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Unit economics

What delivery platforms actually charge a restaurant

The commission is one line on a statement that has a dozen. The rest — per-order charges, the money you put into promotions, advertising, refunds, the platform’s own VAT — is disclosed somewhere in the agreement and itemised somewhere on the invoice, but almost nobody adds it all up. Nothing is hidden; it is simply never reconciled. This page lists every category a delivery platform can charge a restaurant for, where each one appears in your own account, and the one-week check that turns the list into your real number.

By Alex · Delivery Lift Published Reading time 9 min

Nothing is hidden. It is just never added up

Restaurants talk about hidden fees on delivery apps, and the word is wrong in a way that matters. There is no secret charge. Every line exists in the agreement you signed, and every line is itemised on the statement you can download from your own account. What makes them feel hidden is that they arrive in four places at once — the agreement, the monthly invoice, the payouts report and the advertising report — and the restaurant only ever looks at one number: what landed in the bank.

That matters because it decides what to do about it. If the charges were secret, the answer would be a lawyer. They are not, so the answer is an evening with your own statements and a calculator. The gap between what the dashboard calls revenue and what the bank received is not a mystery. It is a list, and the list is finite.

This page does not publish the commission rate, the contract term or any commercial condition of any named platform. Those are set per restaurant, they are commercially confidential, and a figure printed here would be wrong for most readers. What it publishes is the shape of the charges — what exists, where it appears, how it behaves — so you can find your own numbers in your own account.

The commission is charged on a bigger number than you think

Start with the one line everybody knows, because it is usually misread. The commission is a percentage, and the argument is always about the percentage. The more useful question is what it is a percentage of.

On a delivery platform the commission is charged on the price the customer sees. That price includes VAT. Your food cost does not. So a rate that reads as a share of your revenue is in fact a share of a larger number, and the gap between the two is the VAT you were never going to keep. This is the single most common reason a restaurant’s own arithmetic comes out more optimistic than its bank account.

Two consequences follow, and both are practical. First, raising a price raises the commission with it, which is why a price problem cannot be solved by adding a euro and hoping. Second, the effective rate — commission divided by what actually reaches you — is always worse than the headline, and it is the only rate worth putting in a spreadsheet. How platform commission changes delivery economics works through that arithmetic in full.

Everything that is not the commission

Below is the full set of categories we see on restaurant statements across platforms and countries. Not every platform charges every one, and the names differ from one statement to the next — what matters is recognising the shape, then finding whatever your platform calls it.

Per-order service charges
A fixed amount taken on every order regardless of basket size, usually described as a service, processing or transaction fee. Because it does not scale with the order, it is brutal on small baskets and almost invisible on large ones. This is the mechanical reason a menu built around cheap single items keeps so little of each sale.
Promotion participation fees
Separate from the discount itself. When a dish joins a campaign, many platforms add a charge per promoted order on top of the money you gave away. Two costs, one decision, and only one of them appears in the promo screen when you switch it on.
The discount you funded
The most expensive item on this list, and the one restaurants do not count as a charge at all because it never appears as a fee. A discount comes off your side of the price, not the platform’s share: the platform still charges its commission on the basket. Run a promotion on a dish that was priced with no room in it and a busy month ends worse than a quiet one.
Advertising
Sold inside the platform, billed either as a share of the revenue it produced or as a cost per order. It is optional in the sense that you can switch it off, and not optional in the sense that visibility in the listing is partly bought. Budget it as a cost of sale, not as marketing spend, because that is how it behaves.
Refunds, cancellations and order adjustments
Orders that come back, wholly or partly, at your expense or shared. Small per order and never zero across a month. Worth watching as a trend rather than a number: a rising adjustments line is usually a kitchen or a menu problem showing up in the accounts before anyone notices it in the kitchen.
Delivery-fee programmes
Schemes where the customer sees free or reduced delivery and the restaurant funds some or all of the difference. They work — free delivery genuinely lifts conversion — which is exactly why they need to be in the price before you opt in, not discovered on the invoice afterwards.
Packaging bought through the platform
Where the platform supplies branded bags or boxes, the cost usually comes off the payout rather than through a separate supplier invoice. Convenient, and easy to forget when you cost a dish.
VAT on the platform’s own invoice
The platform charges VAT on its commission and its other fees. Whether that is a real cost or a recoverable one depends on your tax position, and that is a question for your accountant, not for this page. Either way it leaves your account before it comes back, so it is a cash-flow item even when it is not a cost item.
Equipment, rental and setup lines
Tablets, printers, occasionally a one-off onboarding charge. Usually small, usually at the start, and usually the only item on this list a restaurant actually remembers.

Nine categories. Most restaurants can name two.

What changes after you sign

The second thing that makes charges feel hidden is that they move. The rate in the agreement is a starting position, not a permanent one: service levels change, a platform reorganises its tiers, a promotional period ends and the terms underneath it were different from the terms on top. None of that is dishonest, and all of it is invisible if nobody re-reads the invoice.

So the useful habit is not memorising your rate. It is checking, once a month, that the rate on the invoice is still the rate you think you have. Take the figure from your own statement every time you do a pricing calculation, and never from the number you remember from the conversation where you signed.

The one-week reconciliation

Here is the check. It takes about an hour, it uses only documents you already have, and it answers the question the dashboard never does: of every euro a customer spent, how much reached you.

  1. 01

    Pick one ordinary week

    5 min

    Not your best week and not a promotion week. An ordinary one, recent enough that the payout has already arrived.

  2. 02

    Write down gross sales for that week

    5 min

    The number the dashboard shows as revenue or sales, before anything is deducted. This is the figure that makes delivery look good. Everything below is what happens to it.

  3. 03

    Download the statement and list every deduction

    20 min

    Line by line, with its own name as the platform writes it. Do not group them and do not skip the small ones — the point of the exercise is the total, and the small ones are where the total hides. Match each line to a category from the list above.

  4. 04

    Add the advertising report separately

    10 min

    Advertising is often billed apart from the order statement, which is precisely why it gets left out of this calculation. Take the same week.

  5. 05

    Compare the result with the bank

    10 min

    Gross sales minus everything you listed should equal the payout that actually arrived, give or take timing. If it does not, you have missed a line — go back and find it. When it does match, you have your real number.

  6. 06

    Divide, and keep the figure

    5 min

    Payout divided by gross sales is the share of each euro that reaches you. That fraction, not the commission rate, is what every pricing decision should be built on. Flip it upside down and you have the multiplier your food cost has to clear.

If you would rather not do the arithmetic by hand, the delivery price calculator takes the same inputs — commission, VAT, advertising, per-order fees, discount depth and how many days a month it runs — and works backwards to the shelf price that still leaves your kitchen the profit you asked for. It shows the same breakdown line by line, so you can check it against the statement you have just been through.

What to check before you sign

If you are still at the stage of reading an agreement rather than an invoice, this is the list to go through with it open. Every item is something we have seen catch a restaurant out after the fact.

The money

The terms

Twelve questions. A platform manager can answer all of them in one call, and the answers are a great deal cheaper before signature than after.

Questions people ask

Are delivery platforms hiding fees from restaurants?

No. Every charge is in the agreement and itemised on the monthly statement. What is missing is not disclosure, it is reconciliation: the charges arrive across four different documents, and almost no restaurant adds them together. Download one week’s statement, list every deduction, compare the total with the payout that reached your bank, and nothing is hidden any more.

What is the real cost of selling on a delivery app?

Take the payout that actually arrived for one ordinary week and divide it by the gross sales the dashboard showed for that week. That fraction is the share of each euro that reaches you, and it already contains the commission, the per-order charges, the advertising, the promotions you funded and the refunds. It differs by restaurant, by platform and by country, which is why no published number can stand in for your own.

Why is the commission charged on the price including VAT?

Because the platform charges on the price the customer pays, and the customer pays a price with VAT in it. The VAT was never yours to keep, but the commission is still calculated on it, so the effective share of your own revenue is higher than the headline rate suggests. It is not a trick — it is in the agreement — but it is the most common reason a restaurant’s own calculation comes out too optimistic.

Who pays for a discount on a delivery platform?

You do. The discount comes off your side of the price, not the platform’s share, and the platform still charges its commission on the basket. On many platforms there is also a participation fee per promoted order on top. That is why dishes you intend to promote need the room built into their price from the start, on those items only, rather than across the whole menu.

Is advertising on a delivery app optional?

You can switch it off, and your listing will still appear. Whether you can afford to switch it off depends on how many restaurants near you are advertising in the same search. Treat it as a cost of sale rather than as marketing: it is billed as a share of the revenue it produced or as a cost per order, and it belongs inside the price of a dish for the same reason the commission does.

The rate on my invoice is not the rate I was quoted. Why?

Usually because something underneath it changed: a service level, a tier, an introductory period that ended, or a promotional commitment that was part of the original rate. Published rates and quoted rates are starting positions; the rate on your own statement is the outcome. Check it monthly and use the statement figure — not the remembered one — in every pricing calculation.

Can I negotiate any of this?

Some of it, and more often than restaurants assume — but not from a position of not knowing what you currently pay. The reconciliation above is what makes a conversation possible: it turns “your fees are too high” into a specific line, a specific amount and a specific month. Platforms respond to that far better than to a complaint.

Where this comes from

The source
From running restaurant accounts on delivery platforms and reading their statements month after month. The categories above are the ones that recur; the names, the amounts and which of them apply are specific to each platform, each country and each agreement.
What we do not publish
No commission rate, contract term, fee amount or client figure of any named platform appears on this page. Those terms are set per restaurant and are commercially confidential. Publishing a number here would be wrong for most readers and unfair to the restaurants whose statements we read.
Why the reconciliation is a week and not a month
Because a week is short enough that you will actually finish it, and long enough that the per-order charges, the refunds and at least some advertising all appear in it. Once the method works on a week, a month is the same exercise with a bigger download.
Tax
Whether the VAT on a platform’s invoice is a cost or a recoverable item depends on your registration and your regime, and it differs across Europe. This page treats it as a cash-flow item and stops there. Confirm the rest with your accountant.

Or let us read the statements with you

The reconciliation above is the first hour of the job, and it is the easy part. What follows is the work that actually changes the number: rebuilding the menu so the basket carries its own costs, pricing every dish against its real break-even rather than a rule of thumb, designing combos that lift the order instead of discounting it, planning the promotion calendar so the discounts are paid for in advance, and splitting advertising so you can see which location or which dish is earning its budget.

That is not an afternoon. It is continuous operational work inside your accounts, and it is what we do: we build the listing, write the menu, set the prices, put the combos together, run the campaigns and keep it honest as your costs and the platform’s terms move. Your side of it is the kitchen.

And you are not paying for effort — 15% of the growth we bring, measured against your own numbers from before we started, after the platform commission and the extra advertising come out of it. No growth, no invoice.

Get my free audit

Leave a request and we will read your last month of statements, work out what actually reaches you per euro, and come back with what we would change and what it is worth. Free, and nothing moves in your accounts until you say so.

Want to do it yourself? The price calculator does this arithmetic on your own numbers

Next: how to price your menu for delivery apps