Should a small restaurant build its own ordering system instead of using Skip?

Short answer: if you’re doing under roughly 150–200 online orders a month, marketplace apps (Skip, DoorDash, Uber Eats) are usually still cheaper in total cost once you account for build and maintenance. Past that volume, the commission they take almost always exceeds what a custom ordering system would have cost you — and you’d own the customer relationship instead of renting it. Here’s the actual math, not the vibes.

What marketplace apps really cost

Skip, DoorDash, and Uber Eats commissions typically run 15–30% per order, depending on the plan tier and whether you’re using their delivery drivers or your own. That’s not a one-time cost — it’s every order, forever, taken straight off your margin.

Take a $35 average order at a 25% commission: $8.75 gone per order before food cost, labour, or rent. At 300 orders a month, that’s $2,625/month — every month, no matter how long you’ve been on the platform.

What owning your ordering system costs

A custom ordering build runs $3,500–$14,000 upfront for most single-location restaurants, plus payment processing of roughly 2.5–3.5% + a small per-transaction fee — call it $1.05 per $35 order, not $8.75. Add hosting and maintenance of $40–$120/month.

The break-even, worked out

Using the numbers above — $8.75/order lost to a marketplace app versus roughly $1.05/order in processing on a custom site, plus a $7,000 mid-range build and $80/month in hosting:

• Extra margin per order by owning it: ~$7.70
• Monthly fixed cost of owning it: ~$80
• Orders needed per month just to cover the fixed cost: ~11
• Time to recoup the $7,000 build cost at 300 orders/month (~$2,310/month in recovered margin): under 3 months

Below roughly 20–30 orders a month, the math flips — you’re paying $80+/month in hosting to save less than that in commissions, and the marketplace app’s built-in customer discovery is worth more than the fee. Most restaurants cross the break-even point faster than they expect, because delivery-app order volume tends to climb steadily once a restaurant is established on the platform.

This isn’t hypothetical for us — order.chadspizza.ca is a commission-free ordering system we built for Chad’s Pizza in Maple Ridge, wired directly into their existing Clover POS. The case study walks through what’s actually in it.

What the marketplace apps don’t put in their pitch

• You don’t own the customer. Every repeat order goes through their app, their notifications, their re-marketing — not yours. A customer who orders from you 20 times through Skip is a Skip customer, not yours, until they happen to search for you directly.
• You can’t run your own promotions cheaply. Discounts and loyalty programs inside marketplace apps usually cost you an additional cut on top of the base commission.
• Menu changes take longer. Updating a dish, price, or 86’ing an item across three different delivery apps is slower than updating one system you control.

What we’d actually tell you

Run both, at least initially, and watch the numbers. Marketplace apps are genuinely good at bringing in customers who’ve never heard of you — that discovery value is real and worth paying for early on. But once you have steady repeat volume, every order still routed through a 20–30% commission is margin you’ve already earned and are giving away. The businesses we see win long-term run their own ordering site as the default for existing customers (linked from Instagram, on the receipt, at the counter) and keep marketplace apps running for new-customer discovery — not as the only channel.

If you want us to run your actual numbers — your average ticket, current order volume, which platforms you’re on — book a free 30-minute call and we’ll tell you honestly whether you’ve already crossed the break-even point.