At L&B Spumoni Gardens, Uber Eats Adds a Flat 10% to Almost Everything — Except the Famous Square Pie

15 min read · 3,285 words

L&B SPUMONI GARDENS (Bensonhurst, 2725 86th St, Brooklyn) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #39. Prices compared between L&B’s own online-ordering page for the 86th Street location (the shop’s direct-order channel, powered by foodbooking/Oracle and linked from its website) and the same shop’s Uber Eats storefront, both for the 2725 86th Street location, captured the same day. See also the restaurant’s own site, spumonigardens.com.

Order a chicken parmigiana from L&B Spumoni Gardens — the Bensonhurst institution that has been selling its thick, upside-down Sicilian square slices out of a 86th Street stand since 1939 — from the shop’s own online menu and it is $22.95. Order the same dish on Uber Eats and it is $25.25 — ten percent more. Do it again with a baked ziti ($15.95 direct, $17.55 on Uber), a Caesar salad ($14.95 and $16.45), an order of mozzarella sticks ($11.95 and $13.15), and the pattern is almost eerily consistent: the Uber Eats price is the shop’s own price plus ten percent, over and over. We matched 62 items across the menu, and on 59 of them the Uber markup landed within a rounding error of exactly +10%.

There is one striking exception, and it is the thing L&B is famous for. Its Sicilian square pie is $35.00 ordering direct and $35.00 on Uber Eats — not a cent more. The large round cheese pie is $24.00 in both places too. The signature pizzas are carried onto Uber at the exact counter price; almost everything else gets the flat 10% lift. Whatever the reason for that split, the effect on the food bill is clear: on Uber Eats, most of L&B’s menu costs about a tenth more than ordering straight from the shop.

The receipt

That 10% is only the markup on the food. On Uber Eats the delivery costs come on top of it, not inside it. Take the chicken parmigiana. The dish travels onto Uber Eats at $25.25 — already $2.30 over the shop’s own $22.95. On top of that Uber adds a service fee (a percentage of the subtotal) and a delivery fee, both of which a customer sees only at a signed-in checkout; then New York’s 8.875% prepared-food tax (about $2.24, which a walk-in pays too) and, if the customer tips the standard 10% we apply across this series, roughly $2.53 more. Before Uber’s service and delivery fees, the $22.95 counter dish is already near $30.02 out the door on the marked-up menu, tax and tip alone; the fees push it higher. None of the 10% menu markup, and none of the fees, is a delivery cost in the ordinary sense: we checked, and L&B’s Uber Eats pickup prices are identical to its Uber Eats delivery prices — $35 for the square pie, $25.25 for the chicken parm — so the premium sits on the food whether or not anyone drives it anywhere. (We report the food prices we captured; the exact Uber service and delivery fees depend on the order, the address and any Uber One membership, and require a logged-in checkout to itemize, which this automated audit did not place.)

The markup

Across the 62 matched items the delivery markup on the food was, on average, about +10% — a mean of roughly +10.0%, a median of +10%, and a mode of exactly +10%. The range runs from +0% (the two signature pizzas, held at the counter price) to +27% (a single chicken Napoleon entree, which L&B prices at $19.95 in-store but lists at the standard $25.25 entree price on Uber). A basket of all 62 items costs $1031 ordering direct and $1132 on Uber Eats — a difference of +9.8% on the food alone. This is not the kind of steep, category-by-category re-pricing this series has documented where a delivery menu is engineered to recover the platform’s whole commission; it is a clean, near-uniform ten-percent overlay — with the pizzas pointedly left out of it.

What the shop nets

Here is why a flat 10% is not the shop coming out ahead. 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%. L&B marks up ten. So the math still runs against the shop: at New York’s capped 15% commission, the $1132 delivery basket leaves the restaurant about $962 — roughly $69 less than the $1031 the same items bring in ordering direct. If the store pays a higher effective rate for wider delivery and promotion — New York’s 2025 amendment lets a restaurant opt into add-ons that can push the total toward roughly 30% or more — it keeps about $792, some $239 less than direct. On 61 of the 62 items, the shop nets less selling through Uber Eats than selling the same item at its own counter, even at the capped rate; at 30% it is all 62. This is the pattern this series calls absorbing (Type B) — but with a sting the purest absorbers do not carry: here the customer also pays about 10% more on the food. On this order, both sides lose a little and the platform gains.

Why it still lands on Uber Eats

L&B sets its own menu prices; Uber Eats does not. But Uber sets the commission and the consumer fees, and a shop that lifts its delivery menu only 10% — well short of the 40%-plus it would take to recover the cut — is choosing to absorb most of it. That partial markup protects the delivery customer from the full recovery pricing some restaurants use, and still leaves the kitchen short: the 10% covers only a fraction of what Uber keeps. It does not make the customer’s bill cheap: the 10% food markup, the service fee, the delivery fee, tax and tip stack up at checkout, and only the first of those even appears in the matched menu prices above. And it does not make the platform’s take disappear — it simply splits it. Uber collects a commission from the restaurant and a stack of fees, plus a 10% higher menu, from the customer on the very same order.

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. L&B marks up a tenth of its menu by ten percent and holds its pizzas flat. The Mayor’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees.

By the numbers

• Items matched: 62 (same description and portion, same 2725 86th St location; Sicilian square pie and large round cheese pie matched pie-to-pie, salads/appetizers/pastas/entrees/heroes/baskets/sides/spumoni like-for-like; build-your-own items, catering trays, family meals, seafood entrees we could not confirm as equivalent, and beverages excluded)
• Delivery markup on the food: mean +10.0%, median +10%, mode +10%, range +0% to +27% — on 59 of 62 items Uber runs within a rounding error of exactly 10% over the counter; 2 (both signature pizzas) match to the cent
• Basket: $1031 ordering direct, $1132 on Uber Eats — +9.8% on the food alone
• Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% (about +17.6% even at the capped 15%) — L&B’s +10% is well below both
• What the shop nets: about $962 on the basket at New York’s capped 15% (~$69 less than direct); about $792 at a 30% effective rate (~$239 less)
• Items on which the shop nets less than the counter: 61 of 62 at the 15% cap; 62 of 62 at 30%
• Uber Eats pickup price = Uber Eats delivery price on the items we checked (square pie $35, chicken parm $25.25) — the premium sits on the food, not on the drive
• Story type: B (absorbing) — the 10% markup is far below what would recover Uber’s cut, so the shop absorbs most of the commission; the customer still pays about 10% more on the food, plus fees

Method

On 16 July 2026, USA Times captured L&B Spumoni Gardens’ own prices from its first-party online-ordering page for the 86th Street (Bensonhurst) location — reached from spumonigardens.com and served by foodbooking/Oracle Restaurants — treated as the direct/pickup price a customer pays ordering straight from the shop with no delivery cost attached. The same day we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same 2725 86th Street store and matched them item by item. We matched only items with the same description and portion (the Sicilian square pie and the large round cheese pie matched pie-to-pie; salads, appetizers, pastas, entrees, heroes, grilled baskets, sides and spumoni matched one-to-one; the entree and hero versions of a dish treated as the distinct items they are), used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded build-your-own items, catering trays, family meals, seafood entrees we could not confirm as equivalent across both channels, and beverages. Across the 62 matched items the Uber Eats prices ran, on average, about ten percent above the shop’s own direct prices, with two signature pizzas identical and one entree higher; we report the prices as captured. We also toggled the Uber Eats storefront to pickup and confirmed its prices are identical to its delivery prices, which is why we describe the premium as sitting on the food rather than on delivery. The fee description in the receipt is illustrative: Uber’s exact service and delivery fees depend on the order, address and Uber One membership and require a logged-in checkout to confirm, which this automated audit did not place; New York’s 8.875% prepared-food tax and a standard 10% driver tip are applied for the out-the-door figure. The “shop nets” figures are an analytical estimate that applies New York’s capped 15% (and, separately, a 30% effective) commission to the Uber 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 L&B Spumoni Gardens and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. L&B 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, and is the near-flat 10% lift on its Uber Eats menu — while holding its pizzas at the counter price — a deliberate choice. Uber was asked about its commission tiers in New York, how it discloses its service and delivery fees to customers, and whether it accepts that on an order like this the customer funds the fees and a higher menu while the restaurant funds the commission.

Sources

• L&B Spumoni Gardens direct-order (86th Street) prices — L&B’s own online-ordering page (foodbooking/Oracle), 2725 86th St, Bensonhurst, captured 16 July 2026.
• L&B Spumoni Gardens Uber Eats list prices — L&B Spumoni Gardens – 86th Street on Uber Eats, captured 16 July 2026 (delivery and pickup prices confirmed identical).
• Shop website — spumonigardens.com, reviewed 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.