How Restaurant Online Ordering Fees Are Eroding Margins

Restaurant Business with Fexingo: Food Service, Hospitality, and Independent Operators · Aug 19, 2026 · 9m · transcript

Independent restaurants are paying up to 30 percent per order to third-party delivery apps, squeezing already thin margins. In this episode, Lucas and Luna break down the real cost structure behind those fees, what operators can do about it, and why some are building their own ordering systems. They dig into a concrete example: a Chicago pizzeria that shifted 40 percent of its delivery business to its own website and cut its average fee from 28 percent to 4 percent. They also look at what the big delivery platforms are doing to lock in smaller restaurants, from opaque commission tiers to…