Chef’s‑Table‑style delivery spikes

Restaurants are packaging tasting menus and omakase-style meals for delivery, turning a format built for the dining room into an at-home product. (blog.doordash.com) DoorDash said in an April 30, 2024 post that Michelin-starred restaurants in New York, California, and Florida were already selling delivery versions of high-end meals, including Jōji’s curated omakase boxes and Tuome’s premium noodle kits. Its marketplace also lists a “tasting menus” category and delivery listings for sellers such as Kissaki Omakase. (blog.doordash.com) (doordash.com 1) (doordash.com 2) The format borrows from omakase, a chef-led meal where diners leave the sequence of courses to the kitchen. Restaurant Business reported on January 24, 2025 that chefs were adapting that multi-course model beyond sushi, with examples including a $150 pizza omakase in Los Angeles and a $375 pasta omakase in Philadelphia. (restaurantbusinessonline.com) Those prices put the idea closer to a special-occasion purchase than standard takeout. Restaurant Business said some omakase guests pay as much as $500 per person, while Konro in West Palm Beach charged about $400 before drinks for a 10-14 course experience. (restaurantbusinessonline.com) Restaurants are chasing that premium check at a moment when off-premise ordering dominates volume. Toast reported on November 18, 2025 that nearly 75% of restaurant traffic now happens off-premises, meaning three out of four orders are eaten away from the dining room. (pos.toasttab.com) Operators also say they need higher-margin ideas as costs stay elevated. In Toast’s 2025 survey of 712 restaurant decision-makers, 40% said improving profitability was their top goal, 20% named inflation as their biggest pain point, and 48% said they planned menu price increases if inflation continued. (pos.toasttab.com) That helps explain why packaging and presentation have become part of the product. Toast said delivery customers experience the food and its packaging, not the room or service, and DoorDash described Jōji’s omakase box as a tightly curated format designed to preserve a luxury feel in transit. (pos.toasttab.com) (blog.doordash.com) The idea is not limited to one city or one cuisine. Resy’s events listings on April 13, 2026 showed New York-area omakase experiences still proliferating, while the Michelin Guide’s U.S. restaurant database lists 1,760 restaurants, giving chefs a large pool of fine-dining brands that can experiment with off-premise formats. (resy.com) (guide.michelin.com) What changes next is less about whether diners will order food at home and more about how much of the restaurant ritual can survive the trip. The winners will be the operators who can make a box on a doorstep feel closer to a chef’s counter than a weeknight delivery bag. (pos.toasttab.com) (blog.doordash.com)