WILLIAMSBURG PIZZA (Lower East Side, 277 Broome St, Manhattan) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #28. Prices compared between Williamsburg Pizza’s own first-party online-ordering menu — the shop’s commission-free Toast page, which states orders “go directly to this restaurant” — and the same 277 Broome Street kitchen’s Uber Eats storefront, both captured the same day.
Order a large Brooklyn pie — the plain, round mozzarella-and-tomato pizza that anchors the menu at Williamsburg Pizza’s Lower East Side slice shop — from the shop’s own ordering page and it is $25.00. Order the same pie, from the same oven, on Uber Eats and it is $27.50. That is not a delivery fee; it is the menu price itself, and it is exactly 10% higher. Order a $2.00 can of soda and Uber lists it at $2.20 — 10% higher. A 50-cent side of marinara becomes 55 cents; a $33.00 Apple Bacon pie becomes $36.30 — the same 10% on each. We priced 36 of the shop’s items side by side — two dozen pies plus knots, a hero, meatballs, cookies and drinks — and every single one carried the identical markup: the counter price, multiplied by 1.10 and rounded to the nearest nickel. Not a range. A dial, set once, to ten per cent, and turned on the whole menu.
The markup
Across the 36 matched items the delivery markup was a flat +10% — mean and median both landing on the same number, with the only wobble a fraction of a percent where Uber rounds an odd-cent item up to the next nickel (a $1.75 bottle of Poland Spring becomes $1.95). A basket of all 36 items costs $648.00 on the shop’s own menu and $712.95 on Uber Eats, a straight 10% more. There is no gentler treatment for the cheap can of soda and no steeper one for the marquee pies; the surcharge is uniform from the 50-cent side of marinara to the $33 Apple Bacon. And because the same 36 prices appear on Uber whether you choose delivery or pickup — we checked both in the app: a large Brooklyn pie is $27.50 either way — the 10% is not a charge for driving the food to you. It is a markup on the food itself.
What the restaurant nets
Here is the twist a 10% markup hides. When a customer orders through Uber Eats, the platform keeps a commission on the sale. To come out level with a walk-in, a restaurant 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%. Williamsburg Pizza marks up 10%. That is enough to make the delivery customer pay more, but not enough to cover the platform’s cut — so the shortfall comes out of the kitchen. Apply a 30% commission to the $712.95 delivery basket and the shop keeps about $499.06, roughly $149 less than the $648.00 the same food brings in at the counter. Even at New York’s capped 15% rate it nets about $606.01, still about $42 less than a walk-in. On all 36 of the 36 items — every one — the restaurant nets less selling through the app than selling the same dish across its own counter. The 10% is what this series calls a partial pass-through (Type A edging to B): the customer pays a premium, and the restaurant still absorbs the rest of the commission out of its own margin. The two of them split Uber’s cut; Uber keeps all of it.
Why it still lands on the platform
Williamsburg Pizza sets its own menu prices; Uber Eats does not. But Uber sets the commission, and a flat 10% dial is a decision about how to share it: raise the delivery menu by a tenth, and split the difference between the customer and the kitchen rather than passing the whole commission to one side. It is a more customer-friendly choice than the shops that mark up 30% or more — and it still does not make the fees disappear. On top of these menu prices, Uber Eats charges the customer a delivery fee, a service fee and a tip at checkout, none of which are in the 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 10%-higher prices wherever this store is sold; what differs between platforms is the fee stack at checkout, not the food. The shop’s own Toast page, by contrast, is commission-free and carries the counter prices — the shop even dangles a “PIZZA10” code for 10% off there, the mirror image of the 10% Uber adds. Uber reports a gap like this one back to the restaurant as a metric it calls “Menu Markup.” It does not show that number to the customer paying it.
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%. Williamsburg Pizza’s flat 10% menu markup sits below even the 15% cap — it does not recover the whole of the capped commission, let alone a higher tier — which is why the shop nets less than the counter on every item at any of these rates. 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 pies | ||||
| Apple Bacon (square) | $33.00 | $36.30 | +10% | $25.41 (-7.59) |
| The Vegan (LG) | $33.00 | $36.30 | +10% | $25.41 (-7.59) |
| Vegan Pepperoni (LG) | $33.00 | $36.30 | +10% | $25.41 (-7.59) |
| Paesano (LG) | $32.00 | $35.20 | +10% | $24.64 (-7.36) |
| Calabrese (LG) | $32.00 | $35.20 | +10% | $24.64 (-7.36) |
| Cup & Char Grandma (square) | $31.50 | $34.65 | +10% | $24.25 (-7.25) |
| Heart Shaped Grandma Pie | $31.00 | $34.10 | +10% | $23.87 (-7.13) |
| Tartufo (square) | $30.50 | $33.55 | +10% | $23.48 (-7.02) |
| Vegetarian (LG) | $30.00 | $33.00 | +10% | $23.10 (-6.90) |
| Sophia Loren (LG) | $29.75 | $32.75 | +10% | $22.92 (-6.83) |
| Bianco (LG) | $29.50 | $32.45 | +10% | $22.71 (-6.79) |
| Margherita (LG, round) | $29.00 | $31.90 | +10% | $22.33 (-6.67) |
| Grandma (square) | $29.00 | $31.90 | +10% | $22.33 (-6.67) |
| The Brooklyn (LG, round) | $25.00 | $27.50 | +10% | $19.25 (-5.75) |
| Sophia Loren (MED) | $21.00 | $23.10 | +10% | $16.17 (-4.83) |
| Vegetarian (MED, round) | $21.00 | $23.10 | +10% | $16.17 (-4.83) |
| Bianco (MED) | $20.50 | $22.55 | +10% | $15.79 (-4.71) |
| Margherita (MED, round) | $19.75 | $21.75 | +10% | $15.22 (-4.53) |
| The Brooklyn (MED, round) | $18.75 | $20.65 | +10% | $14.45 (-4.30) |
| Gluten-free pies | ||||
| Gluten Free Grandma (10×8″) | $24.75 | $27.25 | +10% | $19.07 (-5.68) |
| Venice Bakery Gluten Free (14″) | $21.75 | $23.95 | +10% | $16.76 (-4.99) |
| Heroes, knots & sides | ||||
| Side of Meatballs (8) | $17.00 | $18.70 | +10% | $13.09 (-3.91) |
| Meatball Hero | $9.50 | $10.45 | +10% | $7.31 (-2.19) |
| Side of Meatballs (4) | $9.50 | $10.45 | +10% | $7.31 (-2.19) |
| Pepperoni Knot (4) | $8.00 | $8.80 | +10% | $6.16 (-1.84) |
| Garlic Knots (4) | $6.00 | $6.60 | +10% | $4.62 (-1.38) |
| Chocolate Chip Cookies | $1.00 | $1.10 | +10% | $0.77 (-0.23) |
| Side of Marinara | $0.50 | $0.55 | +10% | $0.39 (-0.11) |
| Side of Caesar | $0.50 | $0.55 | +10% | $0.39 (-0.11) |
| Non-alcoholic drinks | ||||
| Red Bull | $4.00 | $4.40 | +10% | $3.08 (-0.92) |
| A’Siciliana Italian Soda | $4.00 | $4.40 | +10% | $3.08 (-0.92) |
| Boylans | $3.00 | $3.30 | +10% | $2.31 (-0.69) |
| Mexican Coke | $3.00 | $3.30 | +10% | $2.31 (-0.69) |
| La Croix Sparkling | $2.50 | $2.75 | +10% | $1.92 (-0.58) |
| Soda Cans | $2.00 | $2.20 | +10% | $1.54 (-0.46) |
| Poland Spring Water | $1.75 | $1.95 | +11% | $1.36 (-0.39) |
| All 36 matched items (basket) | $648.00 | $712.95 | +10% | $499.06 (-148.94) |
By the numbers
- Items matched: 36 (same description and portion, same 277 Broome St store; salads — listed with a “+” size/add-on option on the shop’s menu — build-your-own toppings and free utensils were excluded)
- Delivery markup: mean +10%, median +10%, range +10% to +11% — a flat 10% on every item, rounded to the nearest nickel
- Basket: $648.00 at the counter, $712.95 on Uber Eats (+10%)
- Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9%; at New York’s capped 15%, about +17.6% — the 10% clears neither
- What the restaurant nets: about $499.06 on the basket at a 30% commission (~$149 less than counter); about $606.01 even at the capped 15% (~$42 less)
- Items on which the restaurant nets less than dine-in: 36 of 36 at 30%; 36 of 36 at the capped 15%
- Uber pickup price = Uber delivery price (checked in-app), so the 10% is not a delivery cost
- Not captured here: Uber Eats’ delivery fee, service fee, tax and tip, which a logged-in checkout adds on top
- Story type: A edging to B (partial pass-through) — the customer pays a 10% premium; the restaurant absorbs the rest of the platform’s commission
Method
On 16 July 2026, USA Times captured Williamsburg Pizza’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering menu (the shop’s direct Toast storefront for the 277 Broome 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. Toast states that orders placed there are commission-free and go directly to the restaurant. The same day, we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same 277 Broome St store from the rendered storefront and matched them item by item against the first-party menu; every one of the 36 matched items came to the counter price times 1.10, rounded to the nearest nickel. We checked both the delivery and pickup toggles on Uber and the food prices were identical, confirming the 10% is a menu markup rather than a delivery charge. We matched only items with the same description and portion, used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded salads (listed with a “+” size/add-on option, so the base portion is not cleanly comparable), build-your-own topping add-ons and free utensils. 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. Williamsburg Pizza operates several New York locations; this audit covers only the Lower East Side store at 277 Broome St. 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 Williamsburg Pizza and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Williamsburg Pizza 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 the flat 10% Uber Eats markup 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
- Williamsburg Pizza counter / first-party prices — Williamsburg Pizza (277 Broome St, LES) online-ordering menu on Toast, Pickup, captured 16 July 2026.
- Williamsburg Pizza Uber Eats list prices — Williamsburg Pizza – LES on Uber Eats, captured 16 July 2026.
- Williamsburg Pizza locations (multiple NYC stores; 277 Broome St, LES) — williamsburgpizza.com, reviewed 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.
