Delivery apps are very good at one thing: putting your restaurant in front of hungry people who have never heard of you. That is genuinely valuable. The problem is what they charge for it, and the fact that most owners never run the numbers on a regular customer who would have come to them directly anyway.
Let us run the numbers honestly.
The commission, in plain figures
Across Uber Eats, DoorDash and SkipTheDishes, the marketplace commission on a delivery order in Canada typically lands somewhere between 15% and 30%, depending on the plan you are on. The cheaper tiers look attractive until you notice they bury your listing; the visible tiers cost the most.
Take a $40 order on a 25% plan:
- Order total: $40.00
- App commission (25%): −$10.00
- Payment processing, baked in: usually included in that take
- What reaches you: $30.00
Now layer in food cost. If your food cost runs 30% ($12 on that order), and the app takes $10, you are left with $18 to cover labour, rent, packaging, utilities and everything else. On a lot of menus, that order is breaking even at best. You did the work, the app kept the margin.
That can still be worth it for a new customer who discovered you on the app. It is a marketing cost. The trouble starts with the regular who orders from you every Friday — and still comes through the app, so you pay the finder’s fee every single week for a customer you already earned.
The number that actually matters: repeat orders
Most restaurants do not have a discovery problem after the first year. They have a retention problem dressed up as a discovery cost. Pull your last three months of delivery orders and look at how many phone numbers or names repeat. For a settled neighbourhood spot, a large share of “app orders” are people who would happily order direct if it were just as easy.
Every one of those that moves to your own channel is the full commission back in your pocket. On the example above, that is $10 on a $40 order — recovered, every time, forever.
How to keep the reach and stop the bleed
You do not have to quit the apps. You have to stop letting them own your regulars. Three moves, in order of impact:
- Stand up ordering you actually own. A direct ordering and reservation system on your own site, where the payout goes straight to your bank and the customer’s details stay yours. This is exactly what we built PlatesReady to do — branded ordering, a kitchen order manager, live alerts and direct payouts, without handing a cut to a marketplace on every order.
- Give regulars a reason to switch. A small “order direct and save” note on the receipt, the menu, the door. Even a modest direct-only discount is cheaper than 25% forever, and it trains your best customers onto the channel you control.
- Keep the apps as a channel, not a landlord. Leave them on for discovery. Just stop relying on them for survival, and stop paying them for customers you already have.
What you keep when you own the channel
The commission is the obvious win, but it is not the only one:
- The customer list. You keep the contact and order history, so you can bring people back without paying a finder’s fee each time.
- The relationship. No marketplace sitting between you and the person eating your food.
- The data. Your best sellers, your slow nights, where the money actually goes — instead of a once-a-month payout statement.
The honest summary
Apps are a fair deal for genuine discovery and a bad deal for loyalty. Pay the commission to meet someone new; stop paying it on the people who already love you. If you want a hand setting up ordering you own and getting the delivery apps configured to work for you instead of around you, that is the core of our restaurant practice — and the first call is free.