--- title: "The Delivery Math Nobody Does" description: "Run the same delivery order through a marketplace app, your own driver, and a white-label fulfillment service, and the fee structure — not the food cost — decides which one actually pays." canonical_url: https://ovenscars.com/articles/the-delivery-math-nobody-does/ author: "Oven Scars Editorial" publisher: "Oven Scars" section: "Operations" date_published: 2026-08-04T00:00:00.000Z tags: ["delivery", "margin", "labor"] word_count: 886 reading_time_minutes: 7 license: "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — cite as \"Oven Scars\" and link the canonical URL" --- # The Delivery Math Nobody Does *Run the same delivery order through a marketplace app, your own driver, and a white-label fulfillment service, and the fee structure — not the food cost — decides which one actually pays.* **Operator takeaway:** Pull your average delivery ticket and radius from your POS this week. Divide the flat fee your white-label provider or driver actually costs you by your marketplace commission rate — that's your breakeven ticket size. Below it, marketplace reach may be worth the higher per-order cost. Above it, price and route those orders somewhere else. Domino's CFO Sandeep Reddy told investors the chain keeps aggregator pricing at a premium "so the channel can be [profit-neutral for franchisees](https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/dominos-order-count-growth-up-q2-aggregators/825688/)." Translation: Domino's doesn't treat DoorDash and Uber Eats as a flat cost of doing business — it prices each channel to protect the store's math. Most independents never do that math at all. They take whatever order lands, on whatever channel it lands on, and average the fees at tax time. Here's what a single $30 order actually nets across the three ways it can reach a customer's door. ## Marketplace commission is a percentage of your ticket, not a flat number DoorDash's published merchant tiers charge [15% commission on the Basic plan, 25% on Plus — the most popular tier — and 30% on Premier](https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/pricing), all calculated on the order subtotal. On a $30 order at the Plus rate, that's $7.50 gone before food cost, packaging, or a single slice is made. The upside is real: DoorDash's own audience, DashPass members, and a listing you didn't have to market yourself into existing. The cost is also real, and it scales with every dollar on the ticket — a $60 order at the same 25% costs you $15, not $7.50. ## Your own driver isn't free labor — it's wages plus mileage, whether or not the phone rings Running your own delivery means paying a driver's wage and covering the miles, full stop. The average U.S. pizza delivery driver earns [$15.91 an hour](https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Pizza-Delivery-Driver-Salary), and employers pay [7.65% in matching FICA tax](https://www.paychex.com/articles/payroll-taxes/how-to-calculate-fica-rate) on top of every wage dollar — call it $17.13 an hour fully loaded before workers' comp. A 6-mile round-trip delivery at the [2026 IRS standard mileage rate of 72.5 cents](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-sets-2026-business-standard-mileage-rate-at-725-cents-per-mile-up-25-cents) — a reasonable stand-in for fuel, wear, and depreciation on a vehicle you don't own — costs $4.35. A 20-minute round-trip delivery cycle adds roughly $5.71 in labor. That's about $10.06 in direct cost on the same $30 order, and it doesn't shrink on a bigger ticket the way commission does — but it doesn't disappear on a slow Tuesday either. A driver clocked in with no orders is still $17.13 an hour of sunk labor. And [pizzerias running their own drivers carry hired-and-non-owned auto liability exposure](https://pizzatoday.com/topics/operations/non-owned-auto-insurance-for-pizzerias/) that neither of the other two channels puts on the shop's books — the industry doesn't publish a standard premium for it, so budget for that cost separately rather than assuming it nets out. Marketplace (DoorDash Plus, 25% commission): $7.50 on a $30 order · In-house driver (wage + FICA + mileage, 6-mile round trip, 20-minute cycle): ~$10.06 · White-label — DoorDash Drive: [$9.75 base fee within 5 miles, plus $0.75/mile beyond that](https://developer.doordash.com/en-US/docs/drive/overview/pricing_payment/) · White-label — Uber Direct: ["as low as $7.99" per delivery, varying by mileage and integration](https://merchants.ubereats.com/us/en/services/uber-direct/). Sources: DoorDash Merchant Pricing, DoorDash Developer Docs, Uber Eats Merchants, ZipRecruiter, Paychex, IRS. ## White-label fulfillment prices like a taxi, not like a tax DoorDash Drive and Uber Direct sit underneath your own ordering system — the customer orders on your site or app, and the aggregator's driver network just fulfills it. DoorDash Drive charges a [flat $9.75 within five miles, plus $0.75 per mile beyond that, capped at fifteen miles](https://developer.doordash.com/en-US/docs/drive/overview/pricing_payment/). Uber Direct advertises pricing "[as low as $7.99](https://merchants.ubereats.com/us/en/services/uber-direct/)" per delivery but is explicit that the real number moves with distance and which ordering platform you've plugged it into. Neither charges a cut of your ticket. That's the structural difference that matters: commission is a percentage, white-label fulfillment is closer to a flat rate. Marketplace commission is a percentage of your ticket. In-house and white-label are closer to a flat fee. That difference, not brand loyalty, is the whole strategy. ## Do the breakeven math on your own ticket, not the industry average Because commission scales with order size and flat fees don't, there's a specific ticket size where the two lines cross. Using DoorDash's numbers above: $9.75 (Drive's base fee) divided by 25% (Plus commission) is $39. Below a $39 ticket, marketplace commission costs less than Drive's flat fee — you're paying for the smaller check plus the audience that generated it. Above $39, Drive gets cheaper than marketplace on every additional dollar of ticket size, and the gap widens as the order grows. Run the same division against your own commission tier and your own driver's fully loaded cost per delivery, and you get a real number instead of a gut feeling about which app "isn't worth it." Pull your average delivery ticket and typical delivery radius from your POS this week. Divide your white-label or in-house cost-per-delivery by your marketplace commission rate to find your breakeven ticket. Route orders below that threshold through the marketplace for the reach; price or steer orders above it toward your own site with white-label or in-house fulfillment, where the fee stops climbing with the check. The honest limitation: this compares fee structures on a single order, not total cost of ownership. It doesn't price marketing spend to replace a marketplace's built-in audience, doesn't account for driver idle time on a slow shift, and doesn't put a number on the non-owned auto insurance exposure of running your own fleet — that premium varies by carrier and state, and nobody in the industry publishes a benchmark for it. Get a real quote before you shift volume off marketplaces because of this math alone. ## Sources cited - https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/dominos-order-count-growth-up-q2-aggregators/825688/ - https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/pricing - https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Pizza-Delivery-Driver-Salary - https://www.paychex.com/articles/payroll-taxes/how-to-calculate-fica-rate - https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-sets-2026-business-standard-mileage-rate-at-725-cents-per-mile-up-25-cents - https://pizzatoday.com/topics/operations/non-owned-auto-insurance-for-pizzerias/ - https://developer.doordash.com/en-US/docs/drive/overview/pricing_payment/ - https://merchants.ubereats.com/us/en/services/uber-direct/ --- Published by [Oven Scars](https://ovenscars.com/) — Industry · Culture · Craft. Editorial standards: https://ovenscars.com/editorial-standards/.