Restaurant delivery commission
The sum nobody does
Platforms hold back between 25% and 35% of every order. The question is not whether that is too much. It is that almost nobody calculates it before signing.
Delivery does not erode margin because it costs too much, but because the cost is never booked by channel.
Three things this guide settles before your next renewal.
What each platform model actually takes, tier by tier.
How to calculate the real cost of one order, not the percentage.
When delivery adds margin and when it only relocates customers.
Share held back by delivery aggregators on the ticket
Monthly cost at 200 orders of 30€ with commission at 30%
What remains of a 25€ order after commission, before food cost and packaging
What each platform
actually takes
Restaurant delivery commission is not one figure. It depends on what the platform does for you. A service that brings you visibility alone costs a fraction of one that also brings the rider. Confusing the two models is why so many owners sign without knowing what they have bought.
Marketplace without delivery
Aggregator with riders
Tiered plans
Activation
Costs outside the commission
The question is not what the commission costs. It is what reaches your till afterwards, and whether that number carries your food cost.
A marketplace and an aggregator with riders are two different products sold under the same word. The gap runs from 10% to 35%, and there is no halfway: either you deliver or they do. Before looking at the percentage, decide which of the two models your venue can carry. The same reasoning applies to table reservations, where the figures change but the logic is identical, as I set out in the guide to restaurant website cost.
What actually remains
of a 30€ order
The percentage is not the cost. It is only the first subtraction. Below is a 30€ order fulfilled by an aggregator with riders, broken down line by line to what genuinely reaches the till.
The cost of delivery is not the percentage, it is the sum of four subtractions. Until the P&L is segmented by channel, that 9.30€ margin stays mixed in with the 21.00€ from the dining room and the average conceals both. The first control to put in place is not switching platform. It is separating the channels in the accounts.
New customer
or relocated customer
Delivery creates value in one case only: when it brings demand that would not have walked in anyway. If instead it takes a customer who would have come to the table and puts them on their own sofa, you have added nothing. You have moved the same takings onto a channel that keeps a third of them.
The customer who was never coming in
Lives outside the area, works evenings, had never heard of the place. Without the platform they would never have ordered from you. The margin is thin but it is additional margin, on kitchen capacity that was otherwise sitting idle.
The customer who would have come in
Lives three streets away, knows you, came once a month. Now they order from the app because it is easier. You lose the commission, the cover, the wine, the dessert, and any chance of lifting the spend by talking to them.
The same 30€ order is worth +9.30€ or −11.70€ depending on who placed it. The commission percentage is identical in both cases, the outcome is not. Before negotiating the rate, look at where the orders come from: that figure tells you whether the channel is growing the venue or just draining it sideways.
Whose customer
is the app order
The commission is paid once per order. This one is paid forever. Whoever orders through the platform is registered by the platform, and to reach that person again you go through the platform again, paying again.
What you never see
- Full name of the customer, in the clear
- Phone and email, verified
- Delivery address, complete
- Order history, frequency, preferred times
- The contact channel. Notifications, promotions, reactivation
What you are left holding
- A first name on the ticket
- The contents of the order
- A numeric identifier
- No usable direct contact
- No way to reach them without going back through the app
A regular who orders twice a month for two years places 48 orders. If every one goes through the platform, the commission is paid 48 times on the same person. On an average 30€ order at 30%, that is 432€ handed over to serve a customer who was already yours.
Commission on a new customer is an acquisition cost, and it makes sense. The same commission on the forty-eighth order from the same customer acquires nothing. The only thing that separates the two is a channel of your own, where someone who has already ordered can come back without an intermediary.
When delivery
actually pays
Delivery is neither good nor bad. It is a high-cost channel that returns under precise conditions. If your venue meets all six of these, the commission is an investment. If two or more are missing, you are funding somebody else's volume.
You have spare capacity in the quiet hours
The kitchen sits idle from 2 to 7, or Tuesday's dining room is half empty. In those hours the labour cost is paid regardless, so a thin-margin order beats no order at all.
The menu survives twenty minutes in transit
Pizza, fried food in the right container, dry pasta dishes: they hold. A delicate plating, a rare steak, a whipped cream: they arrive badly and the customer judges you, not the rider.
Food cost sits below 30%
With commission at 30% and food cost at 35%, the remaining margin does not even cover the kitchen labour. Delivery amplifies the cost structure you already have. It does not correct it.
Orders arrive from outside your area
If the delivery postcodes all sit within a kilometre, the platform is not bringing you customers. It is reselling you your own, with a commission on top.
You have a direct channel for them to return to
The platform is for being found the first time. From the second order onwards the customer should have somewhere of yours to order from: phone, WhatsApp, a page with a readable menu and the contact details in plain sight.
Volume is not the objective
More thin-margin orders means more work, more wear, more staff, and the same profit. Delivery makes sense as an acquisition tool, not as a revenue engine.
A website does not eliminate delivery commission. Nobody can promise that without also building your logistics. What a website does is give you the place a platform-acquired customer can return to without going through it again: a menu Google can read, phone and WhatsApp in plain sight, hours that are always right. The commission on the first order stays. The one on the forty-eighth does not have to.
Five conditions out of six and delivery is an acquisition channel that pays for itself. Three or fewer and you are working for the platform. The lever in your hands is not the percentage, which you are unlikely to shift, but how many of those orders you can bring back onto your own channel. That is the reasoning behind the restaurant websites I build.
Hai i numeri.
Ora serve un preventivo vero.
Scrivimi il nome del ristorante e la zona. Ti rispondo con una valutazione concreta del sito che ti serve e di quanto costa, senza chiamate commerciali e senza impegno.