A Brooklyn Roast-Beef Institution Is on Uber Eats — and Every Item Costs More Than at the Counter

7 min read  ·  1,480 words

ROLL-N-ROASTER (2901 Emmons Ave, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn) — Burgers / American. Case study #12. Prices compared between Roll-N-Roaster’s own online-ordering menu and the same restaurant’s Uber Eats storefront, captured the same day.

A Roll-n-Roast Beef sandwich — the thin-sliced, gravy-topped roll that has anchored this Sheepshead Bay institution for more than 50 years — costs $8.45 at the counter on Emmons Avenue. Order the identical sandwich from the same kitchen on Uber Eats and it is $9.85, before a single delivery or service fee is added. We priced all 34 of Roll-N-Roaster’s items side by side, and the pattern held on every one: the food is dearer in the app than at the counter, by an average of 20%. Even the bottle of spring water — $1.40 at the counter — is $1.93 on Uber Eats, a 38% bump. Yet that markup still falls short of what Uber takes, so on every item we checked the restaurant appears to net less than a walk-in pays. The customer pays more; the restaurant keeps less; only the platform comes out ahead.

The markup

Across the 34 matched items the markup ran from 10.1% on a slice of thin-crust pizza to 37.9% on a bottle of spring water, with a mean of 20.2% and a median of 18.9%. Nothing was spared. The roast-beef sandwiches carry roughly a $1.40 premium; the burgers about $1.25; the fries jump from $4.75 to $5.78; a cup of cole slaw from $1.95 to $2.48. Even the drinks are marked up, which is unusual in this series — a can of soda goes from $2.95 to $3.80, a Snapple from $2.95 to $3.58, an ice-cream shake from $8.45 to $9.85. A basket of all 34 items costs $211.65 on Roll-N-Roaster’s own menu and $251.08 on Uber Eats, an 18.6% premium on the food alone.

What the restaurant nets

Here is the part that turns the number on its head. When a customer orders through Uber Eats, the platform keeps a commission — a figure that can run to roughly 30% at the top of its fee structure. On a $9.85 sandwich, a 30% commission is about $2.96, leaving Roll-N-Roaster roughly $6.90 — well under the $8.45 a walk-in hands over. To simply break even against a 30% commission, a restaurant would need to mark a dish up by about 43%. Roll-N-Roaster marks its food up about 20%. By our calculation, that leaves it netting roughly a dollar less per item than at the counter — and it comes out behind on all 34 of the 34 items we checked.

In the framework this series uses, that makes Roll-N-Roaster a pass-through case that does not quite pass through (what we label Type A, edging toward Type B, “absorbing”). The menu markup roughly tracks the direction of Uber’s cut without fully covering it, so the restaurant quietly eats the difference. It is among the more sympathetic versions of the story: the diner still pays more than the counter price — and will pay more still once delivery, service and any regulatory fees and a tip are added at checkout — while the restaurant still takes home less than it would have. We do not know which commission tier Roll-N-Roaster is actually on; that is a private contract term Uber does not disclose, and at a lower rate the shortfall would shrink or disappear. But at anything close to the top rate, a 20% menu markup does not cover the cut.

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 basic listing and service and 3% for card processing — limits the City Council first made permanent in 2021. A 2025 settlement and amendment now let platforms add an optional up to 20% for “enhanced services” such as wider delivery zones and promotions, which can push the total a restaurant pays toward roughly 43%. That same legislation explicitly protects a restaurant’s right to set higher prices on a delivery app than in its dining room — which is exactly what Roll-N-Roaster has done. None of those caps touch what you pay in the app: the menu markup and the consumer-side fees sit outside the commission the law regulates. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees. That gap between what the law caps and what the customer actually pays is what this series keeps measuring.

By the numbers

• Items matched: 34 (same description and portion; grouped “build-your-own” drink listings and duplicate variants excluded)
• Markup: mean 20.2%, median 18.9%, range 10.1%–37.9%
• Basket: $211.65 at the counter, $251.08 on Uber Eats (+18.6%)
• Most marked-up item: bottled spring water, +37.9% ($1.40 → $1.93); least: a slice of pizza, +10.1% ($4.95 → $5.45)
• Break-even markup at a 30% commission: ~43%; Roll-N-Roaster marks up about 20%, so it nets roughly a dollar less per item than dine-in
• Items on which the restaurant nets less than dine-in: 34 of 34
• Story type: A (pass-through), edging toward B (absorbing)

Method

On 15 July 2026, USA Times captured Roll-N-Roaster’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering menu (order.menudrive.com/rollnroaster), which lists the restaurant’s current pickup prices — the same prices charged at the counter. The same day, we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same location (2901 Emmons Ave) from the rendered storefront. We matched only items with the same description and portion, used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded Uber’s grouped “build-your-own” drink listings (for example a lemonade/orangeade selector) where a single per-item price could not be isolated; sodas, which carry one flat price on both sides, were matched. The “restaurant nets @30%” column is an analytical estimate that applies a 30% commission to the Uber Eats price; it is our interpretation of the economics, not a figure disclosed by Uber, and the true commission tier for this restaurant is not public. At the moment of capture the storefront showed delivery as temporarily unavailable and the Pickup toggle was disabled, so we could not confirm the app’s pickup price against its delivery price for this store; the comparison rests on Uber’s listed food prices against the restaurant’s own counter menu. Delivery fee, service fee, any New York regulatory fee, tax and tip are added at a logged-in checkout; this automated audit does not place orders and did not capture them. Prices can change and can vary by address; figures reflect the moment of capture.

Right of reply

USA Times contacted Roll-N-Roaster and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Roll-N-Roaster was asked the one question that decides this story — after Uber’s commission, does it net more, less or the same as a walk-in? — and Uber was asked about its commission tiers in New York and whether it tracks the gap between in-store and in-app menu prices.

Sources

• Roll-N-Roaster counter / first-party prices — Roll-N-Roaster online-ordering menu (MenuDrive), captured 15 July 2026.
• Roll-N-Roaster Uber Eats list prices — Roll-N-Roaster (Brooklyn) on Uber Eats, captured 15 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.