Your Own Ordering Page vs DoorDash: The Actual Maths

Delivery apps are the most expensive customers a restaurant has ever had, and also a real source of new ones. Both things are true, which is why "delete DoorDash" is bad advice and "let the apps handle everything" is worse.

What the apps actually cost

The gap on a single order looks survivable. Annualised on real volume, it isn't.

The break-even calculation

Take a restaurant doing $10,000 a month in delivery-app orders at an average 25% commission.

• App commission: $2,500 a month — $30,000 a year.
• Same volume on your own ordering page at ~3%: $300 a month — $3,600 a year.
• Difference: roughly $26,400 a year.

A custom ordering site costs $3,000 to $5,000 once. Even if you only move a third of that volume across, you recover the build cost in about two months and keep saving after that.

Why "just build it" usually fails

Plenty of restaurants add an ordering page and see almost no orders. The reason is always the same: the app is easier. Saved card, saved address, reorder in two taps, live driver tracking. If your page asks a returning customer to type their address again, they'll use the app and you'll conclude online ordering doesn't work for you.

So the bar isn't "we have ordering". It's "ordering from us is easier than the app for someone who's ordered before". That means:

• Saved addresses and cards, with no forced account creation on the first order.
• One-tap reorder of a previous meal, prominently placed.
• Order status the customer can see without phoning the kitchen.
• A menu that loads in about a second on mobile data.
• Checkout in three screens or fewer.

How to move customers across

1. 1Put your ordering URL on every takeaway bag, receipt, napkin and window sticker. Make it short and memorable.
2. 2Beat the app price on your own channel. A 10% discount still leaves you far ahead of a 25% commission — and customers notice.
3. 3Insert a card in every app delivery: "Order direct next time and save 10%." This is the single highest-return tactic available to you.
4. 4Collect emails and phone numbers at checkout, with consent, and use them for specials. The apps will never give you this list.
5. 5Keep the apps running for discovery. Judge them on new customers acquired, not total revenue.

The part owners underestimate: your menu as web pages

A PDF menu is invisible to Google and painful on a phone. An HTML menu with a page per dish can rank for searches like "birria tacos near me" — which is exactly the intent that currently sends people to the apps.

This is free. You're already paying for the menu; putting it in real pages instead of a PDF costs nothing extra and creates dozens of phrases you can be found for. It's the first thing we change on any restaurant site.

When the apps are still the right answer

• You're brand new and nobody is searching for your name yet.
• You don't have drivers and your area has no affordable third-party delivery.
• Your delivery volume is low enough that $200 a month in commission isn't worth a project.

Below roughly $3,000 a month in app orders, fix your menu pages and local search first and leave ordering alone. Above that, the commission is funding someone else's growth instead of yours.