Third-party delivery and booking platforms have their place.
They help venues get discovered, bring new customers through the door and make delivery or reservations easy.
But here’s the catch: the number on the invoice isn’t the full cost.
As Narelle unpacked in our recent webinar, the real price of relying too heavily on third-party platforms goes well beyond commission. There are extra fees, lost customer data and, perhaps most importantly, the cost of paying to reach the same customer again... and again... and again.
That’s where things start to get expensive.
Most venue owners know the headline commission they’re paying a delivery marketplace. In many cases, it lands somewhere in the high teens to high twenties per order.
Ouch.
But the important bit isn’t just how much commission you’re paying. It’s what that commission is coming out of.
Because commission is charged on revenue, not profit.
Say food costs chew up around 30% of revenue and labour takes another 30%. You’ve got roughly 40% left to cover everything else.
Now throw a 25% platform commission into the mix.
That platform hasn’t taken a quarter of your profit. It’s swallowed more than half of the margin you had left.
And we haven’t even reached the sides yet.
Depending on the platform, venues can also get hit with:
Booking and reservation platforms can pile on marketplace placement fees and premium visibility upsells too.
Then there’s an especially sneaky one: commission on returning booking guests.
With some platforms, a guest can remain attributed to the platform for a year or more after their original booking. So even when that customer comes back, you may still be paying for the privilege.
Not exactly the kind of regular you had in mind.
Commission hurts today.
Not owning your customer data can hurt for years.
When someone orders or books through a third-party platform, you might receive their name, order details, an arrival or delivery time and perhaps part of their phone number.
Meanwhile, the platform can build a much richer picture of that customer, including things like:
And crucially, they can use that relationship to bring the customer back into their marketplace — where your venue is sitting alongside a whole bunch of competitors.
See the problem?
You make the food. You run the service. You create the experience. You earn the glowing review.
But someone else builds the customer asset.
Instead of owning the relationship, you’re effectively renting access to it.
When you own your customer relationship, you can keep the conversation going.
You can send that Friday regular a new menu update. Give Tuesday-night diners a reason to pop back in. Tell your biggest fans about an upcoming event. Win someone back when you haven’t seen them in a while.
Without the data? That gets a whole lot harder.
You lose opportunities to:
And every time you want to reach that customer again, you may find yourself heading straight back through the same platform.
And paying again.
This is where the maths gets particularly interesting.
Third-party platforms can be brilliant at acquisition. They put your venue in front of hungry people who might never have discovered you otherwise.
But your tenth order from the same person?
That’s a different story.
Repeat customers are where the delicious economics of loyalty kick in. You’ve already done the hard work of winning them over. They know you. They like you. Hopefully they’re already daydreaming about that chilli oil.
The webinar highlighted just how valuable retention can be:
So when every repeat transaction carries the same hefty commission as the first, you lose one of the biggest advantages of loyalty: lower acquisition costs over time.
That’s why owning the customer relationship matters so much.
It doesn’t mean rage-deleting every third-party app before lunch.
Third-party platforms can absolutely earn their place in your channel mix.
The goal is to make sure customers also have a clear path back to something you control.
Think:
In other words, use other platforms to help customers discover you. Then give those customers plenty of reasons to come directly back to you.
A direct channel gives you control over three pretty tasty things:
Your margin. Your customer data. Your customer experience.
Instead of sending people into someone else’s marketplace, you can bring them into an ordering experience built around your venue.
Your menu. Your offers. Your brand. Your relationship.
And one of the easiest places to start is Google.
Your Google Business Profile costs nothing, yet it can shape the very first interaction someone has with your venue.
Someone searches for dinner nearby. Your venue pops up. They check the photos, opening hours and menu, then decide whether you’re tonight’s winner.
That makes your profile an important tool for:
And importantly, you can point customers towards the channels you want them using.
Free, useful and already sitting there waiting for you. Not bad for a few minutes of profile housekeeping.
When customers order directly, you can start building something incredibly valuable: your own first-party customer database.
Depending on the information you collect, that could include:
And unlike an audience sitting inside somebody else’s marketplace, that database belongs to your venue.
You can understand who your regulars are, who hasn’t ordered in a while and who might be interested in your next offer.
That opens the door to smarter, more relevant marketing instead of yelling the same promotion at everyone and hoping somebody’s hungry.
Once you have that customer relationship, you don’t need to pay marketplace commission every time you want to bring someone back.
Email and SMS give you a much lower-cost way to drive repeat visits.
Got a quiet Tuesday?
Send an offer.
Launching a new menu?
Tell your regulars.
Running an event?
Give your biggest fans first dibs.
The goal isn’t to bombard people. It’s to make the customer data you’ve already earned actually work for your venue.
Delivery isn’t disappearing.
Nearly three quarters of restaurant traffic now happens off-premises, according to the figures shared in the webinar, while online ordering has grown significantly faster than dine-in since the early 2000s.
Customers want convenience.
The opportunity is to deliver that convenience without giving away the whole customer relationship.
With white label delivery, customers order through your branded website or app rather than a third-party marketplace.
To them, the whole experience is yours.
Your brand. Your menu. Your ordering flow.
Behind the scenes, a third-party driver network can still handle the last-mile logistics.
So you don’t need to suddenly start recruiting a small army of delivery drivers.
You keep control of the order and customer relationship while someone else handles getting dinner from A to B.
Fork yeah.
One pizza franchise using white label delivery reported more than $240,000 a year in aggregated fee savings.
The same move grew its customer database by 18%, creating an even bigger audience it could market to directly in future.
Or take a mid-sized restaurant doing $60,000 a month through a delivery marketplace at a blended 28% fee.
That’s:
$16,800 a month in platform fees.
Or more than:
$200,000 a year.
Now imagine shifting just one-third of that volume into a direct channel with much lower transaction costs.
You don’t need every customer to change overnight.
Even a partial shift can put thousands of dollars back into the business while growing a customer database you can use again and again.
That’s where owning your channel starts getting pretty delicious.
The smartest approach isn’t necessarily third-party versus direct.
It’s understanding the job each channel should do.
Third-party platforms can help you get discovered.
Your direct channels can help turn that discovery into a long-term customer relationship.
To encourage that shift, venues can use things like:
You’ve already done the hard bit by serving up an experience worth coming back for.
Now make it ridiculously easy for customers to find their way back to you.
The real cost of third-party platforms isn’t sitting neatly on one invoice.
It’s the combination of:
commission + extra fees + lost customer data + repeated acquisition costs + the long-term value of customer relationships you don’t control.
And none of this means third-party platforms are the enemy.
They can be a powerful way to find new customers.
The trick is making sure they’re the front door, not the whole house.
Build direct ordering and booking channels. Grow your customer database. Use email and SMS to bring people back. Give loyal customers a reason to order directly.
And if you’re wondering where to start?
Give your Google Business Profile some love. It’s free, it shapes how customers discover you and it can point more people towards channels your venue actually controls.
Because you did the hard work to win the customer.
You should get to keep the relationship, too.