Delivery apps take 20% to 30% of every order, including orders from regulars who already know your food. We build restaurant sites in the GTA that take orders directly, so repeat orders come straight to you.
A 30-minute call, then a written scope and a fixed price. Nothing is billed until you agree to it.
Keep the apps for new customers.
The apps charge a commission on every order, whether the customer is new to you or has ordered every Friday for a year.
Uber Eats, DoorDash and SkipTheDishes put you in front of people who have never heard of you, and they handle the delivery. For a first order, the commission can be worth paying.
When someone who already knows your food orders again through an app, you pay the commission again. You paid it once already to win that customer.
The apps keep the names, the email addresses and the order history. You cannot send your regulars an offer on a slow Tuesday or tell them about a new dish.
A worked example
An example restaurant keeps the apps for new customers and moves only its repeat orders to its own site.
| Example restaurant | Per month |
|---|---|
| Delivery sales through the apps | $20,000 |
| App commission at 28% | $5,600 |
| Sales from repeat customers, about a third | $6,667 |
| App commission on those repeat orders | $1,867 |
| Card processing on those orders through the restaurant's own site, about 3% | $200 |
| Kept by the restaurant | $1,667 |
Over a year, the restaurant keeps about $20,000. At that rate, a build at $6,000 to $15,000 pays for itself in roughly 4 to 9 months. The example assumes every regular moves to the restaurant's own site. If half of them do, the restaurant keeps about $830 a month, and the build takes roughly 7 to 18 months to pay for itself.
Pickup orders cost nothing beyond card processing. For delivery you need your own driver or an on-demand courier that charges by distance, and you can pass the courier's fee on to the customer the way the apps already do.
If your delivery volume is small, or most of your orders are new customers finding you on the apps, the commission is paying for growth and your own ordering can wait.
The figures are an illustration from our Journal article on delivery app costs, which also covers what each app currently charges.
What the delivery apps cost a Toronto restaurant in 2026A site your customers order from directly, built around how your kitchen already works.
Most orders start on a phone, often on a weak connection. Photos, modifiers and dietary tags are laid out for a small screen, and you edit items and prices yourself when the kitchen changes the special.
Customers order on your site with no commission in the middle. Scheduled pickup and delivery windows let you cap how many orders land in each slot, so the kitchen is not buried at 7 pm.
Stripe or Square, paid into your own account. Each paid order becomes a kitchen ticket or prints on your printer, so the line keeps working the way it does now.
Loyalty perks, one-tap reorder and offers only you can send, with a QR code on the table, the receipt and the takeout bag. You keep each customer's email and order history, so you can bring them back on a quiet night.
The closest project we can show you is TruBites, a meal subscription service. Like restaurant ordering, it runs on a rotating menu, online payment and scheduled delivery.
A vegetarian meal subscription service in Ahmedabad. Customers choose a two- or three-meal plan, pay by UPI or card, and see the calories and macros of every meal.
How we build ordering, payments and the admin screen your staff use.
What Uber Eats, DoorDash and SkipTheDishes take from each order, and when your own ordering pays for itself.
Our four price brackets, what moves a quote up or down, and what you should never pay for.
No, and we will not tell you to. The apps put you in front of new customers who would not have found you otherwise, and for that first order the commission can be worth paying. The cost adds up on your regulars, who already know your food and would happily order from you directly. Keep the apps for new customers and move your repeat business to ordering on your own site.
Often you should not. If the ordering page that comes with your point-of-sale system does what you need, use it, and we will say so on the first call. A custom build is worth it when your ordering has rules of your own, such as pickup and delivery windows capped per slot, or loyalty and offers you run yourself, and a standard ordering page cannot follow them.
On a repeat order, the fee goes from 20% to 30% in app commission to about 3% in card processing on your own site. On a restaurant's margin, that difference is often what decides whether the order makes money. Every regular who moves to your own site keeps that gap with you on every order after. On the call we work it out from your real order volume.
In our pricing it is a site with one working feature, which runs $6,000 to $15,000. After a 30-minute call we send a fixed price in writing, and that is what you pay unless the scope changes.
Card processing of about 3% on each online order, paid to Stripe or Square, and hosting, which the hosting company bills to your own account. If you deliver through an on-demand courier, it charges a fee for each delivery, which you can pass on to the customer. Support is optional: you edit the menu and prices yourself, and if you want changes made for you, a monthly retainer runs month to month, usually 10 to 40 hours. The first two weeks of fixes after launch are included in the build.
It depends on what your point-of-sale system allows. On the first call we look at yours and tell you plainly whether orders can go straight into it or will arrive as a separate kitchen ticket or printout. We will not promise a connection your POS does not support.
No. Orders arrive as a kitchen ticket or on your printer, and in your POS where it allows. The owner edits the menu, changes prices and marks items sold out from a simple admin screen, without calling a developer. We hand over a short written guide and walk your front-of-house staff through it.
Yes. Customers can order ahead for a pickup or delivery window, and you decide how many orders each window takes. That spreads out the dinner rush and keeps catering and large pickup orders from swamping the line mid-service. You set the lead time, the capacity and the delivery radius.
Usually 2 to 8 weeks, depending on the size of the menu and whether you need delivery or only pickup. If you want to start smaller, we can build the menu site first and add ordering later, as two smaller projects. We quote it as fixed work after a call, with the price in writing, and put the work in progress on a private link each week so you can see it come together. You own the code and the site once the final invoice is paid.
Send us your delivery numbers.
Your monthly delivery sales and your current commission rate are enough for us to tell you whether your own ordering would pay for itself. We reply within one business day, and if the ordering built into your POS would do the job, we will say so.
Or call 647-252-5352, Monday to Friday, 9 am to 6 pm Toronto time.
