F&F PIZZERIA (Carroll Gardens, 459 Court Street, Brooklyn) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #33. Prices compared between F&F Pizzeria’s own online-ordering menu and the same shop’s DoorDash marketplace storefront, both for the 459 Court Street location, captured the same day.
Order F&F’s plain Regular pie — the cheese pie that anchors this Court Street slice shop — directly from the shop’s own online-ordering site for pickup and it is $29.45. Pull up the same shop on the DoorDash app, where most of its delivery orders actually run, and the same pie is… $29.45. The $50.57 Clam pie, the priciest on the board, is $50.57 either way; the $41.38 Fennel Sausage & Broccoli Rabe pie is $41.38 either way; the $36.78 Pepperoni is $36.78 either way. We priced 10 of F&F’s whole pies side by side and every single one carried the same price on DoorDash’s marketplace as ordering direct from the shop. The average markup was zero — and DoorDash’s own listing says so, printing the line “Prices on this menu are set directly by the Merchant” at the foot of the page.
That makes F&F an unusually clean case. The shop does not keep two menus; it sets one price, and that price shows up untouched on DoorDash. Which means, as the numbers below show, that the shop — not the delivery customer — is the one absorbing the platform’s commission on the food, while the extra the customer pays lands entirely in DoorDash’s checkout fees.
The markup
Across the 10 matched pies the delivery markup was 0% — a mean, median and mode of zero, and no spread at all: every pie is listed on DoorDash at the shop’s own direct-order price to the penny. A basket of all 10 pies costs $366 ordering direct and the identical $366 on DoorDash. There is no gentle treatment for the cheap pies and no steeper one for the expensive ones: a $29.45 cheese pie, a $38.62 Cacio e Pepe, a $41.38 Fennel Sausage and a $50.57 Clam pie are all listed at the shop’s own price. This is the same pattern this series has found at Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop, Table 87, Emily and Motorino — a flat, honest transfer of the menu to the app with nothing added on the food. The novelty here is only the platform: this one is on DoorDash, and DoorDash confirms in its own words that the price is the merchant’s.
What the shop nets
Here is why a 0% markup is the whole story. When a customer orders through DoorDash, 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%. F&F marks up nothing. So the math runs entirely against the shop: apply a 30% commission to the $366 delivery basket and F&F keeps about $256 — roughly $110 less than the $366 the same pies bring in ordering direct. Even at New York’s capped 15% rate it nets about $311, still about $55 less than direct. On all 10 of the 10 pies the shop nets less selling through DoorDash 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 for the food, and the shop quietly eats the commission out of its own margin.
Where the customer’s premium actually comes from
If the food is the same price, why is DoorDash more expensive? Because the premium is stacked at the checkout, not on the menu. On top of these identical pie prices, DoorDash adds a delivery fee, a service fee it states runs about 17% of the subtotal, an 8.875% New York sales tax, and — unique to this city — a “NYC Regulatory Response Fee” of $1.99 that DoorDash tells customers, in its own words, it charges because “regulations in New York City have increased the cost of facilitating deliveries.” That surcharge is the platform’s answer to New York’s commission cap: the City limits what DoorDash can take from the restaurant, so DoorDash bills the shortfall to the customer instead. In an earlier capture in this series, that fee stack turned a $28.95 counter sandwich into a $45 delivery order — a +56% premium built almost entirely from fees, not food. We did not complete a logged-in checkout for F&F, so we are not putting a single all-in number on an F&F order; but DoorDash’s fee structure is its own, documented, and the same across the city. The point stands either way: at F&F the menu is honest, and the markup a delivery customer feels is DoorDash’s, added after the shop has set its price.
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. F&F marks up none of it. DoorDash’s response to the cap is the consumer-side “NYC Regulatory Response Fee,” a surcharge it adds at checkout to offset the limit on what it can bill the restaurant — a mechanism worth flagging wherever it appears. DoorDash also now discloses, on its New York checkouts, that “this price was set by an algorithm using your personal data,” a notice required under New York’s new algorithmic-pricing law. The Mayor’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees.
| Item | Order-direct (pickup) price | DoorDash | Markup | Shop nets @30% (vs direct) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Pizza (plain cheese, whole pie) | $29.45 | $29.45 | 0% | $20.61 (-8.84) |
| Tomato Pizza (whole pie) | $29.45 | $29.45 | 0% | $20.61 (-8.84) |
| Partanna Pizza (whole pie) | $33.10 | $33.10 | 0% | $23.17 (-9.93) |
| Mushroom Pizza (whole pie) | $33.10 | $33.10 | 0% | $23.17 (-9.93) |
| Pepperoni Pizza (whole pie) | $36.78 | $36.78 | 0% | $25.75 (-11.03) |
| Hot Sausage & Brown Butter Sage Pizza (whole pie) | $36.78 | $36.78 | 0% | $25.75 (-11.03) |
| 1/2 Regular 1/2 Pepperoni Pizza (whole pie) | $36.78 | $36.78 | 0% | $25.75 (-11.03) |
| Cacio e Pepe Pizza (whole pie) | $38.62 | $38.62 | 0% | $27.03 (-11.59) |
| Fennel Sausage & Broccoli Rabe Pizza (whole pie) | $41.38 | $41.38 | 0% | $28.97 (-12.41) |
| Clam Pizza (whole pie) | $50.57 | $50.57 | 0% | $35.40 (-15.17) |
| All 10 matched pies (basket) | $366.01 | $366.01 | 0% | $256.21 (-109.80) |
By the numbers
- Pies matched: 10 (same description and portion, same 459 Court Street location; F&F’s by-the-slice items, drinks and any item we could not confirm to the penny on both platforms were excluded)
- Delivery markup: mean 0%, median 0%, range 0% to 0% — every pie priced on DoorDash at the shop’s own direct-order price
- Basket: $366 ordering direct, $366 on DoorDash (identical)
- Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% — F&F’s 0% is a long way below it
- What the shop nets: about $256 on the basket at a 30% commission (~$110 less than direct); about $311 even at New York’s capped 15% (~$55 less)
- Pies on which the shop nets less than ordering direct: 10 of 10 at a 30% commission; 10 of 10 at New York’s capped 15%
- Documented DoorDash checkout add-ons (NYC): ~17% service fee, 8.875% tax, a $1.99 NYC Regulatory Response Fee, plus a delivery fee — none of them the restaurant’s
- Story type: B (absorbing) — the customer pays the shop’s own price for the food; the shop absorbs the platform’s commission
Method
On 16 July 2026, USA Times captured F&F Pizzeria’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering site (order.online, the DoorDash-powered Storefront linked from the shop’s own channel), set to Pickup from 459 Court Street — the price a customer pays ordering directly from the shop, on a channel that carries no marketplace commission markup and shows the same food prices in pickup and delivery modes; we treated that as the direct/counter price. The same day, we opened the same shop’s public DoorDash marketplace storefront (store id 991755) and matched its list prices item by item against that menu; every one of the 10 matched pies was priced identically, and DoorDash’s own page states “Prices on this menu are set directly by the Merchant.” We matched only whole pies with the same description and portion, used list prices rather than promotional prices (the storefront was showing a “spend $35, get 20% off” promo we did not apply), and excluded by-the-slice items, drinks and any item we could not confirm to the penny on both platforms. Because a logged-in checkout is required to see them, this automated audit did not complete an F&F order or capture its delivery fee, service fee, NYC Regulatory Response Fee, tax or tip; the DoorDash checkout figures cited above (a ~17% service fee, the $1.99 NYC Regulatory Response Fee and 8.875% tax) are DoorDash’s own documented New York fee structure, captured by USA Times in a logged-in NYC session on 15 July 2026, not a measured F&F receipt. The “shop nets” figures are an analytical estimate that applies a 30% (and, separately, New York’s capped 15%) commission to the DoorDash price; they are our interpretation of the economics, not figures disclosed by DoorDash, 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 F&F Pizzeria and DoorDash for comment and will update this report with any response. F&F was told plainly that it is not the target of this story — and was asked the one question that decides it: after DoorDash’s commission, does it net more, less or the same as ordering direct, and is holding its DoorDash prices at its own direct-order prices a deliberate choice. DoorDash was asked about its commission tiers in New York, how the $1.99 NYC Regulatory Response Fee and its ~17% service fee are set, and whether it accepts that a customer ordering from a shop that marks up nothing still pays a premium built entirely from DoorDash’s own fees.
Sources
- F&F Pizzeria direct-order (pickup) prices — F&F Pizzeria online-ordering site, Pickup from 459 Court St, captured 16 July 2026.
- F&F Pizzeria DoorDash marketplace list prices — F&F Pizzeria (459 Court St) on DoorDash, captured 16 July 2026.
- DoorDash NYC Regulatory Response Fee ($1.99) and algorithmic-pricing disclosure — DoorDash NYC checkout notice, captured by USA Times in a logged-in New York session, 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.
