At Han Dynasty, Uber Eats charges more than the counter — and the East Village restaurant still nets less on the order

7 min read  ·  1,412 words

Order Han Dynasty’s Sichuan classics on Uber Eats and you’ll pay a little more than you would at the East Village counter. The surprise is who loses: the markup is so small it doesn’t cover Uber’s commission, so the restaurant keeps less on a delivery order than on a walk-in — even under New York’s 15% commission cap.

By Achir Kalra, Executive Editor, and the USA Times Data Desk

Han Dynasty (East Village) — 90 3rd Avenue, Manhattan. Chinese / Sichuan. $$. Case study #7 in our food-delivery pricing series. We compared the restaurant’s own first-party Toast pickup menu against its Uber Eats storefront, item by item, on 15 July 2026.

What we found

We matched 48 dishes that are identical in name and portion on both menus — cold and hot appetizers, soups and noodles, rice and lo mein, chef’s specials, vegetables and canned drinks. We left out Han Dynasty’s build-your-own “cooking style” entrées (Kung Pao, Dry Pepper, Cumin and the rest), where you choose a protein and the price shifts, because those can’t be matched cleanly.

Across those 48 dishes, Uber Eats prices ran 6.1% higher on average (median 6.7%) than the restaurant’s own counter price. But the markup is not uniform, and that is the story. Thirty-four dishes cost more on Uber, five cost exactly the same, and nine actually cost less on Uber than at the counter — several vegetable dishes and a couple of chef’s specials. The spread runs from Tofu Pot, which is 10% cheaper on the app, to Lo Mein, Rice Noodle and Fried Rice, which are about 20% dearer.

What the restaurant nets: it absorbs the gap

Here is the part that matters. New York City caps the commission a delivery platform can charge a restaurant at 15% of the order (a 2021 rule, made permanent). To simply break even against a 15% cut, a restaurant would need to mark its menu up about 17.6%. Han Dynasty’s average markup is 6.1%. It doesn’t come close.

The result: on 44 of the 48 dishes, Han Dynasty keeps less after Uber’s capped commission than it would at its own counter — on average about $1.60 less per dish. Only the three noodle-and-rice items and the Spicy Hot Pot, whose markups clear the 17.6% breakeven, net slightly ahead. Add up the whole 48-dish basket and it goes from $735 at the counter to $775 on Uber, but after the 15% cap the restaurant is left with about $659 — roughly $77 less than if the same food had been sold at the register. (At the 25–30% commission Uber charges outside New York’s cap, every one of the 48 dishes would lose money.)

In the framework we use across this series, that makes Han Dynasty a Type B, “absorbing” case: the customer still pays more than the counter price, yet the restaurant nets less. The only party ahead on the transaction is the platform.

Why this still lands on Uber

Uber doesn’t set Han Dynasty’s prices — the restaurant does, and we say so plainly. A restaurant is free to charge what it likes on any channel. But the economics that push a menu upward on delivery apps are Uber’s: the commission sets a floor a restaurant has to clear just to match a walk-in, and Uber’s merchant tools surface a “Menu Markup” figure that measures the counter-versus-app gap without ever showing it to the diner. Here, Han Dynasty hasn’t marked up enough to clear that floor — so the modest premium a customer pays doesn’t protect the restaurant; it just narrows the loss.

One more wrinkle worth flagging. When we first loaded the storefront in pickup mode, Uber showed a set of discounted prices — some even below Han Dynasty’s counter price. Those are promotional pickup prices, not the list price, so we did not use them; the comparison above uses Uber’s standard delivery list prices. But it is a reminder that the number a diner sees can depend on which button Uber has pre-selected.

Every matched dish, ranked by markup

By the numbers

• 48 dishes matched by name and portion on both menus
• +6.1% mean markup on Uber Eats · +6.7% median · mode +8%
• Range: −10.0% (Tofu Pot, cheaper on Uber) to +19.6% (Lo Mein, Rice Noodle, Fried Rice)
• 34 dishes dearer on Uber · 5 the same · 9 cheaper on Uber
• Basket: $735.32 at the counter → $774.70 on Uber (+5.4%)
• Breakeven markup needed just to match a walk-in: 17.6% at NYC’s 15% cap (42.9% at a 30% commission)
• After the 15% cap, Han Dynasty nets less than counter on 44 of 48 dishes — about −$1.60 per dish; roughly −$77 across the basket

Method

Counter prices come from Han Dynasty’s own first-party ordering system on Toast (order.toasttab.com/online/han-dynasty-east-village), captured live on 15 July 2026. Toast is the restaurant’s own commission-free ordering channel, so its pickup price is the counter price. Uber Eats prices are the standard delivery list prices for the same store, read from the storefront’s own structured data the same day; we did not use Uber’s discounted pickup-mode prices. We matched only dishes identical in description and portion, and excluded build-your-own “cooking style” entrées and any item that appears on only one menu.

Net-to-restaurant figures apply New York City’s legal 15% commission cap to the Uber price; we note the 25–30% commission that applies outside the cap as an upper bound. These net figures are our analysis, not measured payouts — Han Dynasty’s actual contract terms with Uber are private, which is one of the questions we have put to both parties. Limitations: we could not capture a live checkout receipt (that requires a logged-in order, which we do not place), so delivery, service and regulatory fees and tax are not included in the per-dish figures above — they would only widen the gap the customer pays. Uber lists the store’s address as 98 3rd Ave while the restaurant lists 90 3rd Ave; this is a platform data quirk for the same single East Village location.

Right of reply

Han Dynasty was contacted for comment and asked the one question that decides this story: after Uber’s commission, does it net more, less or the same as a walk-in order? Uber was contacted at its press office and asked for its New York commission rates, whether it tracks a “Menu Markup” figure for this store, and whether it accepts that a customer here funds both the markup and the delivery fees. Any response will be added to this report.

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.