Take a restaurant doing $20,000 a month through delivery apps. Once you add up commission, promos, processing, and refund leakage, the effective cost runs 30–40%, so $6,000–8,000 walks out the door every month, and the figure climbs as your sales grow. The plan below is how operators cut that bill roughly in half in one quarter, without quitting the apps and without losing volume.
One rule before day one: this is not about walking away from the marketplaces. They bring in new customers, and that is worth something. The problem is paying full acquisition prices for people who already know your food. Let the marketplaces introduce you to strangers, and keep the regulars they sent you on a channel you control.
Days 1–14: measure the real rate, launch the direct channel
Start with the honest number. Pull last month's marketplace statements and divide total deductions by gross marketplace sales, counting everything and not just the headline commission. Most owners doing this for the first time land on 30–40%, well above the tier they thought they were paying: DoorDash's Basic 15% / Plus 25% / Premier 30%, or Uber Eats' 15–30% range, which went up in March 2026. We broke down the full line-by-line math if you want the template.
In parallel, get your own channel live. This used to be the six-month, five-figure part of the plan. That is no longer true: a commission-free ordering website and a branded app on a platform like ours go live in about two weeks, with menu, payments, delivery zones, and the marketing stack included. Speed matters here because every week without a direct channel is another week of paying 30%+ on your own regulars.
While the channel is being set up, pick one honest incentive for ordering direct. Cashback of around 10% works well. It costs a fraction of what a marketplace order costs you, and it leaves the customer with a balance they can only spend at your place, so the reason to come back is baked into the reward itself.
Days 15–45: move the regulars, one order at a time
You cannot message your marketplace customers, because the platform keeps their contact details. What you can do is reach them in the physical world. Every marketplace order leaving your kitchen is a package headed straight into the hands of someone who has already paid for your food, so use it.
Put a card in every bag: a QR code to your app or site, plus the offer, "Order direct, get 10% cashback." Consistency matters more than print quality. It costs cents per order and it is the move that pays back most across the whole plan. We wrote up the insert-and-repeat system in detail.
Send your own traffic home. The ordering link on your Google Business Profile, your Instagram bio, the "order" button on your site should all point at your direct channel rather than a marketplace. Someone typing your name into a search box has already found you, so there is no reason to pay 30% to hand them over.
Make the first direct order effortless: no forced registration, a saved address, reorder in three taps. A branded app converts up to 35% of visitors because that friction is gone.
App, ordering site, delivery management, and cashback — set up in about two weeks. We'll show you the launch plan on a call.
Days 46–90: automate the repeat loop, renegotiate from strength
By now a slice of your regulars orders direct. The second half of the quarter is about keeping them there and building on the shift.
Switch on retention automation. Push notifications to app users cost nothing per message. A "your cashback is waiting" nudge, an offer to someone who has gone quiet for a few weeks, a lunchtime ping to weekday regulars: all of it is standard marketing-tools territory, and it runs on a schedule without a marketer on payroll.
Watch three numbers every week: the direct share of total delivery orders, the repeat rate on your direct channel, and the commission bill in dollars. Operators who run this typically see the direct share climb week over week as inserts and cashback do their work, since each regular you convert is 30%+ saved on every order they place from then on.
Then reprice the marketplace relationship. With a working direct channel you no longer need the top visibility tier; its job was to reach people, and your regulars now come to you directly. Drop from a 30% tier to a 15–25% one, skip the co-funded promo campaigns, and the rate falls on whatever marketplace volume you decide to keep. The negotiation stays calm, because for the first time you can afford to say no.
What halving the bill is actually worth
In the example above, the saving is about $3,500 a month, or $42,000 a year, from the same customers ordering the same food. No new traffic, no ad budget, no menu changes. For most independent restaurants that beats the entire annual profit improvement they could squeeze out of food-cost optimization. And the thing you build along the way, a customer database you actually own, keeps paying out long after the 90 days are up.
Do this next
Today, work out one number: last month's total marketplace deductions divided by gross marketplace sales. Write it on the office wall. Every step here exists to bring that number down. If it comes out above 30%, treat this week as day 1.
We'll map the 90-day plan onto your real volumes on a 30-minute call. No slides, just a calculator.