Your own ordering site vs. delivery aggregators: do the math

If you run a restaurant, the aggregator's commission is probably your largest variable cost after food and staff — and the only one you can actually change.

The commission math

Most aggregators take 20–30% of every order. Put your own numbers in:

Orders / month	Avg ticket	Online sales / month	Lost to 25% commission
300	80 PLN	24 000 PLN	6 000 PLN
600	90 PLN	54 000 PLN	13 500 PLN
1 000	90 PLN	90 000 PLN	22 500 PLN

That's money leaving every month, forever — with no asset to show for it.

What you get back with your own channel

• Margin — a flat monthly fee instead of a cut of every order.
• Your customers — names, emails, order history. On an aggregator, they're the aggregator's customers, not yours.
• Your brand — your domain, your look, your upsells — not a listing wedged between 40 competitors.
• Direct contact — loyalty, promos, and a reason to come back to you.

"But the aggregator brings me customers"

True — for discovery it's useful, especially early. The smart move isn't to quit it overnight; it's to add a commission-free channel and steer your repeat customers there. The aggregator finds them once. Your own site keeps them.

What a commission-free setup costs

A branded ordering site with online payment and a kitchen handoff is a one-time build plus a small monthly fee — far less than a single month of aggregator commission at any real volume. I built exactly this for Sushi Zushi (their first commission-free channel), then productized it as Gastronaut — a SaaS a restaurant runs on its own domain: ordering, reservations, widgets, admin, one flat monthly fee.

When it pays off

Do the table above. If your commission line is bigger than a modest monthly subscription — and at 300+ orders it almost always is — a direct channel pays for itself in weeks, then compounds.

Want the math for your numbers? Send me your order volume and I'll show you the break-even point.