At a Queens Peruvian Kitchen, Uber Eats Costs Barely More Than the Counter — Because Kantu Eats the Fee, Not You

9 min read  ·  1,865 words

KANTU PERUVIAN CUISINE (Forest Hills, Queens, 105-07 Metropolitan Ave) — Peruvian. Case study #23. Prices compared between Kantu’s own first-party online-ordering menu and the same counter’s Uber Eats storefront, both for the 105-07 Metropolitan Ave location, captured the same day.

Order the Parrillada Fiera — Kantu’s grilled-meat platter for two or three — for pickup from this Forest Hills kitchen and it is $79.00. Order the same platter delivered on Uber Eats and it is… $79.00. The 12-ounce Churrasco ribeye is $47.00 either way; the seafood rice with a lobster tail is $44.00 either way; the grilled salmon, the whole fried snapper, the ceviche de mariscos platter — all priced to the dollar the same on the app as at the counter. Of the 60 Kantu items we priced side by side, 33 carried no delivery markup at all. The other 27 were nudged up by pennies to a dollar or two: a ceviche de pescado goes from $24.00 to $25.00, a side of rice from $6.00 to $6.50. Across the whole basket the markup averaged 2.7% — a median of 0%. This is the gentlest treatment of a delivery customer we have found anywhere in this series. And, as the numbers below show, it means the restaurant — not the customer — is the one absorbing Uber’s cut.

The markup

Across the 60 matched items the delivery markup averaged just 2.7%, with a median of 0% and a range from 0% to 8.3%. A basket of all 60 items costs $1208.75 on Kantu’s own menu and $1230.50 to have delivered on Uber Eats — about 2% more for the identical order. The pattern is the opposite of what you might expect. The expensive plates — the $79 platter, the $47 steak, the $45 skirt steak, the $44 seafood rice, the $37 whole fish — are held at exactly the counter price. Where a markup appears at all, it lands on the cheapest things on the menu: a $6 side of rice becomes $6.50 (+8%), toasted corn and salsa criolla the same, and most $7.50 sides tick up to $8. The four ceviches each rise a dollar, from $24 to $25 (+4%). No item on the entire menu is marked up by even a tenth of what Uber’s commission would cost the restaurant.

Pickup is the same price as delivery — so the markup is on the food, not the trip

Where Kantu does add a few cents, it is not charging for delivery. We switched its Uber Eats storefront from delivery to pickup and the prices did not move: the side of rice was still $6.50, the ceviche de pescado still $25, the pescado saltado still $31 — identical to the delivery list prices. A markup that is present on pickup as well as delivery is not a delivery cost; it is a small premium attached to the food itself in the app. The distinction matters because it is the same test that, at other restaurants in this series, exposed much larger app-only markups. At Kantu the test simply confirms how little there is to find: a near-flat menu, a handful of cents on the cheap items, and nothing that resembles a delivery surcharge.

What the restaurant nets

Here is why the small markup is the whole story. When a customer orders delivery, Uber keeps a commission on the sale. To come out level with a walk-in, a restaurant needs to mark the delivery menu up by about +42.9% at Uber’s top 30% commission — or about +17.6% even at New York’s capped 15%. Kantu marks up 2.7%. So the math runs hard against the restaurant: apply a 30% commission to the $1230.50 delivery basket and Kantu keeps about $861.35 — roughly $347 less than the $1208.75 the same food brings in at the counter. Even at New York’s capped 15% rate it nets about $1045.92, still about $163 less than the counter. On all 60 of the 60 items — every single one — the restaurant nets less on Uber than it would selling the same dish across its own counter. This is the pattern this series calls absorbing (Type B): the customer pays about the same as at the restaurant, and the restaurant quietly eats Uber’s commission out of its own margin.

Why it still lands on Uber

Kantu 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. Most of the restaurants in this series have lifted their delivery menus to recover Uber’s cut, in whole or in part; Kantu has essentially declined to, holding its plates at the counter price and leaving only token markups on the cheapest sides. That is a decision that protects the delivery customer and squeezes the kitchen. It does not make the fees disappear: on top of these menu prices, Uber still charges the 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. And Uber still reports to merchants a “Menu Markup” metric measuring the gap between in-store and in-app prices; at Kantu that gap is close to 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 Kantu, for the most part, has not. Whatever commission tier applies to this store, the restaurant is recovering almost none of it from the delivery customer. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees.

By the numbers

• Items matched: 60 (same description and portion, same 105-07 Metropolitan Ave counter; combination plates, build-your-own and configurable “+” options, lunch specials that bundle soup and salad, and alcohol were excluded)
• Delivery markup: mean 2.7%, median 0%, range 0%–8.3%
• Items with no markup at all: 33 of 60 — including every entrée priced above $30
• Basket: $1208.75 at the counter, $1230.50 delivered on Uber Eats (about 2% more)
• Uber pickup price = the Uber delivery price on the items we toggled, so the small markup is on the food, not a delivery cost
• Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% — Kantu’s 2.7% is a small fraction of it
• What the restaurant nets: about $861.35 on the basket at a 30% commission (~$347 less than counter); about $1045.92 even at New York’s capped 15% (~$163 less)
• Items on which the restaurant nets less than dine-in: 60 of 60 at a 30% commission; 60 of 60 at New York’s capped 15%
• Story type: B (absorbing) — the customer pays about the counter price; the restaurant absorbs Uber’s commission

Method

On 15 July 2026, USA Times captured Kantu’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering menu (kantuperuvianrestaurant.com/order) for the 105-07 Metropolitan Ave store — the price a pickup customer pays at that counter, taken live from the ordering page on the day of capture rather than from any undatable PDF. The same day, we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same store from the rendered storefront and matched them item by item against the first-party menu. We also switched the Uber storefront to pickup and confirmed its pickup prices equal its delivery prices, so the small markup is on the food rather than a delivery charge. We matched only items with the same description and portion, used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded combination plates (for example a ceviche-plus-entrée combo), build-your-own and configurable “+” items, lunch specials that bundle a soup and salad, and alcohol. 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 Kantu Peruvian Cuisine and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Kantu 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 a walk-in, and is holding its Uber prices at the counter price 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.

Sources

• Kantu counter / first-party prices — Kantu Peruvian Cuisine online-ordering menu, captured 15 July 2026.
• Kantu Uber Eats list prices (delivery and pickup) — Kantu Peruvian Cuisine 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.