Delivery App Profit Calculator
DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub charge 15%–30% in gross marketplace commissions. Model your packaging overhead, true net margin retention, dine-in cannibalization, and optimal menu price markup.
Move the sliders to match your monthly sales. Calculated margins and leakage will update live below.
Delivery Volume & Fee Parameters
312 orders/monthPercentage of delivery guests who are neighborhood locals and would have ordered dine-in or direct takeout.
Per-Order Unit Margin BreakdownTicket: $49.00
Zero delivery commission. Credit card processing overhead is only 3.1%.
You lose $8 in net profit every time a customer who would have eaten in your dining room orders on DoorDash instead. This equals an estimated $5,710/yr in lost dining room profit.
How to Recover Your Off-Premise Margins
- Raise Delivery Prices by +33%: Aligning third-party menu pricing with your true commission drag ensures delivery orders contribute identical dollar profits as in-house dining.
- Include "Order Direct" Bag Inserts: Drop a bounce-back postcard in every delivery bag offering 10% off their next order if placed directly on your website. Shifting 30% of orders saves $10,474/yr.
- 86 High-Waste Items from Delivery: Remove delicate, low-margin crispy items that steam and degrade in transit to protect guest satisfaction and kitchen throughput.
Step 2: Live Calculated Financial Impact
Dynamic Real-Time OutputHow to use this calculator
This calculator compares what you keep from a delivery app order with the same order eaten in, and shows what commission, packaging and lost dine-in orders cost you over a year.
- Enter your monthly delivery app sales, your commission plan and your average order.
- Add packaging cost per order and your food cost.
- Set how much higher your delivery menu prices are, and how many delivery orders would have eaten in anyway.
- Try moving some orders to your own ordering site to see what you would save.
What’s a good number?
Delivery commissions are 15%, 25% or 30% per order depending on plan (DoorDash Basic / Plus / Premier; Uber Eats has similar tiers).
A delivery order is worth taking when it earns about what the same order earns in the dining room. The calculator shows the delivery price markup that gets you there.
Worked example
An example restaurant on a 25% commission plan. The figures are invented; the results are what this calculator gives for them.
| Delivery app sales per month | $12,000 |
|---|---|
| Average order | $40 |
| Commission | 25% |
| Packaging per order | $1.75 |
| Food cost | 30% |
| Delivery prices above dine-in | 10% |
| Kept per delivery order | $17.34 |
|---|---|
| Kept on the same order eaten in | $24.36 |
| Commission paid per year | $36,000 |
| Markup that matches dine-in | 36% |
| Saved per year moving 30% of orders to your own site | $8,359 |
Each delivery order keeps $17.34 against $24.36 in the dining room. Moving regulars to your own ordering site is the quickest fix here.
Common questions
How much do DoorDash and Uber Eats charge restaurants?
Commission depends on the plan you choose, commonly 15%, 25% or 30% of each order. Check your own agreement, as fees and plans change.
Should delivery prices be higher than dine-in prices?
Many restaurants charge more on delivery apps to cover commission and packaging. The calculator shows the markup at which a delivery order earns the same as dine-in, so you can decide how close to get.
Does this include labor and rent?
No. Both the delivery and dine-in figures leave out labor and rent, so compare them with each other, not with your bottom line.
Every formula and assumption is on How we calculate.
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Profit per delivery order
$21.68
Commission paid / year
$44,029