How to Offer Restaurant Delivery
Without Marketplace Commissions
Customers want delivery. Marketplace apps make it easy — and charge 15–30% of every order for the privilege. On a $40 order, that can be $12 gone before you've paid for food or labor. (We broke down the full math in what third-party delivery apps really cost.)
The good news: you don't need a marketplace to deliver. You can take delivery orders on your own website and app, and get them to customers one of two ways.
The Key Difference: Marketplace vs. Courier
A marketplace finds customers for you, takes the order in its app, and delivers it — and charges a commission on the whole order for all three.
An on-demand courier only does the last part. The customer orders from you, on your website or app, and a courier picks it up and drops it off. You pay for the delivery trip, not a cut of the order. And the customer stays yours — their name, number, and order history land in your system, not someone else's.
Option 1: Deliver With Your Own Team
Best for: dense neighborhoods, high delivery volume, or restaurants that already have drivers.
You set the coverage area and the delivery fee. With Gegsy, you define delivery zones per location — a simple radius, or a custom area drawn on the map so you skip the highway or the neighborhood across the river.
Trade-off: you manage the drivers, the schedules, and the slow nights when a driver is on the clock with nothing to deliver.
Option 2: Hand Off to a Courier Partner
Best for: most independent restaurants, especially those without steady delivery volume.
With Gegsy's Managed Delivery, orders from your website and app are dispatched to a courier partner such as Nash or DoorDash Drive, depending on your area. No drivers to hire.
The courier quotes each job, so the fee varies with distance, order size, demand, and traffic. That's true on any platform — what matters is that it's a trip fee, not a percentage of the order.
Decide Who Pays the Delivery Fee
With a courier partner, you choose how the fee is split:
- The customer pays the full fee
- You pay the full fee
- You pay a percentage, the customer pays the rest
- You pay a fixed amount, the customer pays the rest
- The customer pays a fixed amount, and you cover the rest
A popular setup: the customer pays a flat-feeling amount like $3.99, and you cover the difference. It feels predictable to them and still costs you far less than a commission.
Use Minimums and Free Delivery to Protect Margins
- Minimum order for delivery. Keeps a $9 order from costing you more to deliver than it earns.
- Free delivery over a threshold. "Free delivery over $50" nudges customers to add a side or a drink to get there.
Gegsy Tip: Set your free-delivery threshold a little above your average delivery order. You'll see more orders land just over it.
What It Costs With Gegsy
Gegsy charges a flat monthly fee per location, plus a small flat fee per delivery order — $1.00 on either plan — no matter how big the order is. The courier's trip fee is separate and covered however you've set the split above. There's no percentage commission. See pricing, or run your own numbers in the savings calculator.
Keep the Marketplaces — Just Stop Depending on Them
You don't have to quit DoorDash or Uber Eats tomorrow. Many restaurants keep them for discovery and move their regulars to direct ordering, where every order is worth more. Our guide on getting more direct orders covers how.
The Bottom Line
Delivery doesn't have to mean commissions. Take orders on your own website and app, deliver with your team or an on-demand courier, and decide exactly who pays what.
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