Indian 'dopamine sites' let users experience shopping's thrill without spending

You open an app called FoodNeverComes on a Tuesday afternoon. The hunger may be real or it may not be—the distinction hardly matters anymore. You scroll through 22 cuisines, select butter chicken and bibimbap, watch the total climb in your cart, and proceed to checkout. A tracker updates: your rider is on the way. Then comes a call from an AI-generated voice. He's outside your building but can't find the street. Except there is no rider, no building, no food. The entire transaction exists only on your screen. The site's tagline is unambiguous: "The food never comes—but the dopamine does."

FoodNeverComes was built by Purvansh Parmar and Anshul Sharma, two 26-year-old software developers from Udaipur in Rajasthan. Since launching in June, the site has drawn more than 2.7 million visitors. It now hosts 22 kitchens, 327 dishes drawn from 319 real recipes, each with fabricated prices, simulated checkouts, and fictional delivery sequences. The site belongs to a growing internet genre called "dopamine sites"—platforms that recreate the rituals of consumption without the consumption itself. Similar services have emerged across South Korea and beyond: Dopamine Shop, Fakehaul, and others that mimic food delivery, retail shopping, and travel booking. What unites them is a deliberate separation of the act of ordering from the act of receiving.

Parmar and Sharma arrived at the concept through their own habits. The two met in a computer science program and later founded NeuroX AI, a software and content company. They noticed a pattern in their lives and those around them: online shopping carts perpetually full of items never purchased. Sharma would browse electronics, add them to his basket, and abandon the cart. Parmar's mother did the same with household goods, saying she would order later but never did. Parmar's own relationship with consumption centered on food delivery. During a two-month project in Mumbai, he spent between 5,000 and 10,000 rupees weekly on delivery orders—Belgian waffles, ice cream, once a large jar of sour cream he barely wanted and gave to friends. He came to suspect that the craving was not for the food itself but for the ritual of ordering it.

The psychology underlying this behavior is more complex than simple impulse. Ravi Dhar, director of the Yale Center for Customer Insights, describes it as "anticipatory utility"—the pleasure derived from looking forward to consumption. This sensation is especially potent with items that capture imagination: new shoes, a holiday, a restaurant meal. The anticipation itself becomes part of the experience, and sometimes exceeds the satisfaction of actual ownership. "The thrill is in the chase," Dhar explains. Once the object is acquired and tension resolves, psychological arousal drops. Neuroscience complicates the popular notion that dopamine is simply the brain's pleasure chemical. Kent Berridge, a University of Michigan neuroscientist who developed the theory of "wanting" and "liking," argues these are separate processes. Wanting is motivational pull; liking is the pleasure of possession. Dopamine drives the first, not the second. Tempting products online activate this wanting system, which Berridge calls "incentive salience." We can pursue something intensely even when the eventual pleasure is weak—we want it more than we ultimately like it.

Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford addiction psychiatrist and author of Dopamine Nation, makes a similar distinction. "To call dopamine a chemical of pleasure is an oversimplification," she said. "Dopamine is the molecule that says 'get more of' or 'do more of', but it doesn't necessarily equate to pleasure." She emphasizes the role of ritual. Cues and habits attached to a reward become reinforcing in their own right. In addiction, the routines leading up to drug use can eventually matter as much as the drug itself. Anticipation of reward can be as reinforcing as the reward. The question then becomes whether repeatedly ordering imaginary food satisfies a real craving. Berridge suggests the ritual could produce a dopamine hit and strong wanting, along with faint conditioned liking, but he expects novelty to wear off quickly. He would be surprised if many users placed more than about ten imaginary orders. Dhar is more optimistic, noting that evidence from simulated consumption in gaming shows it can be highly effective as a release valve.

Yet an equally plausible danger exists: the ritual may simply rehearse the behavior it is supposed to replace. Lembke says evidence remains incomplete, and effects may vary by individual. Her own assessment is that over time, the sites could reinforce the same addictive neural networks they simulate. "The one upside, though, is that people using these sites have on some level already admitted to themselves they have a problem, and that admission is often the first step in recovery," she added. Sharma conducted an accidental experiment when his phone screen cracked. He spent a week on Amazon comparing six or seven replacements, adding them to his cart, then repaired his handset without purchasing. "I enjoyed the process of research and putting the phones in the cart," he said. "Eventually I didn't buy a phone." He now recognizes the same pattern in himself on food delivery sites, particularly when anxious—filling baskets without checking out. "I realised that I suffer from this problem," he acknowledged.

Parmar and Sharma have expanded beyond food. A second site, TripNeverLeaves, allows users to plan a complete holiday—destination, flight, seat selection, hotel, activities—then sends them on a virtual flight that never leaves the runway. It has attracted more than 100,000 visitors. The founders say the sites are not revenue-driven; they plan to keep them free and eventually share data with neuroscientists and psychologists. Lembke raises particular concern about younger users. The developing brain is a vulnerable brain. In childhood and early adolescence, the prefrontal cortex—which acts as a brake on appetite—is not yet fully connected to emotion centers. Teenagers are therefore more likely to take risks without appreciating consequences and more likely to become addicted to reinforcing substances and behaviors once exposed. What began as a joke about ordering too much food has opened a larger question about modern consumption: if so much of the thrill arrives before possession, do we need the thing at all?