Direct ordering or delivery apps: the real cost

A delivery app takes a large share of every order before the money reaches you, and it keeps the customer's details. Direct ordering through your own website costs you a monthly fee, sometimes with a small share of card orders on top, and the customer's details stay with you.

A marketplace order and a direct order look identical from the kitchen. The difference is what happens to the money and to the customer. That is the whole comparison, and everything below is detail.

Follow one order

Say a customer orders £24 of food on a Friday night.

Through a marketplace. They open the app, possibly searching for you by name. They pay the app. The app takes its cut of the sale, holds the money, and pays you on its own schedule. Your name is on the bag. Their account has the customer's phone number, address and order history. Next Friday the app may show that customer a promoted competitor first.

Through your own site. They open your page, pay through your own payment provider, and the money lands in your account on your provider's normal schedule. Your ordering system charges whatever its deal says: a monthly fee, and with some systems a small share of card orders. Your customer list has the customer.

What each one is genuinely good at

The marketplaces are good at one thing that direct ordering is bad at, and it is worth being honest about it: they put you in front of people who have never heard of you. That is a real service. A new opening with no reputation gets orders on day one from an app, and would get none from its own website.

Direct ordering is good at the opposite thing. It serves the customer who already knows your name without handing a marketplace its cut. It is worthless for discovery and excellent at repeats.

Which is why most restaurants run both. Not as a compromise, but because the two channels do different jobs.

The honest ledger

Marketplace, in its favour: brings new customers, no monthly cost in quiet periods, their delivery drivers if you do not have your own, their marketing spend, and a customer base that already trusts the checkout.

Marketplace, against: a cut of every order forever, including from your regulars. You do not hold the customer relationship. Your prices often have to rise on the app to absorb the cut, which makes your own channel look expensive by comparison. You compete for attention with everyone else on the platform.

Direct, in its favour: no marketplace cut, only your ordering system's own fees, so far more of every order stays with you. You hold the customer list. Your own branding rather than a listing in a grid. Payments into your own account at your own rates. You can price honestly.

Direct, against: you pay in quiet months. It finds you nobody. You have to tell customers it exists, which takes effort and repetition. Delivery is your problem if you do not have drivers.

When to be careful with the arithmetic

Two mistakes make direct ordering look better than it is.

The first is assuming every marketplace order would have happened anyway. Some of them are genuinely the app's customers, and they will not follow you. Only count the repeats when you do the sums.

The second is comparing a commission rate directly against your ordering system's fees and declaring the difference a saving. Marketplace commission usually includes card processing. An ordering system's fees usually do not, and your card provider still charges you. Add that back before you decide.

There is a mistake in the other direction too: judging the marketplace on its percentage alone. The cost of not holding your customers' details is real, it just does not appear on any invoice.

A sensible order of operations

1. Keep the listing running. Do not make a dramatic exit.
2. Get your own ordering working properly, so it is genuinely as easy to use as the app.
3. Point your Google listing, your bags, your receipts and your social posts at it.
4. Watch which orders move. Regulars go first, and some never do.
5. Reassess in three months with real numbers rather than a projection.

You can do that arithmetic with your own figures in our commission calculator.

What this looks like with Tekeats

You get your own ordering website and your own apps, your menu with its real choices, and card payments through your own payment account, so we never hold your money. Orders arrive on a screen at the counter and print as dockets in the kitchen. We charge a monthly fee per site plus 2.5% of the items on completed card orders. On the £24 order above, paid by card, that is 60p, added to your monthly invoice rather than taken from the payment. Delivery fees, charges and tips are not counted, and cash orders cost nothing extra.

We do not deliver food and we have no drivers, so if you need someone else's riders, that is what the marketplaces are for. We also do not have a till. Book a demo and we will tell you honestly whether it fits.