How to Cut Food Delivery Spending in Pakistan

To cut food delivery spending, first find out the real monthly total, then set a weekly cap on orders and replace a few of them with food you prepare ahead. Most people are surprised by the number, because delivery is made of many small payments that never feel big on their own.

How do you find out how much you spend?

You cannot cut what you cannot see. The first step is a total for the last month, ideally the last three.

Open your bank statement from your bank’s app or website. Look for payments to delivery apps such as Foodpanda, and for restaurant names you order from often. Add them up. Include the delivery fee, service charges and tips if they appear as separate lines.

Doing this by hand takes a while, and shop names on statements are not always obvious. If you upload the PDF to SpentStory, it sorts each expense into categories, including Food & Dining, and the top merchants view shows how much went to each place. The same shop spelled differently on a statement is merged into one line, so you see the real number for each restaurant or app. You can also try the bank statement analyzer for a first look.

Do not stop at the total. Look at how many orders there were, and the size of each. That tells you which habit to change.

Why do delivery costs add up so fast?

Delivery rarely costs just the price of the meal. Here is an illustration with made up numbers.

• Meal: Rs 900
• Delivery fee: Rs 150
• Service charge and taxes: Rs 120
• Tip: Rs 50

That is Rs 1,220 for a meal that costs Rs 900 at the counter. If you order four times a week, that is about Rs 4,880 a week, or roughly Rs 19,500 across four weeks. The extra Rs 320 per order alone comes to about Rs 5,100 a month, and you got no extra food for it.

Small orders make it worse. When you order one drink or a single side dish, the fixed fees take a bigger share of the bill. Ordering for yourself late at night, in a rush, or when you are tired is the most expensive pattern, because you do not compare prices.

How do you set a weekly cap?

A cap works better than a promise to “order less”. It gives you a number to check.

1. Take your current monthly total and divide by four.
2. Reduce it by a third as your first target.
3. Decide how many orders that allows, for example two per week.
4. Write the cap where you can see it, such as in the note on your phone.

Keep the cap realistic. If you spend Rs 20,000 a month today, a target of Rs 13,000 is achievable. A target of zero usually collapses within a fortnight.

Use the same weeks every time. Many people find that Friday and Saturday are the busy days, so you might keep both orders for the weekend and cook on weekdays.

How can cooking in batches help?

Most delivery orders happen on the nights when you have nothing ready. Fix that and you remove many of the orders.

• Cook one or two large dishes on a Sunday, such as a curry, a rice dish or a pot of daal, and eat from them for three or four days.
• Keep a few simple backup meals in the house: eggs, bread, frozen parathas or instant noodles.
• Prepare a base such as chopped onions and tomatoes or ginger garlic paste, so cooking after work takes ten minutes.
• Buy groceries for the week in one trip, with a list, so you are not tempted by an empty kitchen on a Wednesday.

Cooking at home is not only about money. It is also about having an easy alternative when you are tired. If the alternative is a bowl of food that is already made, the app is less tempting.

What habits make delivery cheaper when you do order?

You do not have to give delivery up. Make it cheaper.

• Order for two meals at once, and eat the second one the next day.
• Avoid very small orders where the fees are a large share of the total.
• Pick up the order yourself when the restaurant is close.
• Delete the app from your home screen, so ordering takes a few extra steps.
• Wait fifteen minutes before ordering. Many cravings pass.

How do you check your progress?

At the end of each month, look at the Food & Dining category again, and the top merchants. Compare the total with last month. If it fell, keep going. If it did not, look at which orders crept back in. SpentStory’s month over month comparison is part of Pro, which is coming soon. Otherwise you can simply compare two months of statements yourself.

Do not forget that groceries are a separate cost. If your grocery spending rises as delivery falls, that is expected. What matters is that the two together are lower. For a bigger plan around your whole budget, see the 50/30/20 rule on a Pakistani salary. To get a wider view of everything you spend, read how to track monthly expenses in Pakistan.

If you want the real number before you set a cap, Upload your first statement free. Your Food & Dining total and top merchants will be there in a few minutes.