How to price your restaurant menu for delivery apps

Pricing for delivery apps is a different problem from pricing for dine-in. The customer experience is different, the cost structure is different, and the competition is right next to you in a search list. Setting delivery prices well is one of the highest-leverage things a small restaurant can do for delivery profit.

Start with a target margin, not a guess

Before changing any prices, decide what margin you actually need on a delivery order to make it worthwhile after commission, packaging, and discounts. That number becomes your target. Every item can then be checked against it.

Working backwards from a target margin gives you a target delivery price for each dish — the price at which an item clears your threshold on a given channel. If your current price is below that, the item is quietly underpriced.

Avoid quiet underpricing

The most common mistake is using dine-in prices on delivery apps. With commissions sometimes reaching 25–30% and packaging stacking on top, dine-in prices often leave little or nothing behind. Underpricing is rarely visible in daily reports — it shows up as “we’re busy but not making money”.

Watch for:

• Items priced identically across all channels.
• Best-sellers that are also your thinnest items.
• Combos and bundles where the discount math hasn’t been re-run since launch.

Discount safety

Discounts pull traffic, but they come straight off your margin unless the platform fully co-funds them. Before running a promo:

• Check what the discounted price does to your per-item profit on each channel.
• Confirm which items are safe to discount and which should be excluded.
• Cap discount depth at a level that still leaves you above your target margin.

Why delivery pricing usually can’t match dine-in

Customers often expect delivery to feel like a “light premium” over dine-in, not a discount. The honest reason is that delivery fees, commissions, and packaging change the cost base. Pricing slightly higher on delivery — and being transparent about it — is a normal, sustainable model for most restaurants.

A simple pricing routine

1. Set a clear target margin for delivery.
2. Calculate per-item profit and target price for each item on each channel.
3. Adjust prices on items that fall below target.
4. Re-check after every commission change, packaging cost change, or new promotion.

For the underlying calculations, see how to calculate delivery profit for each menu item.