Delivery Apps vs Your Own Ordering Page: Where Each One Earns Its Keep

Use the delivery apps to get found by people who have never heard of you, and use your own ordering page for the guests who already know you. The apps are good at discovery and take a cut of each order for it. Your own page can cost less per order, but it only works when the guest already knows to look for it or finds it in a search. The goal is to keep both running and move regulars from one to the other slowly, without letting the app side slip.

What the apps do well

Be fair to them. A person scrolling an app for "pad thai" at 8 pm sees you even if they've never walked past your door. That's discovery you'd otherwise have to pay for some other way. The apps also bring drivers you don't employ, payment handling, order tracking and a support line for the guest. For a new restaurant, a ghost kitchen, or a place on a street with no foot traffic, the apps can be a large part of how anyone finds you at all.

What it costs you depends on your plan, your market and your contract, and it changes. Don't trust a commission figure from a blog post, this one included. Pull your own monthly statement and add up everything the app kept: commission, fees and any promotions you funded. Divide that by the total order value and you have your real rate.

What your own ordering page does well

Your page is better at the guests who already like you.

• It can cost less per order. Check it against your app rate: you pay your ordering system's fees and card processing, plus delivery costs if you deliver yourself or use a delivery service.
• You control the menu, the prices, the photos and the pickup instructions.
• Depending on your ordering system, you may keep the guest's contact details, so you can tell them about the new fall menu instead of hoping the app shows it to them.
• It can show up in search. Someone typing your restaurant's name plus "order online", or "pizza pickup" plus your neighborhood, can land on your page instead of an app listing. Google may also show an order button on your Business Profile, and where the profile lets you, you can add your own ordering link.

The limit is real: a stranger has no reason to go looking for your ordering page. It works for people who already know you, and for new people only when it shows up in search.

A worked example with your own numbers

Here's a way to see what's at stake without anyone quoting you a rate.

Say you take 400 app orders a month at a $32 average. That's $12,800 in app sales. Now guess what share of those orders come from regulars, people who also eat in or pick up from you. Say a quarter: 100 orders, or $3,200 a month.

Each percentage point the app takes on that $3,200 is $32 a month, or $384 a year. Multiply $384 by the percentage you worked out from your statement, then subtract what those same orders would cost you over a year on your own page (processing, your system's fees, delivery if you handle it). What's left is roughly what moving those regulars would keep each year.

The app commission calculator does this math for you with your own order count, average order, rate, fees and the share you think might move.

How to steer regulars without hurting your app ratings

Low ratings on an app can cost you visibility inside that app. So the move to direct orders has to happen on your side of the counter, not by making the app experience worse.

Keep the app food and timing as good as ever. Don't hold app orders at the pass while direct orders go out first. Keep the same portions. If an item is 86'd, mark it on the app right away so nobody gets a refund notice instead of dinner.

Keep menus in sync. If the brisket sandwich is on your own page, it should be on the app too, at a price you've decided on deliberately. If your app agreement allows different prices on the app, decide whether you want that, and be open about it. Read your contract before you change prices or put anything about direct ordering into app bags, since app agreements can have rules about both.

Tell regulars where they already are. The guest at the counter, the four-top eating in, the person picking up at the register: those are the people to tell about your own ordering page. Put it on the menu, on dine-in receipts, on a sign at the pickup shelf, in your email to the list and in your Instagram bio.

Give direct orders a reason that's about the guest, not a guilt trip. Some ideas:

• A dedicated pickup shelf for direct orders, so they skip the line.
• A family meal or a weekly special that only lives on your own menu.
• Catering and large orders handled only through your page or by email, where you can talk through the details.
• A simple perk for repeat direct orders, if your ordering system supports one.

Make the page easy to find and fast to use. Give it a short address like yoursite.com/order, link it from your homepage and your Google Business Profile, and make sure it loads quickly on a phone. Type your menu as text on the page rather than a PDF or photo; here's why menus work better as web pages.

What search does for each

The apps already rank for plenty of searches, and you shouldn't fight that. Searches for a cuisine plus "delivery" can bring up app listings, and a guest who orders you through one of them is still a guest.

Search work matters most for your own page. That means your restaurant's name and "order online" bringing up your page first, your Business Profile carrying your own ordering link, and your page showing up for pickup searches in your area: "wings pickup near me", "order pizza for pickup" plus your town. None of that is promised, and it takes months to build depending on how many places near you compete for the same searches.

We don't sell or run ordering systems, so this isn't a pitch for one. Whatever system you use, the search side is the same job, and it's what our online ordering SEO page lays out. Start there, or take this week's app statement and work out your real rate first.