Taking orders yourself should not cost you delivery.
The usual trade is: keep the app and keep the drivers, or go direct and figure the driving out on your own. You should not have to choose.
Live today
“But the app gives me drivers.”
It does, and that is worth something. It is also the main reason a lot of restaurants keep sending their own customers through somebody else’s platform — not because they want to, but because the alternative sounded like buying a car.
Getting the food there and owning the customer are two different problems. They only feel like one problem because most platforms sell them together.
The order is yours. The driving is whatever suits you.
The customer orders on your site or your app. What happens after the kitchen is a separate decision, and it is yours to make.
Your own drivers
If you already run delivery, keep running it. Orders come through your own system with the address and the details attached.
A delivery partner
Uber Direct — live On-demand drivers for the orders you cannot cover yourself, without the customer ever leaving your ordering page.
A mix of both
Your drivers for the close ones and busy nights, a partner for the rest. Configured for how your restaurant actually runs.
More partners
DoorDash Drive — coming soon We will say when it is ready rather than before.
This is the part that makes direct ordering realistic. Without it, going direct means telling half your customers you no longer deliver.
A delivery driver is not the same as a middleman.
Through a marketplace
They own the listing, the customer and the relationship. The driving is bundled in with all of it, and your restaurant appears next to four others.
Direct, with a delivery partner
Your page, your menu, your customer record. The driving is a service you use for that order, not a platform your business sits inside.
Buying the driving is very different from renting the customer.
What we cannot promise on a web page.
- How far you can deliver depends on your address, your market and which option you are using. It is set up for your restaurant, not fixed by us.
- Delivery through a partner costs money, and that cost varies with distance, time and provider. We will not pretend otherwise.
- Availability of any delivery partner depends on your area.
Tell us where you are and we can tell you what is actually possible there. That is a better answer than a number on a page that turns out not to apply to you.
Delivery is the last step, not a separate business.
Serving orders your own drivers cannot reach.
Most restaurants set their delivery radius by what their own drivers can cover on a busy night. Anything outside it is a customer who wanted the food and could not get it.
Third-party delivery fulfilment gives a restaurant the option to accept qualifying orders beyond the area its own drivers normally serve. In a competitive local area that can matter, because it lets a restaurant test a wider delivery radius as a setting rather than as a hiring decision, and change it back just as easily.
Revenue fulfilled through expanded third-party delivery in a recent month at Timo’s Pizza
Creators can help create discovery. Website and App provide direct ordering channels. Customer Data records the relationship. SMS, email and push notifications help support follow-up. Loyalty and Promotions give customers reasons to return. Delivery Fulfilment helps the restaurant serve qualifying customers across a wider area.
This describes how qualifying orders were fulfilled, not additional revenue. Those orders were still placed on the restaurant’s website or app, so this figure overlaps with those channels and should not be added to them. It is not a prediction that a wider radius adds a similar amount anywhere else, and it describes revenue fulfilled rather than any other financial outcome.
A restaurant with its own in-house drivers may manage the economics differently. Whether a wider radius works for you depends on demand, your menu, your pricing, the partner’s coverage in your area and how far it is still worth sending food. This is one restaurant’s result, results vary, and no specific result is guaranteed.
Source: Timo’s Pizza operating records and GetBrovo channel reporting for a recent month. Figures are rounded and attribution categories may overlap.
See how it fitted together at Timo’s Pizza →Ready to see what fits your restaurant?
Tell us where you are and we will tell you what delivery can look like for your business.