When I go out to a restaurant rather than getting a takeaway (whether I pick it up or someone else delivers it) I’m not (in my mind, at least) primarily choosing “the seating and decorations and stuff”. Rather, I prefer (1) freshly prepared food rather than food that’s been sat in takeaway containers for the last half hour, (2) food that hasn’t had to be optimized for coping well with sitting in takeaway containers for half an hour, and (3) not having to put up with any of the hassle of preparing a meal and clearing up afterwards.
To elaborate a little: 1. Many kinds of food will just not taste as good if they’ve been kept warm for half an hour after preparation. 2. Some kinds suffer badly enough that they just aren’t available for takeaway. 3. After a takeaway/delivery meal it’s still necessary to clean up dishes and cutlery and dispose of the containers and any leftover food (which may involve cleaning up the containers too, if they’re of a kind you feel you ought to recycle). If you go and sit down at the restaurant you get food that’s tastier because it’s freshly prepared, you have the option of having a meal of a sort that wouldn’t survive transporting from where it’s prepared to where you live, and you don’t have to do any cleanup at all.
Of course you may not care about those things, or may not think them worth the hassle of going out to eat, but it seems clear to me that they are genuine benefits (as you might think “seating and decorations and stuff” aren’t) that a person might reasonably be willing to pay for in time or money or both.
When I go out to a restaurant rather than getting a takeaway (whether I pick it up or someone else delivers it) I’m not (in my mind, at least) primarily choosing “the seating and decorations and stuff”. Rather, I prefer (1) freshly prepared food rather than food that’s been sat in takeaway containers for the last half hour, (2) food that hasn’t had to be optimized for coping well with sitting in takeaway containers for half an hour, and (3) not having to put up with any of the hassle of preparing a meal and clearing up afterwards.
To elaborate a little: 1. Many kinds of food will just not taste as good if they’ve been kept warm for half an hour after preparation. 2. Some kinds suffer badly enough that they just aren’t available for takeaway. 3. After a takeaway/delivery meal it’s still necessary to clean up dishes and cutlery and dispose of the containers and any leftover food (which may involve cleaning up the containers too, if they’re of a kind you feel you ought to recycle). If you go and sit down at the restaurant you get food that’s tastier because it’s freshly prepared, you have the option of having a meal of a sort that wouldn’t survive transporting from where it’s prepared to where you live, and you don’t have to do any cleanup at all.
Of course you may not care about those things, or may not think them worth the hassle of going out to eat, but it seems clear to me that they are genuine benefits (as you might think “seating and decorations and stuff” aren’t) that a person might reasonably be willing to pay for in time or money or both.