What a delivery marketplace actually costs a plate
Most operators can quote their marketplace commission rate from memory. Almost none can tell you what a marketplace order actually nets them after everything is taken out. The gap between those two numbers is where margin quietly disappears.
Here is the honest math, worked through on a single €12 order.
The headline number is never the real number
A marketplace will tell you the commission is, say, 30%. On a €12 order that is €3.60. If that were the whole story, you would keep €8.40 before food and labour, and life would be simple.
It is not the whole story. On top of base commission sit three more line items that rarely make it into the operator's mental model:
- Payment processing — usually 1.5–3% of the order, sometimes bundled into "service fees".
- Marketing / visibility surcharges — the fee for appearing higher in the list, or for being in a "featured" carousel you may not remember opting into.
- Promo cost-share — the portion of any discount or "free delivery" campaign that you, not the marketplace, pay for.
Working the €12 order
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Menu price | €12.00 |
| Base commission (30%) | −€3.60 |
| Payment processing (2.5%) | −€0.30 |
| Marketing surcharge (5%) | −€0.60 |
| Promo cost-share (half of a €2 "free delivery" offer) | −€1.00 |
| Net before food & labour | €6.50 |
The commission you quote from memory removed €3.60. The order actually gave up €5.50 — nearly 46% — before a single ingredient or minute of labour is counted. Put food cost at 30% of menu price (€3.60) and you are at €2.90 contribution before labour, packaging and the card machine's own cut on any in-person split.
Why "free delivery" is the line to watch
Base commission is at least predictable. The variable that turns a healthy order into a loss is promo cost-share, because it is opt-in, easy to forget, and framed as marketing rather than cost. A "free delivery" banner feels like the marketplace's gift to your customer. Read the terms and you often find the two of you split it — and your half lands on every order the promo touches, not just the incremental ones it wins you.
That is the difference between a marketing spend (bounded, measurable) and a margin leak (unbounded, invisible). The first you choose. The second happens to you.
What to actually do about it
You do not fix this by leaving the marketplaces — for most operators they are real, incremental demand. You fix it by reading the invoice line by line and knowing your true take rate per channel, per day-part, per promo. Then the decision becomes concrete: switch this promo off at lunch when the kitchen is already full; keep it on at 10pm when it wins genuinely new orders.
That only works if every order — dine-in, takeaway and every marketplace — lands in one place where the true net is visible next to the menu price. When the numbers live in five different marketplace back-offices, nobody ever does this math. That is exactly the gap dojofood is built to close: one order queue, one reconciliation, one honest number per plate.
The marketplaces are not the enemy. Not knowing your real take rate is.