Free Restaurant Marketplace Margin Calculator

The headline commission is typically 15-30% of the food subtotal, varying by tier - basic at 15-18% with low visibility, standard at 20-25% with medium visibility, premium at 28-32% with priority placement. The headline rate understates the true blended cost by 8-15 percentage points once you add packaging ($0.45-$1.20 per order), promotional spend (3-6% of gross), refunds and adjustments (1-3% of gross), the tablet attention tax (the operational cost of monitoring multiple marketplace tablets), and the brand fungibility loss from guests learning to optimise on marketplace category rather than restaurant brand. For most independents the all-in cost lands in the 35-45% range, which is the level at which the contribution math stops being good.

On a $25-35 average order with a 30% food cost, first-party online ordering typically produces 50-58% contribution before labor and rent - so $13-20 per order. The exact number depends on the delivery model (pickup-only is highest contribution; your-own-driver is mid-range; marketplace-courier-as-a-service like Uber Direct nets in between). On the same order through a marketplace at 25% commission with realistic promo and packaging, contribution lands at 30-45% - so $10-15 per order. The $5-8 per-order gap compounds quickly. A restaurant doing 180 marketplace orders a week is leaving roughly $60k of contribution on the table annually if those orders could move to first-party instead.

Yes, if you run any in-app promotional spend - which most marketplace restaurants do, because turning the promos off drops order volume 20-35% inside two weeks. Enter the average effective discount percentage across your year (typically 8-12% for restaurants running ongoing promotional cadence; 0% if you genuinely run no promos). The promo deducts from gross before commission is calculated, so it shows up twice: once as a direct revenue hit and once as a smaller commission base. The combined effect is meaningfully larger than the headline promo rate suggests, which is why most operators underestimate their true commission cost by 4-6 percentage points.

It is what the operator absorbs in delivery economics on a first-party order after any guest-paid delivery fee. For pickup-only first-party (no delivery), enter 0. For operators running their own driver fleet, enter the loaded driver cost per delivery (typically $4-8) minus the guest-paid delivery fee (typically $2.99-5.99) - net usually lands at $1-3. For operators using marketplace-courier-as-a-service (Uber Direct, DoorDash Drive), enter the courier fee (typically $5-9) minus the guest-paid delivery fee - net usually lands at $1.50-3.50. The model treats this as a per-order cost the operator pays out of the food revenue.

The tier badge is calibrated against operator-tested bands for independent restaurants running marketplace and first-party channels in parallel: Excellent above 20% marketplace contribution (unusual - usually means high average order and below-market commission), Healthy 12-20% (workable as a discovery channel), Marginal 5-12% (push the migration to first-party urgently), Critical below 5% (the channel is losing money once all hidden costs are accounted for). The bands are based on percentage of gross order rather than absolute dollars so they normalise across formats. Use the badge as a directional signal, not a hard rule - the right answer for your specific restaurant depends on format, brand strength, dine-in demand, and operational capacity for first-party fulfilment.

Implicitly, yes - the first-party delivery cost input is the net cost after guest-paid delivery fees, so operators who recover most of the delivery cost from the guest enter a low number (or zero for pickup-only) and operators who absorb more of the delivery cost enter a higher number. The marketplace side does not need a separate guest delivery fee input because marketplaces collect the delivery fee entirely from the guest and the restaurant never sees it on the P&L. The model focuses on what hits the restaurant's contribution margin rather than what the guest pays in total.

It depends on format and tenure. New restaurants (first 6-12 months) usually run 10-25% first-party share because the marketplaces are doing the customer acquisition work. Established restaurants in their second to third year should be targeting 40-60% first-party share. Mature operations with strong brand equity and an active CRM can sustain 65-80% first-party share. Pizza independents are at the high end of the range because the category is brand-loyal and delivery-frequency-high; fast-casual and bowl formats are at the lower end because the category is marketplace-orientated in guest behaviour. The trajectory matters more than the absolute number; healthy operations move first-party share up 10-20 points a year through the seven-step migration playbook in the <a href="/blog/third-party-delivery-for-restaurants/">delivery guide</a>.