Sophie’s Cuban Sells the Same Food on Uber Eats — at One Flat Markup Across the Entire Menu

8 min read  ·  1,661 words

SOPHIE’S CUBAN CUISINE (76 Fulton St, Financial District, Manhattan) — Cuban / Caribbean. Case study #13. Prices compared between Sophie’s own commission-free pickup menu and the same restaurant’s Uber Eats storefront, both at 76 Fulton Street, captured the same day.

El Cubano — the pressed roast-pork-and-ham sandwich that is the reason to walk into a Sophie’s — costs $12.39 at the counter on Fulton Street. Order the identical sandwich from the same kitchen on Uber Eats and it is $13.88, before a single delivery or service fee is added. We priced 43 of Sophie’s items side by side, and found something unusually clean: every single one is marked up by almost exactly the same amount — 12%. Not roughly 12% on average, with cheap items spared and expensive ones gouged. Twelve percent on the $19.49 oxtail stew, 12% on the $12.39 Cubano, 12% on a $3.79 empanada, and 12% on a 50-cent side of green sauce. It is not a set of pricing decisions. It looks like a single dial turned once.

The markup

Across all 43 matched items the markup ran from 11.9% to 12.0% — a mean of 12.0% and a median of 12.0%. The spread is so tight it is effectively flat: sandwiches at $12.39 become $13.88; entrees at $16.29 become $18.24; the salmon plate goes $18.29 to $20.48; a beef empanada $3.79 to $4.24; even the tiny extras move in lockstep, a $0.50 side of sauce to $0.56 and a $2.25 cup of marinated onions to $2.52. A basket of all 43 items costs $364.36 on Sophie’s own menu and $408.05 on Uber Eats — a flat 12.0% more for the same food.

One detail rules out the obvious defense. On Uber Eats we switched the storefront from Delivery to Pickup — where there is no driver and no delivery to pay for — and the prices did not move: El Cubano was still $13.88, the mojo pork still $18.24. If the 12% were covering the cost of delivery, it would disappear when you go pick the food up yourself. It does not. The markup is attached to the food, not to the trip.

What the restaurant nets

Here is where the flat 12% turns against the restaurant. When a customer orders through Uber Eats, the platform keeps a commission — a figure that can run to roughly 30% at the top of its fee structure. On a $13.88 Cubano, a 30% commission is about $4.16, leaving Sophie’s roughly $9.72 — well under the $12.39 a walk-in hands over. To simply break even against a 30% commission, a restaurant would need to mark a dish up about 43%. Sophie’s marks its food up 12%. By our calculation that leaves it netting roughly $2 less per dish than at the counter — and it comes out behind on all 43 of the 43 items we checked.

In the framework this series uses, that makes Sophie’s a pass-through case that does not quite pass through (what we label Type A, edging toward Type B, “absorbing”). The customer pays more — and will pay more still once delivery, service, any regulatory fee, tax and a tip are added at checkout — while the restaurant appears to take home less than it would have. It is among the more sympathetic versions of the story. We do not know which commission tier Sophie’s is actually on; that is a private contract term Uber does not disclose. But the shortfall is not simply an artifact of the top rate: even at New York’s capped 15% delivery commission, a dish needs to be marked up about 17.6% just to break even, and Sophie’s 12% does not reach it. At anything from the cap upward, a 12% menu markup does not cover the 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 basic listing and service and 3% for card processing — limits the City Council first made permanent in 2021. A 2025 amendment (Int 762-B) now lets platforms add an optional up to 20% for “enhanced services” such as wider delivery zones, top-of-search placement and promotions, which can push the total a restaurant pays toward roughly 43%. That same legislation explicitly protects a restaurant’s right to charge more on a delivery app than in its dining room — which is exactly the lever Sophie’s has pulled, uniformly, across its whole menu. None of those caps touch what you pay in the app: the menu markup and the consumer-side fees sit outside the commission the law regulates. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection continues to review delivery-app fees. That gap between what the law caps and what the customer actually pays is what this series keeps measuring.

By the numbers

• Items matched: 43 (same description and portion; combo meals, empanada multi-packs and any item Uber lists as “priced by add-ons” — soups, house salads and drinks — excluded)
• Markup: mean 12.0%, median 12.0%, range 11.9%–12.0% — the tightest, most uniform markup we have recorded in this series
• Basket: $364.36 at the counter, $408.05 on Uber Eats (+12.0%)
• Pickup on Uber Eats costs the same as delivery — the 12% is a markup on the food, not a delivery charge
• Break-even markup at a 30% commission: ~43% (about 17.6% even at NYC’s capped 15%); Sophie’s marks up 12%, so it nets roughly $2 less per dish than dine-in
• Items on which the restaurant nets less than dine-in: 43 of 43
• Story type: A (pass-through), edging toward B (absorbing)

Method

On 15 July 2026, USA Times captured Sophie’s own prices from its first-party, commission-free pickup ordering site (order.sophiescuban.com) for the Fulton Street store — the same prices charged at that counter. The same day, we captured Uber Eats list prices for the same location (76 Fulton St) from the rendered storefront, and confirmed on the app that the Pickup price equals the Delivery price. We matched only items with the same description and portion, used list prices rather than promotional prices, and excluded combo meals, empanada multi-packs and any item Uber lists as “priced by add-ons” (soups, several house salads and all beverages) where a single per-item price could not be isolated. First-party prices vary slightly by location — the Moro rice is $6.99 at Fulton Street and $6.49 at the Union Square store, for instance — which is why both sides of every comparison here are drawn from the same Fulton Street shop. The “restaurant nets @30%” column is an analytical estimate that applies a 30% commission to the Uber Eats price; it is our interpretation of the economics, not a figure disclosed by Uber, and the true commission tier for this restaurant is not public. Delivery fee, service fee, any New York regulatory fee, tax and tip are added at a logged-in checkout; this automated audit does not place orders and did not capture them. Prices can change and can vary by address; figures reflect the moment of capture.

Right of reply

USA Times contacted Sophie’s Cuban Cuisine and Uber for comment and will update this report with any response. Sophie’s was asked the one question that decides this story — after Uber’s commission, does it net more, less or the same as a walk-in? — and Uber was asked about its commission tiers in New York and whether it tracks the gap between in-store and in-app menu prices.

Sources

• Sophie’s counter / first-party prices — Sophie’s Cuban Cuisine online-ordering menu, Fulton St, captured 15 July 2026.
• Sophie’s Uber Eats list prices — Sophie’s Cuban Cuisine — Fulton Street on Uber Eats, captured 15 July 2026 (Pickup price confirmed equal to Delivery price).
• 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.