ROBERTA’S (Bushwick, 261 Moore St, Brooklyn) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #25. Prices compared between Roberta’s own first-party pickup menu on Toast and the same 261 Moore St kitchen’s Uber Eats storefront, both captured the same day.
Order the Bee Sting — Roberta’s soppressata-and-hot-honey pie, one of the pizzas that turned a cinderblock room off the Morgan Avenue L into a global destination — from the restaurant’s own ordering page and it is $26.00. Order the same pie, from the same Moore Street oven, on Uber Eats and it is… $26.00. The Margherita is $23.00 either way; the Famous Original $24.00 either way; a Mexican Coke $6.00 either way. We priced 18 of Roberta’s items side by side — pizzas, small plates, dessert and drinks — and on every single one the delivery-app price matched the counter price to the dollar. The markup was not small. It was zero. And, as the numbers below show, that means the restaurant — not the customer — is the one absorbing the platform’s cut.
The markup
Across the 18 matched items the delivery markup was a flat 0% — mean, median and range all sitting on the counter price. A basket of all 18 items costs $257.00 on Roberta’s own menu and the identical $257.00 on Uber Eats. There is no gentle treatment for the $4 can of soda and no steeper one for the marquee pies: the Coke, the $9 marinated olives and the $26 Bee Sting are all listed at exactly the same price on the app as at the register. This is the rarest pattern in the series — rarer even than a small markup. Most restaurants we have audited lift their delivery menus to recover the commission a platform charges. Roberta’s, a Bushwick institution that helped write the template for the modern destination pizzeria, simply does not.
What the restaurant nets
Here is why a 0% markup is not a happy ending for the restaurant. When a customer orders delivery, Uber Eats keeps a commission on the sale. To come out level with a walk-in, a restaurant would need to mark the delivery menu up by about +42.9% at a 30% commission — or about +17.6% even at New York’s capped 15%. Roberta’s marks up nothing. So the math runs entirely against the kitchen: apply a 30% commission to the $257.00 delivery basket and Roberta’s keeps about $179.90 — roughly $77 less than the $257.00 the same food brings in at the counter. Even at New York’s capped 15% rate it nets about $218.45, still about $39 less than a walk-in. On all 18 of the 18 items — every one — the restaurant nets less selling through the app than selling the same dish across its own counter. This is the pattern this series calls absorbing (Type B): the delivery customer pays the restaurant’s ordinary price, and the restaurant quietly eats the platform’s commission out of its own margin.
Why it still lands on the platform
Roberta’s sets its own menu prices; Uber Eats does not. But Uber sets the commission, and a restaurant that chooses not to pass it on is choosing to absorb it. Most restaurants in this series have raised their delivery menus to recover the cut, in whole or in part; Roberta’s has declined to, holding its app prices at the counter price line for line. 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 Eats still charges the customer a delivery fee, a service fee and a tip at checkout — charges that are not in the menu prices above, because a logged-in order is required to see them. Because the food price is set once by the restaurant and appears identically across delivery apps, the same pies list at these same prices on Roberta’s other storefronts; what differs between platforms is the fee stack at checkout, not the food. The food is the same price; the trip is not free.
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 Roberta’s has not. Whatever commission tier applies to this store, the restaurant is recovering none of it from the delivery customer through the food price. One place New York’s cap does reach the customer is on a rival app: DoorDash layers a consumer “NYC Regulatory Response Fee” onto its checkouts, a surcharge it added to offset the commission cap — a mechanism worth flagging wherever it appears, though it is DoorDash’s and did not figure in this Uber Eats audit. The Mayor’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees.
| Item | Counter / first-party | Uber Eats | Markup | Shop nets @30% (vs counter) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pizza | ||||
| Bee Sting | $26.00 | $26.00 | +0% | $18.20 (-7.80) |
| Speckenwolf | $26.00 | $26.00 | +0% | $18.20 (-7.80) |
| Cheesus Christ | $25.00 | $25.00 | +0% | $17.50 (-7.50) |
| Famous Original | $24.00 | $24.00 | +0% | $16.80 (-7.20) |
| Margherita | $23.00 | $23.00 | +0% | $16.10 (-6.90) |
| Rosso | $18.00 | $18.00 | +0% | $12.60 (-5.40) |
| Kitchen | ||||
| Stracciatella | $19.00 | $19.00 | +0% | $13.30 (-5.70) |
| Little Gem Salad | $19.00 | $19.00 | +0% | $13.30 (-5.70) |
| Tiramisu | $14.00 | $14.00 | +0% | $9.80 (-4.20) |
| Marinated Olives | $9.00 | $9.00 | +0% | $6.30 (-2.70) |
| Non-alcoholic drinks | ||||
| De Soi NA Margarita | $14.00 | $14.00 | +0% | $9.80 (-4.20) |
| Phony Negroni | $14.00 | $14.00 | +0% | $9.80 (-4.20) |
| Mexican Coke | $6.00 | $6.00 | +0% | $4.20 (-1.80) |
| Can Coke Zero | $4.00 | $4.00 | +0% | $2.80 (-1.20) |
| Can Diet Coke | $4.00 | $4.00 | +0% | $2.80 (-1.20) |
| Can Sprite | $4.00 | $4.00 | +0% | $2.80 (-1.20) |
| Fever Tree Pink Grapefruit | $4.00 | $4.00 | +0% | $2.80 (-1.20) |
| Ginger Ale | $4.00 | $4.00 | +0% | $2.80 (-1.20) |
| All 18 matched items (basket) | $257.00 | $257.00 | +0% | $179.90 (-77.10) |
By the numbers
- Items matched: 18 (same description and portion, same 261 Moore St store; large still and sparkling water and an out-of-stock soda that we could not confirm on both menus in this capture, plus any build-your-own or add-on options, were excluded)
- Delivery markup: mean 0%, median 0%, range 0% to 0% — the Uber Eats price equalled the counter price on every item
- Basket: $257.00 at the counter, an identical $257.00 on Uber Eats (0% more)
- Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% — Roberta’s 0% is the whole distance below it
- What the restaurant nets: about $179.90 on the basket at a 30% commission (~$77 less than counter); about $218.45 even at New York’s capped 15% (~$39 less)
- Items on which the restaurant nets less than dine-in: 18 of 18 at a 30% commission; 18 of 18 at New York’s capped 15%
- Not captured here: Uber Eats’ delivery fee, service fee, tax and tip, which a logged-in checkout adds on top of the menu prices above
- Story type: B (absorbing) — the customer pays the counter price for the food; the restaurant absorbs the platform’s commission
Method
On 15 July 2026, USA Times captured Roberta’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering menu on Toast (the restaurant’s direct storefront for the 261 Moore St location), set to Pickup — 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 261 Moore St store from the rendered storefront in delivery mode and matched them item by item against the first-party menu; every one of the 18 matched items carried the identical price. We matched only items with the same description and portion, used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded large still and sparkling water and an out-of-stock item we could not confirm on both menus in this capture, along with any configurable or add-on options. Because a logged-in checkout is required to see them, this automated audit did not capture the delivery fee, service fee, tax or tip a customer pays on top; the Uber Eats 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 Roberta’s and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Roberta’s 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 Eats prices at the counter price a deliberate choice. Uber was asked about its commission tiers in New York, whether it tracks the gap between a restaurant’s in-store and in-app menu prices (the metric it reports to merchants as “Menu Markup”), and why that gap is not disclosed to consumers.
Sources
- Roberta’s counter / first-party prices — Roberta’s Pizza (261 Moore St) online-ordering menu on Toast, Pickup, captured 15 July 2026.
- Roberta’s Uber Eats list prices — Roberta’s (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.
