Takeout may be on the way out. Increasingly customers across tax brackets said they’re done eating the costs of inflated prices on restaurant meals, which rose more than 3 percent in 2025.
The gulf in value between takeout — long positioned as the most economical and popular way to avoid cooking — and a homemade meal is only widening. Restaurant inflation nearly doubled that seen at grocery stores last year.
Some consumers who came to rely on ordering out, even doing so during larger price increases in 2022 and 2023, said this last year made them finally call it quits, as prolonged high prices continue to fatigue consumers across New England.
“It’s a broader concern about everything having become more expensive. Electricity costs, health care costs — you look across the board and the question becomes, what can you cut out? And ordering takeout food is one of those things that you can cut out,” said Alexander Murray, a Quincy wine director working on the North Shore.
An October report from research group YouGov found that seven in ten Americans still order out monthly, but more than a third say they have reduced their ordering since last year, a number that jumps higher among low-income households. Almost 70 percent of those who cut back said they were motivated by rising costs.
Murray and his wife now order between a half to a third as much takeout food from local pizza and sushi places as they did a year ago, opting now for home-cooked meals and a healthier lifestyle he said he might be reluctant to give up, even if prices rebounded.
For others, cutting back may not be easy. Nearly 40 percent of Americans had food delivered weekly in 2025, loan marketplace LendingTree found in a report issued last fall. Weekly ordering jumps to almost 60 percent among Gen Z and millennials and two-thirds of those populations classified takeout or drive-through as “essential to their lifestyle,” according to a 2025 National Restaurant Association report.
Peter Nikolakopoulos, owner of Pomodori, a sandwich and pizza shop in Newburyport, Kefi Catering, and North Shore Beefie Boys food truck, credited this reliance on takeout as part of what keeps his business running amid financial strains.
“People still don’t have time to cook. They still need to put food on the table. So luckily, the fast casual business is still kind of filling in that void,” he said.
Still, Nikolakopoulos may be losing roughly 5 to 10 percent of customers who rely on bottom dollar pricing, he said, and his order volume overall is down around 10 percent in the last few years. He also highlighted expenses like natural gas and electric, which for his stores have grown by around 40 percent each in that same time.
“It’s definitely affected the business owner more than anybody else,” he said.
Less ordering combined with high labor costs pinches his business hard on nights when he staffs a full workforce and few customers show up, further complicated by his inability to drop prices to drive traffic.
“You really can’t mark down something when [costs are] sky high,” he said.
In fact, the National Restaurant Association estimates that restaurants like his need to increase prices by over 30 percent just to maintain pre-pandemic profit margins.
Signs of hope are emerging for the restaurant industry. While profit remains slimmer, Massachusetts restaurants rebounded in revenue to above pre-pandemic levels for the first time last year.
“Prices are going to continue to go up, but we see them going up at a declining rate,” said David Portalatin, a restaurant industry adviser at global market research company Circana. The question remains whether this outlook will be enough to reel back consumers.
Last summer, Peter Gagne, who runs a campground in North Conway, N.H., was ordering out almost five times per week. Since New Year’s Day, he is down to two or three times per week, one of which will be a sit-down meal, he said, after he began to feel irritated by restaurant and delivery app prices.
“I can afford it, but I’m not wasting my money,” said Gagne, who makes $350,000 a year. “If you’re a local business and you’re treating people right . . . even if your prices are more, I’m going to frequent it more. But once you start nickel-and-diming me I’m done.” He said he mainly ordered delivery for convenience, and after multiple late or cold orders, it stopped being worthwhile. Now he picks up his own food.
Gagne also has increased his spending on sit down meals as prices for delivery in particular approach and at times eclipse costs for dining in. He and other high earners are driving 4 percent growth in on-premise dining last quarter, Portalatin said, and households over $75,000 in income have actually increased dining traffic by 2 percent or more in the same period, he said.
Conversely, households under $75,000 in income reduced ordering by the largest factor at 5 percent in late 2025, reflecting the “K-shaped economy" that has emerged in restaurants like other sectors across the economy where high-income consumers drive spending, while lower-income Americans are paring back.
Kathleen Sullivan, a retiree living in Roslindale, is ordering almost no takeout this year, in large part because of delivery fees she is forced to include in her budget as someone with mobility issues and no car.
“Unfortunately, I’m cooking the same amount because I just kind of have to,” said Sullivan, who lives off Social Security and retirement accounts on fixed income.
She estimates she was charged between $10-$15 more per order over previous years before she called it quits, marking the first time in 8½ years she has changed her spending behavior on food, she said.
According to a January survey from restaurant management system TouchBistro, nearly 70 percent of restaurants owners said they raised menu prices in the last year. Another operator, Toast, estimated prices on popular foods such as burgers and burritos are outpacing overall inflation increases, with a median price of $14.61 for burgers and $13.49 for a burrito in December.
Nikolakopoulos said he has taken to courting customers with loyalty incentives, coupons, and other deal-making measures that don’t actually lower menu prices, though he isn’t bracing for a rush of new business anytime soon.
“You kind of have to be a little creative to get the customer through your door,” he said.
Bryan Hecht can be reached at bryan.hecht@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @bhechtjournalism.