The real cost of ordering through delivery apps: a receipt breakdown

Start with the burger

Let's say a restaurant sells a cheeseburger for $9. You find it on a delivery app. You add it to your cart. By the time you confirm the order, you're paying $14.50 for that burger — before the delivery fee, service fee, and tip.

The $9 became $14.50 not because the restaurant changed their price. It became $14.50 because the restaurant raised their delivery app menu prices 15–30% to partially offset the 20–30% commission they pay the platform on every order.

The full receipt

For a $18 order (two burgers at real menu price), here's what you actually pay through a delivery app:

For the same order on Runzo:

Where the money actually goes

On a typical delivery app, the $41.88 breaks down roughly as: $9–10 to the restaurant (their actual cost is recouped through the markup, but their margin is thin), $8–12 to the platform (service fee + their cut of the delivery fee + commission), $4.50 to the driver (the tip, which is the bulk of their earnings), and the rest in fees and overhead.

On Runzo, $18 goes to the restaurant (their full menu price), $1 to Runzo, and $4.99 to your driver. That's it. There's no entity in the middle extracting a commission on the restaurant's revenue.

The annual number

If you order delivery twice a week, the $17.89 difference per order compounds to $1,859/year. That's money leaving your pocket for the same food, from the same restaurant, cooked by the same people. The only difference is the platform it travels through.