Eltham - a suburb ignored by the trend

I was going to write a post - inspired by an article in yesterday's Age - about upmarket online takeaway services. Apparently by the end of the week - Thursday - we are all getting tired of cooking and resort to takeaway. And, of course, in the digital age, some people have seen this as an opportunity to create an online business. The main ones seem to be Deliveroo, Foodora, Menulog and UberEATS - and they all have apps so are available at your fingertips.

The idea seems to be that these companies have signed up various restaurants to provide gourmet takeaway meals. You place your order online and within half an hour or so it is delivered to your door. The restaurants pay the company a commission and the customer pay the company for the delivery. A win/win for the online company. And it's a good idea isn't it? I must confess I don't resort to takeaway these days but there was a period in my life - working mother of teenage children with a husband who was often away on business - when I frequently resorted to chicken and chips from the chicken shop. OK the chips weren't very healthy, but I reckoned it was healthier than McDonalds. Occasionally we had pizza as an alternative. Also considered a relatively healthy option. And we didn't do it every day. But aside from the guilt of not properly doing my job of cooking dinner for my family, there was also the guilt of the takeaway food not being very healthy. Now if you had a choice of something gourmet that would be very tempting. It's a booming industry it seems. But not in Eltham.

I thought I would check them out. You start by putting in your address - and very encouragingly my address always appeared in a pop-up menu, but when I hit search, or submit - I inevitably got the message that they don't operate in my area. Which I guess is not a big surprise. We are out on the edge of Melbourne after all, and we are not a 'trendy' suburb. But we do have lots and lots of cafés and restaurants within a half-hour from here. The online deliverers all said they are expanding, and no doubt they are. I wonder who will get here first? Do they not know that there is money and restaurants out here?

We do have restaurants that do takeaway of course, but we have to deal direct with them. There is no centralised service. And with some of them you may have to actually go and pick the food up yourself.

In the meantime if you want to go with the trend you have to live in a trendy suburb.

Part two of this post is to contemplate the history of takeaway food. Well it's been around forever. And you can sort of see why when you think about it. The poor, and apparently even some of the wealthier, did not have kitchens in their houses, and therefore no means to cook food - unless you took it to the local baker to cook it there. So there was an endless number of street vendors and takeaway places cooking food for the populace. In Pompeii there were over 200 such places - not restaurants - there was nowhere to sit and eat - but kitchens that cooked food for sale. The tradition of street vendors and street food continued over the centuries, and indeed continues to this day in most of the world. The west has retreated somewhat from this, although it seems to be coming back with night markets, popups and takeaway sandwich bars, not to mention the fast food chains that we all know. Luke Nguyen recently dedicated a TV series to the street food of Asia, so it's not a new thing. And the tiffin carriers of Mumbai are world famous. Mostly though we now either eat at home or in the venue that has prepared the food - with the exception of the takeaways like fish and chip shops, chicken shops, McDonalds, and takeaway pizza places. Now, apparently we are getting classier kitchens that simply do takeaway for these online companies - after all this would cost less than running a restaurant. But again - not in Eltham. Maybe there is a business opportunity there - on a small scale anyway.

Interesting isn't it how the job market changes too? For there are a large number of delivery people required to service this industry. And kitchen slaves to do the cooking. Not to mention the tech whizzes to create the software that runs it all. And yes, most of these are not top jobs - but then it is the people at the bottom of the work heap who are losing jobs. Wouldn't it be better to cycle around delivering food rather than work on a factory production line or clean toilets? Not that I know anything about the relative rates of pay - probably very poor.

Anyway - Eltham - you are not trendy.