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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Lifestyle
Maddy Mussen

Why do Londoners eat so much cucumber? What your borough orders the most on Deliveroo

Have you ever wondered what weird grocery items people order on Deliveroo? Here, I’ll give you one for free: During the pandemic, I regularly used to order a four pack of beer, a Covid test and some Rowntree's Randoms from Sainsbury’s and then have the rider throw it up to me on my first floor balcony. Once I ordered £110 of booze to a house party at 4am. Now, I mainly just order onions and almond milk. The duality of woman.

But according to new data from Deliveroo, onions and almond milk aren’t the top order for my borough. In fact, they’re not the top order for any borough. Thanks to Deliveroo’s 2024 ordering statistics, we at The Standard have been able to pry into what you lazy Londoners have had ferried to your house, and some of the items are quite surprising.

For instance, one of the most commonly ordered items across the entirety of London is a whole cucumber. Why? What meals could you possibly be making that demands a cucumber that often? Onions, I get. Onions are the base of nearly every meal. Cucumber is rogue.

The Sainsbury’s meal deal was most popular in Tower Hamlets (PA)

As for where people are ordering all these cucumbers: Hammersmith and Fulham love them, apparently, with whole cucumbers topping their most ordered item lists for 2024. The same can be said for Lewisham and Westminster, who also had the elongated fruit as their most popular item.

Also on the list for weird fruit orders is the borough of Camden, who have ordered more ready-to-eat papaya from Whole Foods than any other grocery this year. This is a frankly insane statistic, surely skewed by a papaya lover chowing down on eight a day, or someone who drunkenly fell asleep on their phone and ordered 300 instead of three.

And while you might have expected Hackney to be raking in the Torres truffle crisps and Perello olives, turns out they’re a little more basic than that. All they really want to order is sea salt crisps from Co-op, all the time.

Location

Shop

Grocery Item

Camden

Whole Foods

Ready to Eat Papaya

Greenwich

Waitrose

Essential Chicken Thighs

Hackney

Co-op

Sea Salt Crisps

Hammersmith and Fulham

Waitrose

Whole Cucumber

Islington

Sainsbury’s

Eggs

Kensington and Chelsea

Whole Foods

Kimchi

Lambeth

Co-op

White Wine

Lewisham

Waitrose

Whole Cucumber

Southwark

Sainsbury’s

Feta Cheese

Wandsworth

Morrisons

Semi Skimmed Milk

Westminster

Waitrose

Whole Cucumber

Tower Hamlets

Sainsbury’s

Lunchtime Meal Deal

Meanwhile, the bougiest most-bought item can predictably be found in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, who have been ordering kimchi from Whole Foods like there’s no tomorrow. And the booziest borough is apparently Lambeth, who are absolutely loving ordering their white wine via Deliveroo.

The laziest borough of all may be Tower Hamlets, though, who are getting their meal deals ferried to them via the turquoise steeds, instead of popping out to Sainos themselves. Cheeky sods!

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