Kate Hawkesby: Our kids are wasting money on Uber Eats

I am just wondering how many parents are , like me, watching a generation of kids who don’t or won’t cook.
And how much of this has been exacerbated by Covid?
What I mean by that is, yes during lockdown people cooked from home more, but they also ditched the supermarkets a bit and got into meal kits and takeaways. We know this from a recent Herald survey which looked at life ‘post-Covid’ for Kiwis.
Feels weird saying ‘post-Covid’ given we didn’t really have Covid here like other countries did, but also are we ever really ‘post-Covid?’ I think it’s something we’re going to have to live with forever. But this Lifestyle Survey by Colmar Brunton and the Herald found that how we eat has changed.
I know for our family, a couple of our kids became hooked on Uber Eats. Easy, convenient, you can get what you feel like, you don’t have to leave the house, you don’t have to waste time cooking. There are no dishes.
Our kids got dependent on it for their flat, it was the easiest solution to the ‘what to have for dinner’ question and they now seem unable to shake the habit. This is despite their mother banging on to them endlessly about what an expensive waste of money that is, and how they really should cook for themselves.
Thing is, they tried the supermarket shopping and cooking thing, and decided they didn’t like it.
Too time consuming, too hard. I’m sure blowing up their microwave didn’t help, but that’s another story.
So I wasn’t surprised to see in this survey that actually this is typical for this age group.
This is their new normal. Those “aged 18 to 24 said in the survey that would order Uber Eats on a weekly basis.“
And it’s not just the convenience of Uber Eats, the meal kit business also took off post Covid.
Meal kit businesses ‘soared in popularity’ apparently. “Around a fifth of under 50’s are using meal kits more now than a year ago.”
I would have thought all that time during lockdowns baking sourdough and making endless pasta, that we would have enjoyed provisioning and making our own food, but apparently not.
There are large chunks of us who want the convenient and easy way out, and I know at least two of our kids fit that bill.
It’s a time poor thing I guess, but it’s also a variety thing. You may not know how to cook a good Indian curry or a yummy Thai dish, but you sure can order it in from an expert in about 20 minutes. So it’s not hard to see why that’s appealing.
I’m old school though, and admittedly I’m not in that age demographic of die-hard weekly Uber Eats orderers, so it’s hardly surprising I’m not a huge fan of takeaways.
But to try and convince my kids about the merits of making your own food from scratch? Disappointingly, it’s a battle I‘m losing, and Uber Eats is winning.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.