In Astoria, Sac’s Place Lists Its Food on Uber Eats at the Counter Price — Then You Pay the Fees

13 min read · 2,990 words

SAC’S PLACE (Astoria, 35-11 35th Ave, Queens) — Italian / Pizza. Case study #38. Prices compared between Sac’s Place’s own Slice ordering page (the shop’s direct-order channel, where it has been a partner for over a decade, set to Pickup) and the same shop’s Uber Eats storefront, both for the 35-11 35th Ave location, captured the same day. See also the restaurant’s own site, sacsplace.com.

Order a small cheese pie from Sac’s Place — the coal-oven Astoria institution that has been baking San Marzano-and-fresh-mozzarella pies a block from Kaufman Astoria Studios since 1989 — from the shop’s own online menu and it is $13.95. Order the same pie on Uber Eats and it is $14.00 — a nickel more. Go dish by dish through the rest of the menu and the pattern holds: a chicken-parm hero is $16 on both; baked ziti is $24 direct and $22 on Uber; a side of broccoli is $16 at the counter and $14 on the app. We priced 52 of Sac’s items side by side, and across the board the Uber Eats menu ran within about a dollar of the shop’s own pickup prices — an average of roughly +1%, with a median of essentially zero. There is almost no delivery markup on the food at all.

That is the opposite of what a delivery bill usually implies. On 14 of the 52 items we matched, the Uber Eats price is identical to ordering direct; on 12 — mostly sides, salads and a couple of pastas — it is actually cheaper on the app; on 26 it is a little higher, topping out at a $20 veal-parm hero that is $24 on Uber. What the food never does is climb the way a menu does when a restaurant is trying to claw back the platform’s commission. And that is the whole story: when a shop holds its delivery menu at — or under — its own counter prices, it is the shop, not the customer, that swallows Uber’s cut.

The receipt

Because the food is priced at the counter, any premium a delivery customer pays sits in the fees — and on Uber Eats those come on top of the menu, not inside it. Take that same small pie. The food travels onto Uber Eats at the shop’s $14.00. On top of it 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 $1.24, which a walk-in pays too) and, if the customer tips the standard 10% we apply across this series, roughly $1.40 more. Even before Uber’s service and delivery fees, the $13.95 counter pie is already near $16.65 out the door on tax and tip alone; the fees push it higher. None of that reaches Sac’s. (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 52 matched items the delivery markup on the food was, on average, about +1% — a mean of roughly +1.2%, a median of about 0%, and a range from −12% (the sauteed vegetable sides, cheaper on Uber) to +20% (a single veal-parm hero). A basket of all 52 items costs $1055 ordering direct and $1070 on Uber Eats — a difference of +1.4% on the food alone. The split is category-shaped: the small pies, the heroes and most pastas match to the dollar or the cent; the sauteed greens and the salads run a dollar or two lower on the app; a handful of chicken and veal entrees and a couple of ravioli run a dollar or two higher. We did not find the kind of across-the-board lift — 20%, 30% or more over the counter — that this series has documented where a delivery menu is engineered to recover the platform’s take. Sac’s simply carries its menu onto Uber Eats more or less intact.

What the shop nets

Here is why an at-par markup is the whole story. 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%. Sac’s marks up almost nothing, and on 12 items prices below its own counter. So the math runs entirely against the shop: at New York’s capped 15% commission, the $1070 delivery basket leaves the restaurant about $909 — roughly $145 less than the $1055 the same items bring in at the counter. 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 $749, some $306 less than direct. On all 51 of the 52 items, the shop nets less selling through Uber Eats than selling the same item at its own counter. This is the pattern this series calls absorbing (Type B): the customer pays the shop’s own price or less, and the shop quietly eats the commission out of its own margin.

Why it still lands on Uber Eats

Sac’s sets its own menu prices; Uber Eats does not. But Uber sets the commission and the consumer fees, and a shop that chooses to hold its delivery prices at — or under — its own is choosing to absorb the cut. Many restaurants in this series lift their delivery menus to recover the platform’s commission, in whole or in part; Sac’s, on the food, has largely declined to. That protects the delivery customer from a menu markup, and squeezes the kitchen. It does not make the customer’s bill cheap: the service fee, the delivery fee, tax and tip still stack up at checkout, none of which appear in the matched menu prices above. And it does not make the platform’s take disappear — it simply moves it. Uber collects a commission from the restaurant and a stack of fees 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. Sac’s marks up almost none of it. The Mayor’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees.

By the numbers

• Items matched: 52 (same description and portion, same 35-11 35th Ave location; small pies matched small-to-small, heroes/pastas/salads/entrees like-for-like; build-your-own pies, pizza sizes we could not match one-to-one, and beverages excluded)
• Delivery markup on the food: mean +1.2%, median 0%, range −12% to +20% — on 14 of 52 items Uber matches the counter to the cent, on 12 it is cheaper, on 26 slightly higher
• Basket: $1055 ordering direct, $1070 on Uber Eats — +1.4% on the food alone
• Break-even markup at a 30% commission: +42.9% — Sac’s marks up almost nothing, a long way below it
• What the shop nets: about $909 on the basket at New York’s capped 15% (~$145 less than direct); about $749 at a 30% effective rate (~$306 less)
• Items on which the shop nets less than the counter: 51 of 52 at the 15% cap; 52 of 52 at 30%
• Story type: B (absorbing) — the customer pays the shop’s own price or less; the shop absorbs Uber’s commission

Method

On 16 July 2026, USA Times captured Sac’s Place’s own prices from its first-party online-ordering page on Slice (slicelife.com) — the shop’s direct-order channel, where it has been a partner for more than a decade — with the storefront 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 35-11 35th Ave store and matched them item by item. We matched only items with the same description and portion (small pies matched to Uber’s small size; heroes, pastas, salads and entrees matched one-to-one; the entree and hero versions of the same dish treated as the distinct items they are), used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded build-your-own pies, pizza sizes we could not confirm as equivalent across both channels, and beverages. Across the 52 matched items the Uber Eats prices ran, on average, about a percent above the shop’s Slice pickup prices, with many identical and several lower; we report the prices as captured and do not speculate on why a shop’s two online channels differ by a dollar here and there. 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 Sac’s Place and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Sac’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 ordering direct, and is pricing its Uber Eats menu at or near its own counter 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 while the restaurant funds the commission.

Sources

• Sac’s Place direct-order (Pickup) prices — Sac’s Place ordering page on Slice, 35-11 35th Ave, Astoria, captured 16 July 2026.
• Sac’s Place Uber Eats list prices — Sac’s Place, 35-11 35th Ave, on Uber Eats, captured 16 July 2026.
• Shop website — sacsplace.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.