Ahh, the dreaded airport food. Everyone knows the cost of a meal miraculously jumps from ‘affordable’ to ‘I am a prince, feed me’ when you cross that magic line between security and the terminal. Evidently Torontonians were tired of this, as yesterday, -in a world first- Toronto Airport announced a partnership with Uber Eats, allowing passengers to order food directly to their gate.
The Details
Available immediately, passengers are able to order from a number of different restaurants for delivery straight to their gate. While pickings look slim in terms of variety, the more this catches on, the more restaurants will want in on this. There’s a $3.99 CAD delivery fee, and all restaurants have a max delivery window of 15-25 minutes. So if your family is anything like mine and arrives one thousand hours prior to departure, you’ll have plenty of time to order, eat, and resume staring into the middle distance while searching for meaning in your life. The food isn’t even overpriced, which means you can afford to feed your family and have your vacation too. Unfortunately for the other terminals, delivery is currently limited to Terminal 3, which hosts both international and domestic flights.
Is This The Future?
This is a first of its kind move for delivery services post-security, and has the potential to seriously shake things up. It can even have some a significant impact on food pricing at the airport, as it opens the door to new competition and breaks the monopoly food vendors hold over passengers. More than that, though, it paves the way to a number of interesting opportunities for future travelers. If this pilot is successful, we can expect to see many airports jumping on board. And if that works? Who’s to say that we’ll be limited to food deliveries? Forget your iPad at home? Order a courier and thank him profusely as he hands it over to you before you board.
Of course, this also opens up risk to all kinds of security issues. Details are scarce in regards to how Toronto Airport is screening delivery drivers, though I’m sure the process won’t be lax. I’ll be interested to see what kind of measures are put into place and how long they’ll take. Because you and I both know nothing is worse than soggy french fries.
Is anyone here flying through Toronto soon? Are you going to try this out?
H/T Daily Hive
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
AtYourGate has already been doing this successfully in the states.
Ditto, saw “ATYourGate” or something similar at BWI last year. In the US there are plenty of tasty choices from both national brands and local favorites — example, IAH has Dunkin, Pizza Hut, etc, plus Pappadeaux, a local regional Cajun food restaurant, doing both sit down and carry out.
The sole reason food past security is SO EXPENSIVE, is the rents, fees and special business taxes charged by the local government owned airports. That’s just another reminder that there is NO SUCH THING AS A “BUSINESS TAX.” We, the consumers pay all of those so-called business taxes and fees imposed by governments as they’re included in the price of the product or service. Try to prove me wrong.
These are all post-security restaurants at presumably post-security prices (plus delivery fee). Where are you getting the information that they are offering lower prices or deliveries from outside of security?