Delivery & Growth

Delivery App Profitability: How to Read Your Restaurant's Per-Order P&L

Delivery app profitability is the net margin left on each order after commissions, food cost, packaging and ads are subtracted from the ticket. On most apps, marketplace commissions run 15–30%, so a typical order only stays profitable when your food cost sits below ~30% and packaging plus ads don't eat the rest. The only reliable way to know is a per-order P&L, not a monthly gut check.

By Pimentón · 2026-08-09 · 4 min read

Most restaurant owners look at delivery revenue and assume it's working because the number grows every month. But volume isn't margin. The apps take their cut before you see a peso or a dollar, and packaging, ads and prep costs quietly stack on top. If you can't read the profit on a single order, you're flying blind on the channel that pays. This is how to build a per-order P&L for delivery and know exactly when it makes money.

What a per-order delivery P&L actually is

A per-order delivery P&L is a line-by-line breakdown of one average order: what the customer pays, what the app keeps, and what it costs you to fulfill it. It answers one question — how many pesos or dollars are left after everything?

The core lines are simple:

• Gross ticket — what the customer pays for food (before delivery fee and tip, which usually aren't yours).
• App commission — the marketplace cut, typically 15–30% depending on the app, market and plan.
• Food cost (COGS) — the raw cost of the dish, usually 25–35% of ticket.
• Packaging — containers, bags, seals, utensils. Often 3–8% of ticket and badly underestimated.
• In-app ads and promos — sponsored listings, discounts and 2x1s that come out of your margin.
• Payment and processing fees — sometimes bundled into commission, sometimes separate.

What's left is your contribution margin per order. That's the number that tells you if delivery is a profit engine or a leak.

How to build it: a worked example

Take a $15 order on a marketplace with a 25% commission. Here's how it drains:

• Gross ticket: $15.00
• App commission (25%): –$3.75
• Food cost (30%): –$4.50
• Packaging (5%): –$0.75
• In-app promo / ads (10%): –$1.50

Contribution left: $4.50, or 30% of the ticket — before labor and fixed costs. Now drop the ticket to $10 and keep the same percentages plus a fixed packaging cost, and the margin collapses fast. This is why average ticket is the single biggest lever in delivery profitability: commissions and packaging don't shrink proportionally on small orders.

Run this math for each app you're on. DoorDash, Uber Eats, Rappi, PedidosYa, DiDi Food and Grubhub all price differently by market and plan tier, so the same menu can be profitable on one and bleeding on another.

The costs owners forget in the P&L

The commission is the obvious line. The margin usually dies in the ones people skip:

• Promotions stacked on ads. Running a 20% discount and paying for sponsored placement at the same time can push effective cost past 45% of the ticket.
• Packaging inflation. Premium containers feel like a brand investment until you multiply them by 3,000 orders a month.
• Refunds and cancellations. Every remake or refunded order is a negative-margin transaction that should be averaged into your per-order number.
• Prep labor for delivery peaks. If delivery forces extra kitchen hands during rushes, that cost belongs in the channel P&L.

Build your per-order P&L with real blended costs, including the bad orders, not the best-case scenario.

When delivery stops being profitable

Delivery stops paying when your combined variable costs — commission + food cost + packaging + ads — cross roughly 70–75% of the ticket, leaving too little to cover labor and overhead. Common triggers:

• Average ticket too low to absorb fixed packaging and commission.
• Discount-driven volume where every extra order lowers blended margin.
• Paying for in-app ads on items with thin food-cost margins.
• Being on too many apps without the volume to justify each one.

The fix isn't always "leave the app." It's often re-pricing the delivery menu, building combos to lift ticket, cutting the promo that isn't converting, or concentrating volume where commissions and visibility actually work in your favor.

How to run this monthly

Turn the per-order P&L into a habit, not a one-off audit:

1. Pull each app's payout report and separate commission, ads and promo lines.
2. Divide by order count to get blended cost per order, per app.
3. Compare contribution margin across apps and menu categories.
4. Act: re-price, kill dead promos, adjust menu mix, or shift budget to the app with the best return.

The restaurants that win on delivery aren't the ones with the most orders — they're the ones who know the margin on every single one.

Frequently asked questions