Operations Guide
How to Offer Delivery Without DoorDash or Uber Eats
This is the question that stops most restaurants from moving orders off the marketplaces, and it usually goes unanswered because the apps are the only party with an incentive to answer it. There are three real options, they cost very different amounts, and — the part almost nobody explains — with one of them the delivery can cost your restaurant nothing at all.
Uber Direct and DoorDash Drive pricing is from each company's own merchant pages, read September 2026. Own-driver cost and insurance figures are marked reported because they come from third parties and vary enormously by market. Nothing here is legal or insurance advice — the driver questions at the end are ones to put to your own carrier and accountant.
Ginger · Ginger Direct is the direct ordering site to pair with dispatch or pickup — $0 a month, no commission, and orders print in your kitchen.
Three ways to deliver food without a delivery app
A delivery marketplace bundles two completely different services and charges you one percentage for both: finding the customer, and driving the food. Once you separate them, the pricing stops looking inevitable.
Discovery is genuinely worth paying for when the customer is new. The driving is a commodity — it is a car going two miles — and it is priced like one the moment you buy it separately.
| Option | Who drives | You pay | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace (DoorDash, Uber Eats) | Their courier | 15-30% of the food | The customer is new to you |
| On-demand dispatch (Uber Direct, DoorDash Drive) | Their courier | A flat fee per delivery | The order came from your own site |
| Your own drivers | Your employee | Wages, mileage, insurance | High, dense, predictable volume |
| Pickup only | The customer | Nothing | More often than owners assume |
Uber Direct vs DoorDash Drive: what on-demand delivery costs
Uber Direct and DoorDash Drive are the same courier networks that serve the marketplaces, sold as a flat per-delivery fee for orders you generated yourself. No commission on the food, no percentage of the ticket — a fee for the drive.
Both publish their pricing. Uber Direct starts at $7.99 a delivery. DoorDash Drive lists $6.99 to $10.99 per delivery order, with no signup, subscription or termination fee, and states that customer tips go entirely to the Dasher.
| Service | Price | Commission on food | Fixed fees | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uber Direct | From $7.99/delivery | None | None published | Uber Eats merchant pricing page |
| DoorDash Drive | $6.99–$10.99/delivery | None | No signup, subscription or termination fee | DoorDash Drive product page |
| Uber Eats self-delivery | 15% of the order | Yes — it is a marketplace order | None | Uber Eats merchant pricing page |
| Own drivers (reported) | ~$4–$6/delivery at 30+ a day | None | Wages, insurance, vehicle | Third-party estimates, 2026 |
Uber Eats self-delivery is in this table because it is often confused with Uber Direct. They are opposites: self-delivery means an order that came through the Uber marketplace which you deliver yourself, still at a 15% commission. Uber Direct means an order that came through your own site, delivered by an Uber courier, at a flat fee with no commission.
Who pays the delivery fee: dispatch fee vs marketplace commission
A marketplace commission comes out of your food revenue. There is no version where the customer pays it — it is a percentage of the ticket, deducted before you are paid.
A dispatch fee is different in kind. It is a flat charge for a discrete service, and it can be shown to the customer at checkout as a delivery fee, exactly as every marketplace already shows one. Customers are thoroughly used to paying a delivery fee; they have been paying one on every app order for a decade.
So the comparison that matters is not $6-12 of commission against $7-11 of dispatch. It is $6-12 out of your pocket against a fee that can come out of the customer's, on an order where you keep the entire ticket.
| On one $40 delivery order | Restaurant keeps | Customer pays | Delivery cost lands on |
|---|---|---|---|
| DoorDash Marketplace, 15% tier | $34.00 | $40 plus their own fees | The restaurant |
| DoorDash Marketplace, 30% tier | $28.00 | $40 plus their own fees | The restaurant |
| Own site + dispatch, fee passed on | $40 less card processing | $40 plus the delivery fee | The customer |
| Own site + dispatch, fee absorbed | ~$32 after dispatch and card | $40 | The restaurant |
| Own site + pickup | $40 less card processing | $40 | Nobody |
Card processing excluded from the marketplace rows because it is inside their commission, and shown as a deduction on the direct rows where it is billed separately. Absorbing the dispatch fee entirely is the worst case shown here and it still lands close to the 15% tier — which is the point: dispatch is priced as a service, not as a share of your business.
Hiring your own delivery drivers: the costs that never make the pitch
Own drivers look cheapest on a spreadsheet and are the hardest of the three to run well. The quoted figure of roughly four to six dollars a delivery is a reported third-party estimate, and it only holds at genuinely high density — thirty or more deliveries a day, in a tight radius, on a predictable schedule.
What that estimate does not carry is the shape of the cost. A driver is a shift, not a per-order expense. You staff them on a slow Tuesday and pay for the idle hours; you cannot staff a surge on a rainy Friday that you did not see coming. Dispatch inverts that exactly: you pay per delivery and nothing when nothing is moving.
Then there is the part that is genuinely not a software question. Your general liability and commercial auto position changes when an employee drives for you, personal auto policies commonly exclude delivery use, and worker classification for drivers has been litigated heavily. We are not going to tell you how to handle any of that. Ask your own carrier and your own accountant before the first shift, not after the first incident.
The honest summary: own drivers make sense when volume is high enough that a driver is busy for an entire shift, and rarely before. Most independents that run their own drivers profitably were doing so before the apps existed and never stopped.
How far should a restaurant deliver?
The single most common self-inflicted delivery wound is a radius drawn on a map in miles. Three miles through a downtown grid at 7pm and three miles down a suburban arterial are not the same delivery, and only one of them arrives warm.
Draw the radius in drive time instead — twelve to fifteen minutes is a defensible ceiling for most food, less for anything fried. Then check what that actually covers at your worst traffic hour, not at 3pm on a Tuesday when you are testing.
This matters more with dispatch than with a marketplace, because a flat fee per delivery does not care how far the courier goes but your food does. A cold arrival is charged back to your reputation regardless of who drove.
Is pickup-only a good option for a restaurant?
A significant number of restaurants offer delivery because it feels obligatory, lose money on every delivered order after commission and packaging, and have never checked which of their orders are actually delivery.
Check yours before investing in any of the above. Pull a month of orders and split them by fulfilment type. If pickup is the majority — and for a lot of neighbourhood restaurants it is — then the cheapest delivery strategy available to you is a good pickup experience: accurate prep times, a clear shelf, a name on the bag, and an order that was ready when it said it would be.
Pickup keeps the entire ticket, has no courier to blame, and the customer walks into your restaurant — which is the only channel that can turn a delivery order back into a regular.
How to choose a delivery option for your restaurant
If you are moving orders off the marketplaces, start with dispatch and pass the fee to the customer. It requires no hiring, no insurance conversation and no fixed cost, and it lets you find out what your real direct delivery volume is before you commit to anything.
Keep a marketplace listing running the whole time. You are not trying to win a fight with DoorDash; you are trying to stop paying a finder's fee on customers who already know your name. Those are different projects and only one of them is worth doing.
Revisit own drivers only when the dispatch bill is consistently large enough that a full shift would be cheaper — and when you have had the insurance and employment conversations properly, with people whose job that is.
Frequently asked questions
Can I offer delivery without DoorDash or Uber Eats?
Yes, in three ways. On-demand dispatch services send a courier for an order that came from your own site: Uber Direct starts at $7.99 a delivery and DoorDash Drive lists $6.99-$10.99, both with no commission on the food. You can hire your own drivers, which is cheapest only at high, dense volume. Or you can offer pickup only, which many neighbourhood restaurants find covers most of their orders anyway.
What is the difference between DoorDash Drive and DoorDash Marketplace?
Marketplace is the app customers browse: DoorDash finds the customer and delivers the food, and charges 15-30% of the order. Drive is delivery only, for an order the customer placed on your own website — DoorDash supplies the courier for a flat $6.99-$10.99 per delivery with no commission on the food and no signup, subscription or termination fee. The same courier network, sold two different ways.
Who pays the delivery fee with Uber Direct or DoorDash Drive?
You decide. Because it is a flat fee for a discrete service rather than a percentage of your sales, it can be shown to the customer at checkout as a delivery fee — which is exactly what every marketplace already does, so customers are used to it. That is the structural difference from a marketplace commission, which comes out of your food revenue with no version where the customer pays it.
Is it cheaper to use my own delivery drivers?
Only at high, dense, predictable volume — third-party estimates put own-driver cost at roughly $4-$6 a delivery at thirty or more deliveries a day. The reason it is not usually cheaper below that is the shape of the cost: a driver is a shift you staff and pay through the quiet hours, while dispatch charges per delivery and nothing when nothing is moving. There are also insurance and worker-classification questions that need your own carrier and accountant, not a software vendor.
What is Uber Eats self-delivery, and is it the same as Uber Direct?
They are close to opposites and are often confused. Self-delivery is an order that came through the Uber Eats marketplace which you deliver with your own driver — Uber still charges 15% because they found the customer. Uber Direct is an order that came through your own website, delivered by an Uber courier, at a flat fee from $7.99 with no commission on the food.
How far should a restaurant deliver?
Measure it in drive time, not miles. Twelve to fifteen minutes is a defensible ceiling for most food and less for anything fried, and you should check what that covers during your worst traffic hour rather than when you are testing on a quiet afternoon. Distance-based radiuses fail because three miles across a downtown grid at 7pm and three miles down a suburban road are not the same delivery — and only one of them arrives warm.
Keep the whole ticket on the orders you already earned
Ginger Direct gives your regulars somewhere to order that is not a marketplace: $0 a month, no commission, no contract, the $1 order fee paid by the customer, and the ticket printing straight to the printers already in your kitchen. Pair it with dispatch or pickup, whichever your order mix actually calls for.