In the Dots admin panel you draw your delivery territory as polygons on a map — street by street, not a circle around the kitchen. Each zone carries its own delivery fee, free-delivery threshold, minimum order, and promised delivery time. The app does the rest: the customer types an address, and every price and ETA they see from that second is the correct one for where they actually live.
The address check happens first, not last
The most expensive moment in delivery UX is a customer who builds a $40 cart and then learns you don't deliver to them — that person rarely comes back for a second try. The Dots app asks for the address up front, matches it to a zone instantly, and shows that zone's fee and delivery time before the first item goes in the cart. Inside your app, where conversion runs up to 35%, removing that late rejection protects exactly the orders that were hardest to win.
Zone-based pricing protects the margin on every distance
One flat fee citywide always loses money twice: it undercharges the 7-km order and scares off the neighbor 800 meters away. With per-zone terms you price the near zone at $1 or free, the middle at $3, the far edge at $5 with a $25 minimum — and each order carries a fee that resembles its real courier cost. Because zones are polygons, a river, a railway line, or a bridge with evening traffic becomes a zone border instead of a daily dispatch argument. How to segment the map and set the numbers is its own craft — we wrote the full playbook in delivery zones that don't lose money.
Built for more than one kitchen
Zones are set per location. When a brand runs several branches, the platform routes each order to the branch whose zone contains the address — no dispatcher deciding by memory, no customer picking the wrong branch from a list. Fees flow into your reports per zone, so you can see which edge of the map earns and which one quietly subsidizes long rides. Zone borders also feed your courier logistics: tighter zones mean routes that stay short and delivery promises you can keep.
Who gets the most out of it
- Multi-location brands — automatic routing of every address to the right branch.
- Restaurants with their own couriers — per-zone fees that track real trip cost.
- Cities cut by rivers and rail lines — polygon borders where circles fail.
