The marketplaces publish commission tiers. In the United States the headline range runs from about fifteen percent to about thirty, depending on how much marketing you buy from them. That is the number in every conversation, and it is not the number that matters.

What actually comes off

• The commission itself.
• Card processing, on top.
• Promotions, which are often the price of being visible.
• Packaging, which is real money and is yours.
• Refunds, which land on you more often than feels fair.

Stack those and the real cost of a marketplace order commonly lands somewhere in the thirties as a share of the ticket. Against a pre-tax margin that the industry measures in low single digits, that is the whole of the profit and then some.

Which is not the same as saying do not do it

Marketplace orders can still be worth taking. A kitchen with idle capacity at three in the afternoon is selling time that had no other buyer, and covering fixed costs at a thin margin beats an empty kitchen.

The mistake is treating those orders as if they carried the same margin as the dining room, and then wondering why a busier year made less money.

Price the channel, not just the dish

Most operators now run higher prices on the marketplaces than in the room. It is normal, guests broadly understand it, and the alternative is subsidising a third party with your dining room.

Check what your agreement says about price parity before you do it. Some tiers require matching, and that requirement is worth pricing in.

The customer is not yours

This is the part that gets underweighted. You do not learn who ordered, you cannot contact them, and the relationship belongs to the app. Every order taken in your own room, or through your own address, is a customer you keep.

Do the sum for one month

Take last month’s marketplace orders, work out what actually landed in your account after everything, and set it against what the same food would have earned in the room. Most operators have never done this arithmetic, and it changes what they do next.

Delivery is not expensive because of the commission. It is expensive because of everything stacked on top of it.