How much DoorDash and Uber Eats really cost your restaurant

In the U.S., delivery almost always runs through DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub. They're convenient for customers and put you in front of millions of people, but for the restaurant they carry a price that, line item by line item, often exceeds every other variable cost. The problem isn't using them: it's depending on them 100%. In this guide we'll look at what they really cost, with concrete numbers, and how to bring margin and customers back to your side.

The commission isn't a single line item

When you hear "30% commission," that's only the main line item. On a typical delivery order in the U.S., you generally pay:

• Marketplace commission: 15-30% of the order value, depending on the plan you choose on the platform.
• Marketing and sponsored listings: another 5-15% if you want to appear higher in the results.
• Payment processing on some plans, plus per-order fees and chargeback fees.

Added together, these line items can push the real cost past 30% per order. On a dish sold for $18, you might be left with a little over $12 before you've even paid for ingredients, staff, and rent.

Let's run the numbers for a month

Picture 600 delivery orders a month with an average ticket of $32. That's $19,200 in gross revenue. With an average platform cost of 28%, about $5,400 a month goes out the door, which is over $64,000 a year. For many restaurants, that's a full-time employee's salary, burned up in commissions.

The hidden cost: customer data

The biggest damage, though, isn't on your paycheck: it's that you don't get the data on who orders. Name, email, phone, what they order, how often they come back — it all stays with the platform. The result: you can't send a promotion, you can't win back someone who hasn't returned in months, you can't build real loyalty. Every time that customer reorders, you pay again to "re-rent" them. It's like paying rent on a customer base that should already be yours.

Why the direct channel changes the math

An order moved to your direct channel doesn't zero out the costs, but it slashes them dramatically: you only pay card processing (typically around 3%) instead of 30%. On that $32 order, that's over $8 in margin coming back to you. And above all, the customer becomes yours: you can bring them back without paying a toll every time.

What you can do starting tomorrow

• Open a direct ordering channel (website and chat) with minimal commissions, to run alongside the aggregators.
• Keep your customer data: every direct order builds your contact list.
• Use loyalty and targeted promotions to bring back people who've already ordered, instead of re-buying them every time.
• Incentivize the switch to direct: a discount on the second order costs far less than 30% forever.

Aggregators are still useful for getting discovered by new customers. But they shouldn't be your only channel: every order moved to direct is margin back in the till and a customer who truly becomes yours.

With QLF you get direct orders via chat and keep customers and data on your side →