DoorDash and Uber Eats Lean on Superusers Spending Up to $2,400 a Year

The median big spender on food delivery — someone aged 35 to 44 in the top 10% of consumers — shells out $2,400 a year on apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats, according to Federal Reserve data. That works out to roughly $200 a month, or $46 a week, arriving via a delivery bag rather than a shopping cart.

The numbers come from the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances, which runs every three years and asks 5,000 households how they earn, spend, save, and invest. The latest round was collected in 2025 and released in October.

Jeremy Horpedahl, an associate professor of economics at the University of Central Arkansas, broke the results into spending percentiles — groups of 10% each, from the lowest spenders to the highest. What he found explains a lot about why delivery apps keep posting strong numbers while traditional retailers sweat.

Who actually pays for delivery?

For the eight bottom percentiles, the median respondent spent $0 on food delivery. Many people who answered the survey appear to have never used a delivery app at all, Horpedahl said.

The money sits at the top. Consumers under 35 in the top 10% of spenders spent a median of $1,800 a year on delivery. For those between 35 and 44, the median hit $2,400.

"Those are where probably most of their revenue is coming from," Horpedahl said of the apps. "It's super important for them to retain those customers."

So the customer base skews young — consumers in their mid-40s or younger — and concentrates spending in a narrow band of heavy users ordering hundreds or thousands of dollars of food a year.

What does this change for the retail picture?

It squares a puzzle that's been nagging the sector. Walmart and Dollar General have both warned in recent quarters that shoppers are pulling back or hunting for better value, and that trend extends even to households with six-figure incomes, the retailers have said. Yet DoorDash and Uber keep reporting steady order and spending growth with no sign of a similar retreat.

Horpedahl's read: the two trends aren't contradictory. "It could be true that 95% of people are pulling back," he said. "But if this group is still spending, that's why Uber Eats could be saying 'Yes, we're still seeing strong revenue.'"

In other words, delivery apps don't need a broad consumer recovery. They need their superusers to keep ordering.

A DoorDash spokesperson pushed back gently on reading too much into one survey. "Surveys like this are a helpful snapshot, but they capture only one slice of how people use DoorDash today," the spokesperson said. The company has recently added more grocers and other retailers to its platform, the spokesperson added, and it's growing its paid DashPass membership — a tool aimed squarely at retaining frequent users.

The caveats — and the opportunity

The Fed's question doesn't name DoorDash or Uber specifically. It covers food delivery broadly, including old-school pizza delivery. Horpedahl also notes it likely misses customers who ordered once or twice and forgot about it while answering.

For the companies, the data cuts two ways. There's headroom in converting first-time users, since so many households have never ordered at all. But the real prize is poaching rivals' heavy spenders.

"If you get just one percent of those going to the other company, that would be huge," Horpedahl said.

That framing explains the current land grab — grocery partnerships, retail expansions, membership programs like DashPass. The apps aren't chasing everyone. They're fighting over a small pool of customers worth up to $2,400 each per year, and every percentage point of that pool that switches platforms moves real revenue.