Restaurants Bled Dry by Delivery Apps
Restaurant owners are investing in direct ordering platforms to avoid commission fees, but these platforms fail to attract customers. This leaves them with lower prices and no increased order volume, negating the intended benefit of bypassing third-party delivery services. The lack of visibility and customer acquisition is a significant hurdle.
SOURCES (60)
“I’m at a Chipotle where the staff tells me they see an order on their screen but it’s not due for 10 minutes later than when I got here. Do places not have the ability to manually pull the order for preparation if a driver…”
“Had a corporate catering order for 40 people this morning and the driver I usually rely on just never showed up. Ended up loading trays into my own car and driving across town myself while my kitchen was short staffed the whole time. Client was understanding but I can't keep running my restaurant like this. Looking for an actual courier service in Tampa that does catering runs, not some app that disappears when you need them most. What's worked for you guys? submitted by /u/S”
“Reading through all the comments made me realize something. The idea actually didn’t come from waiting at a single food truck. It came from food truck festivals, where I’d have food ordered from one truck, drinks from another, and sometimes dessert somewhere else. I found myself walking back and forth between pickup windows because I didn’t want to miss my order. Maybe that’s a much narrower use case than I originally assumed, and that’s valuable feedback in itself. It might simply be a better f”
“That makes sense, and I can see why. If most orders are ready in 2–5 minutes, calling out a number is probably the simplest and fastest approach. The places I had in mind were the ones with longer or less predictable waits—busy festivals, larger menus, or operations where people don’t necessarily want to stand next to the pickup window the whole time. Judging by the responses here, it seems my assumptions fit some businesses much better than others, which is exactly the kind of feedback I was ho”
“So far, I noticed this only works if I arrive to the pickup on-time. If the restaurant is running late with the order simply message the customer saying there's a delay with their order. Same thing for drop off if I'm delivering late to the customer (due to traffic, complex apartments, ect.) ⭐️ Update: To add more context, Doordash is very strict with on-time rating. There have been times I was marked late for delivering to the customer 1 minute past the delivery time. By messaging the c”
“I came across this in another thread and it worried me. The orders I am getting today aren't perfect, but oh man do they pay way, WAY better than Uber Eats. Honestly not even in the same universe. $8 for 0.4 miles. A small bag from 7/11 and a case of water. Again, when I was doing Uber Eats they wanted me to drive far greater distances for that. Should I be expecting orders to fall off a cliff and only receive terrible offers or is my market simply better for DD than UE? I sat at a 7/11 the”
“Doordash in my area is now considering pretty much all orders as high paying platinum orders. Its unfortunate because theyre NOT high paying. Previously if it was about $2 a mile it was platinum, now im getting "platinum" offers that are less than a dollar a mile. Guess im about to cherry pick my orders since theres no point to being platinum anymore submitted by /u/Perfect_Solution_736 [link] [comments]”
I just tried it. I was able to see it for restaurants near me.
“A customer of ours actually does this very thing and I was very interested to learn more. While customers are waiting for their order they push an ad with something like "Can't wait for your {brand name here}? Donate €2 to our community meals program". They then add each sale to some digital counter and the next customer can ask for a €2 discount. Apparently it's very popular at festivals.”
“when it becomes impossible for me to ignore i will try it again but since 75% of my revenue is catering i could give zero fucks about walkup sales and online orders.”
“DD will start at 2 dollars and go up from there. This is why you suddenly see orders for 2 or 3 dollars a mile. It is close to the pick up time. DD would rather pay you 15 dollars than pay for a 45 dollar food order. Even though they first offered it for 2 dollars. Accepting low offers screws every driver in your market. Don't take it unless it is worth your time. submitted by /u/Different-Cry8143 [link] [comments]”
“i am not a fan of delivery apps for food trucks. maybe if the food truck is one of those that operates as a fixed location with regular hours.”
“If you can swing it, I would at least ask GH what they can do around promos + fee relief for the first 30-60 days, otherwise it usually ends up being a lot of tablet babysitting for pretty thin incremental volume. Also, not sure what POS you are on, but IMO the biggest win with integration is fewer missed orders and fewer menu/price mismatches (even if you still keep a backup tablet). If you do try them again, I'd track it like a mini marketing test: incremental orders vs other apps, average”
“Currently, we use DoorDash and UberEats. We use them via tablets so we save the Toast integration fees. We used GrubHub roughly 1.5 years ago via tablet, and we found they weren’t as good as the others. It maybe brought in an extra $100 a month at the time. They are reaching back out as they have some new partnerships they are trying out. I don’t like the idea of having a 3rd tablet, as it is already hard enough to get employees to make sure everything is turned on in time. However, $30 a month”
“Is anyone else getting bombarded with Delivery reservations? Reservations can be overwhelming to begin with but these delivery reservations are unbelievable without an option to decline them. Is there anyway to block or delete these? submitted by /u/Bronx_Benny [link] [comments]”
“That's exactly the trap. What got us past it was a real holdout - a segment that gets no credit - so we could separate true lift from people who'd have reordered anyway. Once we could actually attribute it, store credit beat cash on margin for us.”
Food truck people are not going to pay for a service that syncs all that.
“Genuine question. I use doordash as a costumer and I can’t even order from restaurants 12 miles away as it’s deemed too far. So how does a 24 mile order get through? submitted by /u/broment-61 [link] [comments]”
“I’m not getting any offers whatsoever. It’s been this way since about 6 o’clock yesterday. What in the world is going on it is never this completely dead. I am just wasting my life sitting out here, not getting any offers or able to make any money. Where are the orders at? Edit: I I have never seen it where I get no offers at all. I’m getting some Uber offers, but they’re all lowball. I literally have not gotten one DoorDash offer in like an hour though. Is there something wrong with the app or”
“I applied to UberEats and DoorDash at the same time 4 years ago, Uber accepted me right away and DoorDash immediately put me on the waitlist. I am in a very saturated market (Los Angeles), so I kinda understood, but at the same time, it just seemed pretty crazy to have to wait so many years. I had been more or less making a living on UberEats (as well as the occasional Amazon, Instacart orders sprinkled in). I already had deleted the DoorDash app, as I thought there was no hope in it, but just d”
“Is iCarry a better option than using individual delivery partners? Which delivery partner or aggregator do you prefer, and why? submitted by /u/Dense_Act_1434 [link] [comments]”
“It was possible and probable to make upwards and over $200 a day during this era as a delivery driver if one worked an entire shift. Nowadays, it's very difficult. I'm simply curious, where did the money go? Why does it seem like there's no job where someone can go and simply work not too hard and (adjusted for inflation) make $300 a day with little experience? submitted by /u/Some_Donut8701 [link] [comments]”
“Sat at pizza place for about 30 mins for what appeared to be an 8.50 dollar order for about 2 miles. I told myself it was my last order of the night anyway... to deliver 9 pizzas. Drove around this university for about 8 minutes trying to drop off, make it to drop off, some kind of basketball player party stuff going on. Then I get this FAT tip. submitted by /u/Night_Wyld [link] [comments]”
“It's basically just the title. At about 8:25pm, I got an order for Buffalo wild wings, but once I arrived at the store I saw that the expected pickup time on the app was 8:11 p.m. I continued with the offer and delivered it. I don't know if DoorDash expects me to be able to time travel, but I'm worried that this will result in a contract violation and a potential ban. Also, why does this happen in the first place? submitted by /u/Fire_Raptor_220 [link] [comments]”
“If I've made $40 tonight and I'm supposed to collect $60 cash to keep, doing the next few orders for free is just whack in my opinion. Especially since people in my area avoid tipping like it's the plague. submitted by /u/Fast_Client373 [link] [comments]”
“Finally! Someone willing to go into a space few have tried to tackle with an app. A dozen or more apps should get food vendors finally what they've been asking for. Thank you. tech bros for being our shining light /s”
“I do agree with NumbersNijaCPA. . . Let them go somewhere else if they not willing to pay the price.”
“The thing that finally broke me wasn't the pay — it's that the platform takes a third before I see a dollar and owns the whole relationship. I build the hustle, they keep the customer. Been researching pharmacy delivery as a way out. Independent pharmacies are getting hammered right now (chain closures, patients scattering, Amazon rolling out same-day in ~4,500 cities), and the ones that survive are the ones that can deliver. A reliable local driver is exactly what they need — and you”
“Got 3 min away from the drop off , the cancelled their order , door dash told me to return it to the supermarket , (it was hot food) store said they don’t take returns from door dash Now I can’t work because of this bozo wanted to cancel their order .. submitted by /u/willywill2121 [link] [comments]”
“what does this mean? lol someone explain plz submitted by /u/sompky [link] [comments]”
“Different day, same bullshit. Doordash constantly takes me out of the zone and then gives no return to zone orders. Like, hello, I chose my zone for a reason. Stop sending me out of it by MILES. Constant batched low paying orders. Let me turn off batched orders already. It seems like almost every day something is wrong with the app. I do a fresh install every. single. day. and there are still problems. Hell, sometimes I have to reinstall mid scheduled shift and when that doesn't fix it I hav”
“As someone who drove for instacart for over 2 years, I'm gonna assume they are doing a his as the expense of the driver. It was good at first but over time the pay got worse and the order got dumber. When I say dumber, I mean that instacart would bundle terrible orders together and make you take those or nothing at all. The standard pay for a delivery was like $4 when I left, everything after that was tip. I was literally deciding which orders to take based only on tip because the base pay w”
“Hey y’all! I recently got a job and am finally able to move on from relying on DoorDash full time, but my partner is still dashing while I work since we only have the one car, and our morning/EA market is *horrible.* My partner doesn’t want to do multi-apping without me in the car with them as it’s a bit too much for them to keep track of, so I wanna know what else y’all do to supplement the income! Our running ideas are either DashLink or Amazon Flex, but I know those can both be pretty bad on”
“Are you starting from the Clover website or directly from the restaurant website? I've noticed that a lot of restaurants have multiple methods of ordering if you start from their website.”
“Maybe go at DoorDash instead of customers for not tipping, maybe door dash should up their base pay so customers shouldn’t have to tip, I fear we have forgotten what tipping is for, ITS FOR GOOD SERVICE not a bribe to pick up an order that’ll probably get eaten by the driver anyways, some of yall are greasebags submitted by /u/jadyen1103 [link] [comments]”
“I finally went through my bank statements today and added everything up. Between Uber Eats, DoorDash, and the occasional Grubhub order, I'm spending somewhere around $1,100 a month on food. Seeing that number all at once makes me sick Part of the problem is that I'm a pretty heavy eater. I run/lift regularly and usually eat somewhere in the 2,500–3,500 calorie range depending on the day, so grabbing one small meal usually isn't enough. I'll often order larger portions or add side”
“I picked up this delivery for a deli this morning, it was two orders going to the same customer, it was two French dip sandwiches. I get to the restaurant and I say I'm here for two orders for Jaime, the give me a single bag, and I say "oh I need the other order too" and the employee then shows me the two cups of au jus, and the two styro foam boxes for the two sandwiches. So I think it's fine, I deliver the order, it was an 8 dollar order for 4 miles, then I saw that the base”
“Started out the day, utterly normal, 20 dollar delivery for two small shop & pay orders mostly frozen food...for a supermarket that had to throw out ALL of their perishables...DAMMIT. The damn ice cream section even had POLICE tape around it I think, what HAPPENED to those frozen foods?! Sundays are my grocery day, I get a good grocery order I'll be set for the whole day, but NOT today. Sorry person who ordered almost all frozens, luck was not on your side, and I emphasize sorry as you c”
“DO NOT support this app. They changed something where false positive violations are being handed out like candy and there is NO method for disputing the violation, unlike Doordash and Ubereats, which means once you have the violation it's there for 3 months, which is a long time if you're doing a high volume of orders. The only way to avoid violations is just to do very few orders to decrease your chances. It's like they intentionally WANT to reduce volume and drivers. You can email”
“You are also paying for the convenience, which you even point out in your post that you would have to go to the restaurant or minimart as an alternative”
“Is this a thing? It’s only $9 for 40 minutes but drop off by time is a 6 hour window? I don’t do deliveries but it’s been so slow that I’ve had to consider - can someone explain this to me please. submitted by /u/mdl27603 [link] [comments]”
“If the profit is there I guess. But the menu would show the price of that sandwich as $1 event fee, $10 facility fee, and $14 for the sandwich. That way the customer knows exactly who is actually gouging them.”
“GTFO here with your $2 delivery 30 min delivery runs and 7 dollar 25 min rides lol submitted by /u/bilj1982 [link] [comments]”
“I recently started using Fantuan Delivery, and I was shocked and disgusted by something I learned after asking one of my drivers a question. I asked him whether it made a difference if I tipped him through the app or in cash, and he told me that he doesn't receive tips left through the app. And I said, not even a percentage? His answer was no, none of it. He didn't volunteer this information, I specifically asked. Based on that conversation, I'll only be tipping in cash from now on.”
“Hey everyone! This is my first time ever doing DoorDash this consistently. I've always done it off and on, but never this often since I'm relying on it for bills and a little pocket money. Today was very slow. I only received two offers—one was a low-paying order ($6 for 8 miles), and the other was actually pretty good, but the customer ended up requesting a refund because the item was out of stock. Since then, I've been waiting for over an hour with no offers, so I logged off to go”
“Hi! I manage a high-volume restaurant where roughly 70% of sales is from takeout. We use 3-4 different 3P services. Is there an app, where if two iPads are used, you can communicate updated wait times to drivers outside while the restaurant updates the app inside? Trying to eliminate drivers constantly coming in to crowd a small space, drivers asking everyone that passes by multiple times, etc. submitted by /u/im-a-classic-man [link] [comments]”
“120 deliveries in less than a week? Right. Maybe if you didn't have drivers waiting for nearly an hour for one single order. submitted by /u/Mcstuffins420 [link] [comments]”
“anyone else experience these? submitted by /u/ColdMedium5279 [link] [comments]”
“Not selling anything, genuinely trying to understand this before building something (happy to share more if anyone asks). A few questions if you have a minute: Do slow weeks or unexpected expenses (repairs, insurance, gas) ever create a cash crunch before your next payout? Have you used any advance/early-pay features — Uber's instant pay, DailyPay, Earnin, anything like that? What worked, what didn't? If you've ever taken a payday loan, cash advance, or borrowed from family/friends t”
“Thank you DoorDash. Side bar, when I’m not getting any orders I text the AI chat bot agent “WHY AM I NOT GETTING ANY ORDERS!!??“ and usually an order will come through soon after. I actually ended up texting this customer that by mistake after delivery, then I tried to play it off by putting the AI chat response reply to make it look like a glitch Haha, so I’m not sure if this customer did this in response to that? even though it’s completely out of context. submitted by /u/odiwelsou”
“It's a very basic-looking app I see couriers have in restaurants sometimes. The orange pill-shaped buttons turn green when pressed. That's all I got. I don't think it's Relay unless its design significantly changed. submitted by /u/43tj34 [link] [comments]”
“AND I call door dash. They contact merchant & tell me the merchant will remake it , if i wanna go pick it up!!:Although supposedly it has done been picked up ,and sent back to 3 other dashers. Then they tell me they can't contact customer to see if she Recieved the food!! Oh Doir dash your on one TODAY !! No i did not go try pick up order again 🙄 submitted by /u/NotACareInTheWorld72 [link] [comments]”
“This month has been a complete waste. Some nights after gas I barely cleared 30 bucks. I even went into normally what's a hotspot with a lot of restaurants and most of the order requests I get are over 8 miles of a drive for less than 10 dollars and a lot of them I get are from other drivers who canceled because when getting up to the restaurant, I saw the line out the door for people wanting to get into Dairy Queen as ice cream seems to be all that's busy lately. submitted by  ”