SONG ’E NAPULE (West Village, 132 West Houston Street, Manhattan) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #31. Prices compared between Song ’E Napule’s own online-ordering menu and the same restaurant’s Uber Eats storefront, both for the 132 West Houston Street location, captured the same day.
Order a 12-inch Margherita — the San Marzano-and-fior-di-latte pie this Michelin Bib Gourmand pizzeria built its name on — for pickup on Song ’E Napule’s own ordering site and it is $20.70. Order the same 12-inch Margherita, from the same kitchen, delivered on Uber Eats and it is $25.00 — about 21% more. The gap is not flat, and it is not small everywhere: the 12-inch Diavola runs $20.70 to $26.00 (+26%), while the pizzeria’s panuozzi — the wood-fired bread sandwiches — are $18.00 on the restaurant’s own menu and $23.00 to $25.00 on Uber, a markup of up to 39%. We priced 31 of Song ’E Napule’s items side by side, from pizzas and panuozzi to pastas, antipasti and desserts, and the delivery markup averaged +13%.
This is a real markup — unlike the flat, dollar-for-dollar pass-through this series found at Emily, Table 87 or Roberta’s, where the app price matched the counter exactly. Song ’E Napule does lift its delivery menu, and on some items by a lot. But, as the numbers below show, it does not lift it nearly enough to cover what Uber takes — so the kitchen is still the one left absorbing the difference.
The markup
Across the 31 matched items the delivery markup averaged 12.8%, with a median of 8.7% and a range from -2% to +39%. A basket of all 31 items costs $629 on Song ’E Napule’s own pickup menu and $704 to have delivered on Uber Eats — about 12% more for the identical order. The premium is concentrated: it is steepest on the panuozzi (+28% to +39%), the calzones and focaccia (+16% to +22%), the two marquee pies (Margherita +21%, Diavola +26%) and the desserts (+11% to +20%), and it thins out on the pastas and salads, where Uber tracks the restaurant’s own prices within a dollar — a handful of pasta and salad plates are even a few cents cheaper on Uber. The cheapest pizza, the Marinara, carries only a +6% markup; the Gnocchi Sorrentina is priced identically on both. In other words, the delivery markup is uneven — heaviest on the shop’s signature street food and its pies, lightest on the sit-down plates.
What the restaurant nets
Here is why a +13% markup is not the windfall it might sound like — for the restaurant. When a customer orders delivery through Uber Eats, the platform keeps a commission on the sale. To come out level with its own counter, 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%. Song ’E Napule marks up about 13%. So the math still runs against the kitchen: apply a 30% commission to the $704 delivery basket and the restaurant keeps about $493 — roughly $137 less than the $629 the same order brings in on its own pickup site. On all 31 of the 31 items — every one, including the panuozzi marked up nearly 40% — the restaurant nets less selling through Uber than selling the same dish through its own channel. This is the pattern this series calls absorbing (Type B): the delivery customer pays more and the restaurant earns less. Even at New York’s capped 15% rate the shop nets about $598 on the basket, still about $31 less than its own counter, with 20 of 31 items below. The only party ahead on the transaction is the platform.
Why it still lands on Uber
Song ’E Napule sets its own menu prices; Uber does not. A restaurant that raises its delivery menu is trying to claw back the platform’s commission, and Song ’E Napule has — partway, and unevenly. A markup that averages +13% softens the blow to the kitchen without recovering it: the shop still eats most of the commission out of its own margin, while the customer eats the rest at the top of the menu, most sharply on the panuozzi and pies. And the markup is not where the customer’s bill stops. On top of these prices, Uber still charges the delivery 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. Uber also reports to merchants a “Menu Markup” metric measuring the gap between a restaurant’s own prices and its in-app prices — a number the platform can see and the diner cannot; at Song ’E Napule that gap averages about 13%, and it still comes nowhere close to covering Uber’s cut.
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. Song ’E Napule marks up a fraction of that. One place New York’s cap does reach the customer is on the 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 is charged at checkout rather than in the menu prices matched here. The Mayor’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees.
| Item | Own pickup menu | Uber Eats | Markup | Shop nets @30% (vs pickup) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antipasti | ||||
| Polpette al Sugo (3 Meatballs) | $17.25 | $21.00 | +22% | $14.70 (-2.55) |
| Calamari alla Griglia | $21.85 | $24.00 | +10% | $16.80 (-5.05) |
| Burrata | $23.00 | $25.00 | +9% | $17.50 (-5.50) |
| Insalate | ||||
| Insalata della Casa | $14.95 | $16.00 | +7% | $11.20 (-3.75) |
| Pomodorini Salad | $17.25 | $17.00 | -1% | $11.90 (-5.35) |
| Kale Salad | $18.40 | $18.00 | -2% | $12.60 (-5.80) |
| Insalata di Cesare | $18.40 | $18.00 | -2% | $12.60 (-5.80) |
| Primi | ||||
| Fettuccine Nere con Gamberi | $26.45 | $28.00 | +6% | $19.60 (-6.85) |
| Spaghetti Polpette | $24.15 | $25.00 | +4% | $17.50 (-6.65) |
| Gnocchi Sorrentina | $23.00 | $23.00 | +0% | $16.10 (-6.90) |
| Fettuccine Bolognese | $25.30 | $25.00 | -1% | $17.50 (-7.80) |
| Paccheri Genovese | $27.60 | $27.00 | -2% | $18.90 (-8.70) |
| Secondi | ||||
| Polpette al Sugo (5 Meatballs) | $24.15 | $25.00 | +4% | $17.50 (-6.65) |
| Pollo alla Milanese | $25.30 | $26.00 | +3% | $18.20 (-7.10) |
| Scaloppine di Pollo | $26.45 | $27.00 | +2% | $18.90 (-7.55) |
| Contorni | ||||
| Broccoli Rabe | $13.80 | $14.00 | +1% | $9.80 (-4.00) |
| Pizze (12-inch) | ||||
| Diavola Pizza (12″) | $20.70 | $26.00 | +26% | $18.20 (-2.50) |
| Margherita Pizza (12″) | $20.70 | $25.00 | +21% | $17.50 (-3.20) |
| Marinara Pizza (12″) | $16.10 | $17.00 | +6% | $11.90 (-4.20) |
| Pizze Speciali | ||||
| Calzone Classico | $23.00 | $28.00 | +22% | $19.60 (-3.40) |
| Focaccia | $11.50 | $14.00 | +22% | $9.80 (-1.70) |
| Calzone Song’E Napule | $24.15 | $28.00 | +16% | $19.60 (-4.55) |
| Montanara (fried pizza) | $23.00 | $25.00 | +9% | $17.50 (-5.50) |
| Panuozzi | ||||
| Primavera Panuozzo | $18.00 | $25.00 | +39% | $17.50 (-0.50) |
| Caprese Panuozzo | $18.00 | $25.00 | +39% | $17.50 (-0.50) |
| Milanese Panuozzo | $18.00 | $25.00 | +39% | $17.50 (-0.50) |
| Melanzane Panuozzo | $18.00 | $23.00 | +28% | $16.10 (-1.90) |
| Polpette Panuozzo | $18.00 | $23.00 | +28% | $16.10 (-1.90) |
| Dolci | ||||
| Coccole | $18.40 | $22.00 | +20% | $15.40 (-3.00) |
| Tiramisu | $13.80 | $16.00 | +16% | $11.20 (-2.60) |
| Nutella Pizza | $20.70 | $23.00 | +11% | $16.10 (-4.60) |
| All 31 matched items (basket) | $629.35 | $704.00 | +12% | $492.80 (-136.55) |
By the numbers
- Items matched: 31 (same description and portion, same 132 W Houston St location; the round Neapolitan pies matched at the 12-inch size on both platforms; configurable add-on toppings, items listed on only one platform, alcohol and a few dishes not confirmable to the dollar were excluded)
- Delivery markup: mean +12.8%, median +8.7%, range -2% to +39% — highest on the panuozzi, lightest on the pastas and salads
- Basket: $629 on Song ’E Napule’s own pickup menu, $704 delivered on Uber Eats (+12%)
- Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% — Song ’E Napule’s +13% is far below it
- What the restaurant nets: about $493 on the basket at a 30% commission (~$137 less than its own counter); about $598 even at New York’s capped 15% (~$31 less)
- Items on which the restaurant nets less than its own counter: 31 of 31 at a 30% commission; 20 of 31 at New York’s capped 15%
- Story type: B (absorbing) — the customer pays more and the restaurant still nets less than its own counter
Method
On 16 July 2026, USA Times captured Song ’E Napule’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering site (song-e-napule.orderwebsite.com, an UpMenu-powered platform linked directly from the restaurant’s website), set to Pickup from 132 West Houston Street — the price a customer pays ordering directly from the restaurant for pickup; the site shows the same food prices in pickup and delivery modes. The same day, we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same 132 West Houston Street store from the rendered storefront and matched them item by item against the pickup menu. Song ’E Napule’s round Neapolitan pizzas are sold in two sizes and are priced by size selection on Uber; we read each pie’s 12-inch price on both platforms and matched 12-inch to 12-inch (for example, the Margherita: $20.70 on the restaurant’s own site, $25.00 on Uber). We matched only items with the same description and portion, used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded configurable add-on toppings, items listed on only one of the two platforms, a small number of dishes we could not pair to the dollar (including the eggplant parmigiana and carpaccio antipasti, the plain pasta al pomodoro, the panna cotta desserts and a Greek-style 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 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 location; figures reflect the moment of capture.
Right of reply
USA Times contacted Song ’E Napule and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Song ’E Napule 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 it does through its own counter, and is its roughly 13% delivery markup — heaviest on the panuozzi and pies — a deliberate attempt to recover part of the platform’s cut. Uber was asked about its commission tiers in New York and whether it tracks the gap between a restaurant’s own prices and its in-app prices (the metric it reports to merchants as “Menu Markup”).
Sources
- Song ’E Napule counter / pickup menu prices — Song ’E Napule West Village online-ordering site, Pickup from 132 W Houston St, captured 16 July 2026.
- Song ’E Napule Uber Eats list prices — Song ’E Napule Pizzeria & Trattoria on Uber Eats, captured 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.
