MOBILE APPS · HOSPITALITY
What Wolt and Glovo really cost you — and when your own system pays off
Delivery platforms bring customers and a new cost few people count to the end. We show exactly where the money goes and how your own ordering system keeps the margin with you.
Delivery platforms brought restaurants new customers — and a new cost that plenty of people never count all the way to the end. On food delivery the intermediary’s commission is often 25 to 35 per cent of the order value. On the margins hospitality actually runs, that means many orders placed through a platform earn you little or nothing.
The answer is not walking away from the platforms overnight — it is your own ordering system, which gradually takes over your regular, loyal customers, where no commission is charged.
Where exactly the money goes
Take an order of 30 €. At a 30 per cent commission, 9 € stays with the intermediary. Subtract the cost of ingredients and labour on top of that and you can see the “profit” is often an illusion. The platform also keeps the customer data — you do not know who ordered, and you cannot reach them again.
Your own system reverses both: there is no commission (only the low fee of a payment provider, usually around 1–2 %), and the customer becomes yours.
Mobile and web application development
Your own ordering system — online menu, basket, payment, alerts to the kitchen — carrying your brand, with no intermediary taking a cut.
See the service →What such a system really is
It is not necessarily an app the customer installs from a store. To begin with, a web ordering system built into your site and reachable through a link or a QR code is usually enough. It contains:
- a digital menu with photographs, prices and availability;
- a basket and payment (card, Apple/Google Pay, cash on delivery);
- a choice of collection or delivery, with the delivery zone and fee;
- an alert straight into the kitchen — to a tablet or a printer;
- order history, so the customer reorders with one tap.
Later this can grow into a proper mobile app with a loyalty scheme and push notifications — but that is an upgrade, not a condition for starting.
How to move across without risk
You do not have to leave Wolt or Glovo all at once. The sensible route runs in parallel:
- We set up your own system and add it to the existing channels.
- With every platform order you include a small card: “Next time order direct — same food, no commission.” The QR code leads to your system.
- Loyal customers move across slowly, and the platform is left doing the one thing it is good at: finding new ones.
A platform is excellent for a stranger’s first order. For a regular’s tenth order it is just a tax you do not have to pay.
When it pays off
A simple calculation: if you turn over 5.000 € a month through the platforms and move only half of that onto your own system, at a 30 per cent commission you save around 750 € a month. At that volume your own system pays for itself within a few months, and after that the saving stays in your pocket every month.
For a small place with a low delivery volume, a simple online menu with orders by e-mail or message may well be enough — and we will say so honestly if that is the sensible answer.
What this means for you
If you deliver through the platforms and the commission is choking you, let us do the sums together. Send us your rough monthly turnover through the intermediaries — that single figure is usually enough to show whether your own system is worth it and how quickly it pays for itself.