The Real Cost a Delivery App Adds to an Order

The four charges, separated out

A delivery order carries up to four distinct costs on top of the food, and they behave differently.

The menu mark-up. Restaurants pay the platform a commission on every order - commonly 20 to 30 per cent of the basket. Many pass some of that on by listing higher prices in the app than on the board in the shop. The typical uplift is 10 to 25 per cent. This is the one most people do not know exists, because there is nothing on the screen that says so.

The delivery fee. The visible one. Typically £2 to £5 depending on distance and demand, and variable with surge.

The service fee. A percentage of the basket, commonly 5 to 15 per cent, sometimes capped. Because it is a percentage, it grows with the order in a way a flat fee does not.

The small order fee. Charged below a threshold, and designed to push your basket above it. Which it does - that is what it is for.

Add tips and the occasional priority-delivery upsell and you have six lines on a receipt, only one of which is food.

Why the mark-up is the one worth knowing about

Of the four, the menu mark-up is both the largest on a typical order and the least visible.

A delivery fee is a line on a receipt. A service fee is a line on a receipt. The mark-up is not a line at all - it is simply a different number printed next to the item, and nothing on the screen invites you to compare it with anything.

Two consequences follow.

Collection orders through an app are often worse value than collection orders in person, because you pay the marked-up menu without the delivery. Ordering at the counter, or through the restaurant's own site where one exists, avoids it entirely.

A subscription does not help with it. Subscriptions remove the delivery fee. The mark-up and the service fee are untouched. On the example above, a subscription turns £31.32 into £27.83 - still £5.83 above the shop price for the same food.

The way to see the mark-up is to open the app and the restaurant's own website side by side. On most chains the difference is immediately visible.

What the same meals cost cooked at home

Across every recipe on this site that has a counter-price equivalent, the batch cost averages a small fraction of the menu price. The individual figures are on each recipe page and the method is on how we cost recipes.

A few representative comparisons, all priced on UK supermarket own-brand lines for the quantity actually used:

The delivered column applies the same 15 per cent mark-up, £3.49 delivery and 10 per cent service fee as the example above.

The honest caveat: these compare ingredients against menu prices, not your evening against somebody else's. Cooking for four takes an hour. That is a real cost and it is not in the table.

Where a delivery app is genuinely the right answer

A guide that only argues one way is not much use.

When you are ill, or it is midnight, or the kitchen is being replaced. The premium is for the service and the service has value.

When the alternative is not cooking but not eating. A takeaway that gets a meal into a tired household is better than a plan that does not happen.

When the restaurant is genuinely better than what you can make. Nothing on this site claims a home version of a tandoor-cooked naan or a properly made pho is a match. Chain food is unusually reproducible; most restaurant food is not.

When you are ordering for a group and cooking for that many is a project.

What the arithmetic is actually for is the default - the Friday that happens every Friday because it has become the shape of the week. That one is worth looking at, and it is what the cost calculator is for.