If you run a restaurant in Ontario, you have almost certainly been approached by Uber Eats, DoorDash, or SkipTheDishes. The pitch is compelling: they will bring you new customers, handle the delivery logistics, and all you have to do is prepare the food. In exchange, they take a commission on every order.
What the pitch glosses over is the size of that commission and what it actually means for your margins. Let us look at the full picture.
The Real Cost of Delivery App Commissions
Third-party delivery apps in Canada typically charge restaurants between 15% and 30% per order, depending on the service tier[1]. The higher tiers offer more visibility within the app — essentially, you are paying to be seen by customers the app already controls access to.
For a restaurant operating on typical margins of 3-9% net profit[2], a 25% commission does not just reduce your profit — it eliminates it entirely. On many orders, you are actually losing money. The math is stark: if your food cost is 30%, your labour is 30%, your overhead is 25%, and the delivery app takes 25%, you are at 110% of the order value before you have made a cent.
Some restaurant owners accept this as a customer acquisition cost — the idea being that delivery app customers will eventually become regulars who dine in or order directly. But the data does not support this. Research from the restaurant industry consistently shows that delivery app customers are loyal to the platform, not to individual restaurants[1]. They order from whoever the algorithm puts in front of them.
What Delivery Apps Actually Provide
To be fair, delivery apps do provide real value in certain areas:
- Discovery — they put your restaurant in front of people who might not have found you otherwise
- Delivery logistics — they handle drivers, routing, and tracking
- Payment processing — they handle the transaction with the customer
- Convenience — the ordering experience is familiar and frictionless for customers
These are genuine benefits. The question is whether they are worth 15-30% of every order, indefinitely, with no path to reducing that cost over time.
The Ownership Problem
Beyond the commission, there is a deeper issue: when customers order through a delivery app, the app owns the customer relationship. You often do not get the customer's contact information. You cannot email them about specials, invite them to events, or build any direct relationship. If you stop using the platform, those customers disappear — because they were never really yours.
This is fundamentally different from a customer who finds you through your own website. When someone orders through your site, you know who they are, you can follow up, and you can build the kind of repeat relationship that sustains a restaurant long-term.
Not sure your restaurant even needs a website? We break down why social media and Google profiles are not enough. Read the full case.
Building Your Own Online Ordering Channel
The alternative to delivery apps is not to abandon online ordering — it is to build your own channel for it. This can range from simple to sophisticated, depending on your volume and needs.
At the simplest level, your website can have an online ordering page with your menu and a phone number to call. Many customers are perfectly happy to call in a takeout order if you make the menu easy to browse and the phone number easy to tap. This costs effectively nothing beyond having a functional website.
At the next level, you can integrate a lightweight ordering system into your website. Services like Square Online, ChowNow, or Gloria Food provide ordering widgets that you embed on your own site. The customer orders through your website, you receive the order directly, and the commission is typically 0% to 5% — a fraction of what delivery apps charge.
For delivery specifically, some of these platforms can connect you with independent delivery drivers or delivery-as-a-service providers at a flat per-delivery fee rather than a percentage of each order. This separates the delivery cost from the ordering platform cost, giving you more control over both.
The Hybrid Approach
Most Ontario restaurants we work with do not go all-or-nothing. They use a hybrid approach: maintain a presence on one or two delivery apps for discovery, while actively steering customers toward ordering directly through their own website.
Here is what that looks like in practice:
- Offer a small incentive for direct orders — 10% off, a free side, or free delivery over a certain amount
- Include a card in every delivery order — "Order directly at ourwebsite.ca and save" with a QR code
- Make your website ordering experience excellent — fast, mobile-friendly, with a clear menu
- Collect email addresses — and use them to bring customers back directly
- Promote your website on social media — not your delivery app listing
Over time, this shifts a meaningful percentage of orders from 25% commission to 0-5% commission. On a restaurant doing $10,000 a month in delivery orders, that shift could mean an extra $2,000 or more per month going to your business instead of to a platform.
Ready to take back your margins? We build fast, mobile-first restaurant websites designed for direct ordering. See our pricing.
The Ontario Context
Ontario restaurant owners should also be aware that delivery app commission caps, which were implemented during the pandemic, have expired[3]. There is no longer a regulatory ceiling on what platforms can charge. This makes building your own ordering infrastructure more urgent, not less.
At the same time, Ontario consumers are increasingly aware of how delivery apps affect local restaurants. The "order direct" movement has genuine traction here, with many customers actively preferring to support restaurants by ordering through the restaurant's own channels. Having those channels available is essential to capturing that goodwill.
Where Your Website Fits In
Your website is the foundation of your direct ordering strategy. Without it, there is nowhere to send customers when you tell them to order direct. With it, you have a platform you own, where you control the experience, keep the customer relationship, and pay a fraction of the fees.
A well-built restaurant website with an integrated ordering option is not a cost — it is an investment that reduces your ongoing costs every month. When you compare the annual cost of a professional website to the annual cost of delivery app commissions, the website pays for itself many times over. If you are still on the fence about whether a website is worth it, read our breakdown of why restaurants still need websites in 2026.
Your website menu is the centrepiece of that direct ordering channel — make sure it is done right with our guide on how to showcase your menu online without a PDF.
If you are ready to build a direct ordering channel for your restaurant, take a look at our web design and hosting services. We build fast, mobile-first restaurant websites specifically designed for Ontario food businesses. All our sites are built and hosted on Canadian servers — your data never leaves the country. Reach out for a free consultation and we will walk through what a direct ordering setup could look like for your specific situation.
Sources
- Restaurants Canada, "2024 Restaurant Industry Report" — delivery app commission rates and customer loyalty data
- Restaurants Canada, "Restaurant Industry Statistics" — average net profit margins
- Government of Ontario — pandemic-era delivery app commission cap expiry