Delivery apps vs your own page
A delivery app earns its commission when it brings you a customer you did not have. It does not earn it when your regular opens the app to order the same thing they ordered last week. That order was always yours. Only the commission is new.
Set the rate your app actually charges. Everything below is worked out from it.
Through a delivery app
Through your own page
R50.00 back on this one order. Over a month of 130 orders like it, that is R6 500.00 that stays in the till.
130 a month is thirty orders a week. If you do more, the figure is bigger. Our side of the table does not change either way.
This is not a list of what is wrong with the apps. They do a real job. It is a list of which job each door is for.
| What | A delivery app | Your own page |
|---|---|---|
| Finding new customers | This is what you pay them for, and they are good at it. | No. Your own page is for people who already know your name. |
| Commission | A percentage of every order, set by them, on your regulars as well as on strangers. | None. One flat monthly fee, whatever you sell. |
| Delivery | Their drivers, their delivery fee. | Collection only. The customer orders ahead and fetches it hot. |
| The customer’s cellphone number | Theirs. You see a name and an order. | Yours, on every order, so you can phone when it is ready. |
| Your menu, your look | Their layout, their colours, next to everyone else. | Your logo, your colour, your own address, nobody else on the page. |
| Payment | Taken in the app and paid over to you on their timetable. | At your counter when they collect, cash or card, as it is today. |
| When the kitchen is in trouble | Switch off in their app, if you can find it in time. | One tap pauses ordering and says why. Anyone on shift can do it. |
Keep the apps. Let them bring you people who have never heard of you. Then, when those people come back, give them a door that does not cost you a cut: your own link, on the till slip, on the window, on WhatsApp.
A stranger searching for food near them. Worth a commission.
A regular who already knows what they want. Not worth one.
Print it on the slip that goes in the bag. The next order comes through your door.
See what it costs and when it pays for itself.