Guides · Delivery

How much does Deliveroo really cost your restaurant?

Everyone quotes the commission rate — usually somewhere around 25–35% depending on your deal. But the commission is the headline, not the whole bill. The real question isn’t “what’s my rate?” It’s “of every £10 a customer spends, how much actually reaches my bank?”

The four costs hiding behind one order

1. Commission. The obvious one. On a £20 order at 30%, that’s £6 gone before you’ve turned the fryer on.

2. Packaging. Delivery food needs boxes, bags, lids and labels that counter food doesn’t. It’s easy to forget because it’s bought in bulk, but it’s a real per-order cost — often 40–80p on a main.

3. Refunds and errors. A missing item, a cold delivery, a customer complaint — the platform often refunds from your money, not theirs. Across a month this is rarely zero.

4. VAT on the commission. The platform charges VAT on its fee. Depending on your VAT position, some of that isn’t recoverable — a quiet extra few percent most owners never account for.

So is delivery worth it?

Usually yes — but not for the reason owners think. Delivery rarely makes strong margin on its own; its value is filling the quiet hours and covering fixed costs you’re paying anyway. The danger is running so much delivery volume at thin margin that a busy night feels profitable while the bank balance says otherwise.

The owners who win at delivery do two boring things: they price their in-app menu deliberately higher than the counter to recover the commission, and they know their true net per platform to the pound — so they push the channel that pays and quietly rein in the one that doesn’t.