Pricing 6 min readUpdated August 30, 2026by Dishboard

How to calculate delivery menu margins

Delivery profit is not the same as dine-in profit. Platform commission, packaging, payment fees, and discounts all reduce what you keep from each order.

A pad thai costed for dine in against a delivery app

A menu item that is profitable dine-in can be underwater on delivery. The food cost percentage is the same either way. What changes is how much of the selling price you actually keep after the platform takes its cut.

Understanding delivery margin is not optional if you sell on DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub. It is how you decide which dishes to push on delivery, what delivery prices to set, and whether a platform is worth keeping at all.

The full delivery margin formula

Delivery profit = selling price minus recipe cost minus packaging minus platform commission minus payment fees minus discounts and promotions

Each of these elements deserves a number, not a guess.

A full worked example

A rice bowl sells for $14.00 on delivery. Here is the full breakdown:

Recipe cost (ingredients + prep): $3.80

Packaging (container, bag, utensils): $0.85

DoorDash commission at 25%: $3.50

Payment processing fee: $0.35

Promotional discount (10% weekend promo, your cost): $1.40

Delivery profit: $14.00 minus $3.80 minus $0.85 minus $3.50 minus $0.35 minus $1.40 = $4.10

Delivery margin: $4.10 divided by $14.00 = 29.3%

The same rice bowl dine-in at $12.00 with no packaging or commission earns $12.00 minus $3.80 = $8.20 gross profit, twice as much per sale.

Platform commission rates

Commission rates vary by platform and contract tier. Approximate US ranges:

DoorDash: 15% Basic, 25% Plus, 30% Premier. No separate card processing fee on Marketplace orders.

Uber Eats: 20% Lite, 25% Plus (30% on Uber One orders), 30% Premium, since their March 2026 increase. 15% if you deliver the dish yourself and only take the order through the marketplace. Processing is included in the fee.

Grubhub: 5% Basic, 15% Plus, 20% All-access. That is marketing commission only: add 10% or more if a Grubhub driver delivers, and processing on top. A single blended percentage understates Grubhub.

Always use your actual contract rate. Published ranges are starting points, not what you are paying.

Packaging costs add up

Delivery packaging (insulated bags, sealed containers, side containers, utensils) costs meaningfully more than dine-in serviceware. A full delivery order with soup, a main, a drink, and condiments can carry $1.50 to $2.50 in packaging alone.

If you are not measuring packaging cost per order, you are likely underestimating your delivery cost by $1 to $2 per transaction.

Should delivery prices be higher than dine-in?

Yes, in most cases. Delivery customers are not surprised by delivery prices being 10 to 20% higher than dine-in. The platform UI makes the comparison harder and consumers accept a convenience premium.

A common approach: set delivery prices to recover the commission, so your gross profit per delivery order is similar to dine-in. If commission is 25%, a dine-in price of $12.00 would need a delivery price of roughly $16.00 to maintain the same gross profit (ignoring packaging).

How to decide if a platform is worth keeping

Calculate average delivery margin across your top 10 selling items on each platform. If the margin is consistently below 20%, the platform is consuming your profit. At that point you have three options: raise delivery prices, remove low-margin items from the delivery menu, or renegotiate your commission rate.

Platforms will sometimes negotiate, especially if your order volume is meaningful or if you threaten to leave.

Frequently asked questions

Does DoorDash charge the restaurant or the customer for delivery? Both. The restaurant pays a commission (15 to 30% of the sale). The customer pays a delivery fee and often a service fee. These are separate charges.

Should I have a different menu for delivery? Yes. Many operators remove low-margin items, items that travel poorly, or items that require expensive packaging from their delivery menu. A smaller, optimized delivery menu often earns more profit per order than the full dine-in menu.

What is a healthy delivery margin? Most operators target 20 to 30% gross delivery margin (before labor and overhead). Below 15% means the platform is taking too much of the sale for the arrangement to be sustainable.

Do I need different prices on each platform? Not necessarily, though it is allowed. Many operators set one unified delivery price higher than dine-in and use it across all platforms. Others optimize per platform based on commission differences.

How does a discount or promo affect my margin? Discounts you fund come directly out of your delivery profit. A 10% off promotion on a $14 sale that you pay for reduces your revenue to $12.60 before commission, then the commission is calculated on $14, not $12.60, making the effective hit larger than 10%.

Read the transcript

An app takes 30% of the order. That is the top tier on both of the big ones. So you add 30% to your delivery prices, and you are square again, right? You are not. And the gap is bigger than almost anyone expects.

Here is a pad thai. $12 on your menu. The food in it costs $3.90. So dine in, you keep $8.10. Hold on to that number, because everything from here is about whether delivery gets you back to it.

First, listed on the app at the same $12. The app takes 30%, which is $3.60. You keep $8.40. Out of that comes the food, $3.90, and the packaging, $0.60. Your profit is $3.90. You were making $8.10. Same dish, same price, less than half the money.

So put the price up. 30% on $12 is $15.60. But now the app takes 30% of $15.60, which is $4.68. Not $3.60. That is the part people miss. The commission comes off the new price too. You keep $10.92, and after food and packaging, your profit is $6.42. Better. Still $1.68 short of dine in.

To actually get back to $8.10, the price is $18. That is 50% up, not 30. Because you do not multiply by what they take. You divide by what you keep. They take 30%, so you keep 70. Your costs, plus the profit you want, divided by 70%. That is $18.

And that is the real answer, $18 for a pad thai on an app. Some kitchens can charge that, most cannot, which makes this a listing decision, not a pricing one. The dishes that work on delivery are the ones with room in them, and it is usually not the cheap one you are proudest of.

So before you put your menu on an app, cost it per channel. Dine in, takeaway, delivery, with the commission and the packaging in. Some dishes will be fine, some will be a lot worse than you think. You can do that free at dishboard.co. No card. And if this was useful, subscribe.

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