{"id":503,"date":"2026-01-15T13:29:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T13:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuntsintrucks.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/15\/is-takeout-dying-the-middle-ground-between-the-cost-of-eating-out-cooking-is-disappearing\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T13:29:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T13:29:05","slug":"is-takeout-dying-the-middle-ground-between-the-cost-of-eating-out-cooking-is-disappearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuntsintrucks.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/15\/is-takeout-dying-the-middle-ground-between-the-cost-of-eating-out-cooking-is-disappearing\/","title":{"rendered":"Is takeout dying? The middle ground between the cost of eating out, cooking is disappearing."},"content":{"rendered":"

Food, Honestly is a monthly column discussing how people actually eat right now \u2013 not through reviews or recipes, but through real talk about cost, convenience and everyday food decisions. We want you to participate in that discussion, by telling us what matters to you. Email allysoneatsden@gmail.com to keep the conversation going.<\/em><\/p>\n

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My house used to have Thai Tuesday.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d order takeout from our favorite local spot, happily trading time at the stove and a sink full of dishes for curries and noodles that arrived hot and delicious. At a little more than $10 a plate, it felt like a splurge — but a manageable one. An easy-to-rationalize indulgence on a random weeknight when everyone was tired and hungry and no one wanted to talk about quinoa.<\/p>\n

\"Thirteen-dollar
Thirteen-dollar meals times four people adds up to nearly $60 for my family\u2019s beloved Good Times burgers and fries. (Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Thai Tuesday has gone the way of free bread at restaurants and anyone but me changing the rolls of toilet paper at my house. Not because we stopped loving Thai food, but because dinner now comes with a side of financial anxiety. As someone who loves to eat and try new restaurants, but who also loves paying her (thankfully-locked-in-at-2.5%) mortgage on time, I keep coming back to that age-old question, but for different reasons these days: What\u2019s for dinner?<\/p>\n

Ordering takeout used to feel like opting out of effort. Lately, it feels like opting into credit card debt. I do the quiet mental math while waiting in drive-thru lines: $13 meals times four people adds up to nearly $60 for my family\u2019s beloved Good Times burgers and fries.<\/p>\n

And that’s just for fast food<\/em>. Somewhere along the way, the dinner middle ground disappeared. Picking up to-go food from the local Chinese spot or even Chipotle was once the compromise between cooking at home and sitting down at a restaurant. It cost a little more than a home-cooked meal, but not so much that it felt out of reach. But now it\u2019s adding up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had this conversation with pretty much everyone I know lately. A friend tells me her Chick-fil-A lunch ran $16. Someone else grabbed drinks and appetizers at The Cherry Cricket and left $60 lighter. Scroll Denver Food Reddit for five minutes and you\u2019ll find the requisite \u201cCan you believe this sandwich cost $20?\u201d thread.<\/p>\n

Dinner choices, like so many things right now, feel increasingly stratified. There\u2019s the cheapish and labor-intensive cooking at home and stretching leftovers, or the takeout\/eating out experience that\u2019s increasingly expensive. What\u2019s missing is that once-reliable in-between option that made weeknights easier without blowing the budget. Middle-ground food, like the middle class itself, feels like it\u2019s slipping away.<\/p>\n

Takeout used to be the pressure valve, the thing that kept us from burning out after returning from work, out of energy and willpower. Too tired to cook? Too broke for a sit-down restaurant? No problem, have some takeout tacos. But lately, even fast-casual feels like a decision you have to justify.<\/p>\n

How did that happen? Not because restaurants suddenly got greedy, or because we all collectively broke Apple Wallet when money stopped feeling real. It\u2019s not like restaurant owners banded together at their Annual Restaurant Owner Meeting and decided to spike prices for the heck of it. I don\u2019t see the owner of my local pizzeria driving around town in a Ferrari.<\/p>\n

If anything, it was inevitable. Restaurants are dealing with the same things the rest of us are — runaway rents, soaring food costs and, at least in Denver, a tipped minimum wage that\u2019s nearly $5 higher per hour than that in notoriously expensive New York City. And all of this is happening in an industry that\u2019s always operated on famously thin margins.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, a 2025 Expert Market Food & Beverage Industry Report, which surveyed restaurant professionals, found that 85 percent believe labor issues affect their business, with more than half pointing to wages and benefits as the single biggest threat to profitability. To cope, nearly two-thirds have raised prices. Almost one in five have raised them significantly.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, this is why the math stops working at mealtime. A recent Newsweek article called the food and beverage sector \u201cthe canary in the coal mine,\u201d one of the first sectors where economic anxiety shows up when people start tightening their belts. Which means that that $20 pad thai could be just the beginning.<\/p>\n

The real loss isn\u2019t any one dish or restaurant, but the ease of it all. Thai Tuesday didn\u2019t disappear at my house because it stopped being good; it disappeared because it stopped being reasonable. The middle ground it occupied ghosted us, along with the idea that a weeknight meal could be both convenient and affordable.<\/p>\n