the $705 delivery basket and Prince Street keeps about $494 — roughly $206 less than the $699 the same pies bring in ordering direct. Even at New York’s capped 15% rate it nets about $600, still about $100 less than direct. On all 18 of the 18 pies — the Houston Jalapeno included, even though that one sells for $6 more on Uber — the shop nets less selling through Uber than selling the same pie through its own channel. This is the pattern this series calls absorbing (Type B): the customer pays the shop’s own price, and the shop quietly eats the commission out of its own margin.

Why it still lands on Uber

Prince Street sets its own menu prices; Uber does not. But Uber sets the commission, and a shop that chooses to hold its delivery prices at its own 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; Prince Street has, on all but one pie, declined to — holding its Uber prices at its own direct-order prices to the dollar. 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 own prices and its in-app prices; at Prince Street that gap is close to zero, which means the commission comes almost entirely out of the shop.

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% — the same figure a shop would need to mark up its menu just to break even. Prince Street marks up almost none of it. One place New York’s cap does reach the customer is on the rival app: 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

• Pies matched: 18 (same description and portion, same 27 Prince St location; the shop’s by-the-slice items, sauces, drinks and any item we could not confirm to the dollar on both platforms were excluded)
• Delivery markup: mean +0.7%, median 0%, range 0% to +13% — 17 of 18 pies priced the same to the dollar on Uber; one, the Houston Jalapeno square, $6 (about 13%) higher on the app
• Basket: $699 ordering direct, $705 delivered on Uber Eats (a difference of about $1 a pie, all from one square)
• Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% — Prince Street’s ~0% is a long way below it
• What the shop nets: about $494 on the basket at a 30% commission (~$206 less than direct); about $600 even at New York’s capped 15% (~$100 less)
• Pies on which the shop nets less than ordering direct: 18 of 18 at a 30% commission; 18 of 18 at New York’s capped 15%
• Story type: B (absorbing) — the customer pays the shop’s own price; the shop absorbs the platform’s commission

Method

On 16 July 2026, USA Times captured Prince Street Pizza’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering menu on Slice (slicelife.com), the ordering channel linked directly from princestreetpizza.com for the original 27 Prince Street location — the price a customer pays ordering directly from the shop, on a channel that carries no marketplace commission markup. We used Slice’s list prices (the higher, pre-discount figure that equals the shop’s set menu price) and set aside Slice’s own roughly 5% app discount, in keeping with the series’ rule of comparing list prices rather than promotions; we treated that list price as the direct/counter price. The same day, we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same 27 Prince Street store from the rendered storefront and matched them item by item; 16 of the 18 matched pies were priced identically to the cent, the burger pie differed by seven cents, and one square, the Houston Jalapeno, was $6.01 (about 13%) higher on Uber. We matched only whole pies with the same description and portion (round Neapolitan and Sicilian square pies are treated as the distinct items they are, and the gluten-free line, priced identically at $25 on both, is matched separately), used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded by-the-slice items, sides of sauce, beverages 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. Prince Street Pizza also operates a number of franchised locations in other cities; this audit concerns only the original 27 Prince Street store in Nolita. Prices can change and can vary by address; figures reflect the moment of capture.

Right of reply

USA Times contacted Prince Street Pizza and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Prince Street was told plainly that it is not the target of this story — and was asked the one question that decides it: after Uber’s commission, does it net more, less or the same as ordering direct, is holding its Uber prices at its own direct-order prices a deliberate choice, and why the Houston Jalapeno square is the one pie priced higher on the app. Uber was asked about its commission tiers in New York and whether it tracks the gap between a restaurant’s own prices and its in-app prices (the metric it reports to merchants as “Menu Markup”).

Sources

• Prince Street Pizza direct-order (Slice, list) prices — Prince Street Pizza online-ordering menu on Slice, 27 Prince St, captured 16 July 2026.
• Prince Street Pizza Uber Eats list prices — Prince St. Pizza (NYC), 27 Prince St, on Uber Eats, 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.