It’s 8pm on a Wednesday. The fridge contains three eggs and a bottle of oyster sauce that probably should have been thrown out months ago. You could cook or tapau, but after a long day, the food delivery app on your phone starts looking tempting.

Ordering in is the easy choice, especially when you cannot stand the thought of washing up after. It’s also the priciest one, and with the fees creeping up, the ‘Confirm’ button starts to feel a bit heavier. Just how much extra are you willing to pay for the convenience?

If Prices Go Up, Most Say They Will Cut Back

Consumer research company Rakuten Insight asked 1,003 Malaysians in July what they would do if food delivery and e-hailing prices keep climbing because of fuel costs. The survey found that 82% of respondents would change their behaviour in some way if delivery became more expensive. 8% said they would continue ordering as usual because the convenience was worth paying for.

28% said they would switch to cheaper alternatives such as public transport, driving themselves, or cooking at home. 27% said they would use the services less often, 17% would order only when there’s a promotion running, and 10% said they would stop using delivery services altogether.

The survey also found that delivery is one of the first expenses people reconsider when costs start rising. Asked what they would reduce first, 56% of respondents pointed to dining out, while 31% said they would cut back on food deliveries.

Between April and July, Malaysians started feeling better about spending money again. But that did not help every kind of spending equally. More people said they were ready to eat out at restaurants, while fewer said the same about ordering delivery. On the survey’s own scale, eating out went up by 5.3 points, while delivery only went up by 1.5.

Rakuten Insight thinks the fees are the reason. When you order delivery, you can see the extra charges being added to your bill. When you eat at a restaurant, you only pay for the food. Delivery is also easy to give up, because cooking at home or driving out to buy your own food costs you nothing extra.

An earlier edition of the survey in March also found that convenience ranked last, at 13%, among the things respondents cared about when money was tight, behind price, promotions, and brand trust.

Wah, So Many Fees On One Chicken Rice 

Delivery is easy to cut partly because the extra cost is so visible on the receipt. The app total climbs because you’re paying for the food, the delivery, and the platform’s service fee. The food itself is often listed above what the restaurant charges walk-in customers. The delivery fee changes depending on distance and demand. Then there’s whatever you choose to tip.

Each charge looks reasonable on its own. RM3 of markup, RM5 of delivery, RM1.50 of service fee. Nobody argues over RM1.50. Stack them together, and your RM12 chicken rice has become RM22 without a single extra piece of chicken appearing on the plate.

Using that same RM12 chicken rice from a shop about three kilometres away, the three options work out like this. (Author’s note: Prices are based on my own ordering habits, and yes, I order GrabFood a lot. Guilty as charged!)

How You Get The Meal	Rough Total Cost	The Trade-Off
Delivered To Your Door	RM21 to RM23	The most convenient, but also the most expensive
Tapau Yourself	RM13 to RM14	Time, petrol, and possibly parking
Cooked At Home	RM5 to RM7 per portion	Shopping, cooking, and washing up

Tapau can save you most of that extra cost, even after factoring in petrol or parking. The price on the menu is also the price you pay, without extra fees being added on top.

Cooking brings the cost down even further because one grocery trip can cover several meals instead of just one. If you normally order lunch twice a week, replacing those eight deliveries each month with home-cooked meals could save roughly RM120.

Cooking At Home Cheap, But Not Free

Cooking at home clearly saves you money. What it doesn’t save you is time.

Cooking takes more time than just the minutes you spend standing at the stove. There’s the grocery run on the weekend, and then the washing up afterwards. A twenty-minute dinner is rarely a twenty-minute job once all of that is counted in.

If you’re already facing an hour in traffic after a full day at work, cooking dinner from scratch is a big ask, and the app is the easier option.

Those weekend hours could be earning money if you’ve got freelance work or a side hustle going. You might as well order in if you earn anything above RM120 a month.  

Lunch Break Only One Hour, Where Got Time

For office workers, the difference can be even more noticeable during lunch breaks. Walking out, queuing, ordering, eating, and walking back can take up the full hour.

Order in and eat at your desk instead, and you get most of that hour back, five days a week. If you’re on a fixed salary, those hours may not turn into extra pay, but they can mean finishing your work and leaving on time instead of staying back. 

Still Can Order, Just Jimat Sikit

Giving up delivery completely isn’t the only way to save money on food. Most of the extra cost comes from the fees rather than the food itself, and those are often the easiest part to reduce.

Batch your orders where you can. If delivery and platform fees come to RM6.50 an order from your favourite restaurant, ordering from there four separate times costs you RM26 in fees alone. One order from the same place for the whole household costs RM6.50, split three or four ways. Those fees change with distance, time of day, availability of delivery riders, and how busy the restaurant is, which is also why ordering from restaurants closer to you keeps the delivery fees down.

Many respondents from the Rakuten Insight survey said they would only order during promotions, which brings down the food price rather than the fees. Pairing those discounts with a credit card that offers cashback on food delivery or dining can stretch your money even further. It only takes a few seconds to check before you order.

Finally, set yourself a monthly budget. Under the 50/30/20 budgeting approach, food delivery falls under your “wants” alongside dining out and entertainment. Decide on an amount you’re comfortable spending each month, and you can order without second-guessing yourself.

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