Delivery-app fees, decoded: what's actually eating your margin

Delivery-app fees are a maze on purpose. Here's the honest breakdown.

**What you actually pay on a $30 order:** - Commission: 15–30% depending on your plan tier ($4.50–$9.00) - Marketing / promoted listings: 5–15% if you opt in ($1.50–$4.50) - Small-order fee: sometimes $0.50–$1.00 charged to the customer, but it caps your ticket - Adjustment: refunds, missing-item chargebacks, wrong-order comps — these come out of your payout with a 48-hour dispute window

**What's negotiable:** - Commission tier (call your rep — most operators can drop 3–5% by moving up an "activation package") - Marketing spend (pause, optimize, and reactivate — nobody's stopping you) - Menu pricing per platform (yes, you can charge more on DoorDash than your dine-in menu)

**What's not:** - Payment processing built into commission - Delivery driver payout (that's their side, not yours)

**Where the money actually leaks:** 1. Uncontested adjustments (missing items, comp'd orders, unfair chargebacks) — most independents miss the 48-hour dispute window 2. Marketing spend on tiers that don't drive incremental orders 3. Menu-pricing gaps between platforms (you're absorbing the commission delta)

The fix is boring: audit every payout line-by-line, dispute the wrong charges before the window closes, price the menu right per platform. That's what our revenue-recovery add-on does — you only pay 20% of what we actually recover.