For many restaurant operators, the idea of running their own delivery system is intoxicating. Why pay 20–30% commissions to Uber Eats, DoorDash, or Grubhub when you could keep that money in-house, own your data, and strengthen your brand?
But here’s the hard truth: building your own delivery stack is less like flipping a switch and more like building a second business from scratch. Some pull it off brilliantly (Domino’s being the poster child). Others sink time, money, and energy into projects that end up in the graveyard of buggy apps and frustrated customers.
Let’s break down what it really takes – step by step, with reality checks along the way.
Domino’s isn’t just a pizza chain, it’s a logistics and tech powerhouse. Their success rests on decades of relentless investment, smart franchise operations, and a willingness to treat delivery as a core business, not an afterthought.
Here’s what sets them apart:
- Dual Business Model: Domino’s operates both physical stores and a powerful digital ordering ecosystem. Their website and apps are polished, frictionless, and built to scale globally.
- Real-Time Transparency: Customers can track every stage of the process with the famous “Pizza Tracker.” It’s not just novelty; it reduces anxiety, builds trust, and keeps customers glued to the brand.
- In-House Drivers: While gig platforms outsource to freelancers, Domino’s keeps most of its fleet in-house. That means training, accountability, and consistent service standards. It also means higher costs, but the tradeoff is control.
- Tech Infrastructure: Domino’s was experimenting with AI voice assistants, predictive ordering, and route optimization long before most competitors thought past paper tickets. At one point, over 65% of Domino’s orders came through digital channels.
What can restaurants learn here? Domino’s didn’t just tack delivery onto the business. They rewired their operations around it.
1. Define Your Why
Without a clear why, you’ll drown in complexity. Is your goal lower fees, tighter customer loyalty, or creating a self-hosted food delivery platform for multiple brands?
Without a clear why, you’ll drown in complexity.
2. Research and Validate
Pilot with a phone line, a simple form, or WhatsApp ordering. Before you spend big, make sure there’s demand for an independent food delivery platform in your market.
3. Core Features to Plan For
At minimum, you’ll need:
- Customer app or site: ordering, payments, order status.
- Restaurant dashboard: order management, menu control, analytics.
- Driver app: routing, earnings, pick-up/drop-off tools.
- Admin system: complete oversight, reporting, troubleshooting.
- Payments: secure processing, split payouts, refunds, fraud protection.
- Real-time tracking: GPS + push notifications.
Every missing piece here increases support calls and customer churn.
4. Tech Choices
- White-Label SaaS: Tools like ChowNow or Menufy offer branded apps and sites. Great for small-to-midsize operators.
- Integration Layers: Platforms like KitchenHub unify orders and menus across providers, giving resellers and multi-brand operators flexibility without reinventing APIs.
- Custom Development: For ambitious operators. Requires full dev teams (backend, frontend, DevOps, mobile, QA). Expect 6–18 months of work, minimum.
5. Infrastructure That Scales
If you’re aiming for on-premise food delivery infrastructure, plan for:
- Cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure) with auto-scaling to handle spikes.
- Route optimization engines to avoid “driver stuck in traffic” nightmares.
- Menu management that supports nested modifiers and provider-specific pricing.
6. Testing in the Real World
This is where many projects fail. Simulate:
- High-order spikes during Friday night rush.
- Wrong customer addresses.
- Driver cancellations mid-route.
- Payment disputes.
If your system fails in tests, it will likely collapse in production.
7. Launch & Ongoing Maintenance
- Roll out with a marketing push. Educate customers on why ordering directly is better.
- Expect constant iteration. Delivery stacks are living systems, not “set it and forget it” projects.
Here’s what the glossy sales decks won’t tell you:
- Driver Costs Add Up: Paying $15–20/hour plus insurance and payroll taxes is very different from gig apps offloading liability. Be prepared for slim margins until you scale.
- Payments Are Complex: Handling split payouts between restaurants and drivers is a compliance minefield. PCI-DSS isn’t optional, it’s law.
- Customer Support Is a Grind: When food is late, customers won’t email your developer. They’ll call you, sometimes angrily, sometimes at 2 AM.
- Scaling Breaks Everything: A system that works for 200 orders/day may implode at 2,000 orders/day. Promo campaigns or TikTok virality can destroy fragile systems overnight.
- Menu Syncing Is Messier Than You Think: Breakfast vs dinner menus, modifiers (extra cheese, gluten-free crust), delivery-only pricing, these details are why POS integrations fail.
Should You Build or Partner?
Not every operator should rebuild Domino’s. Sometimes the smarter move is a hybrid approach:
- Use white-label ordering for speed.
- Layer in KitchenHub or similar platforms for unified orders, menu syncing, and integrations with Uber Eats, DoorDash, etc.
- Focus your energy on customer loyalty and food quality.
Owning delivery doesn’t always mean coding your own stack. It means owning the relationship with your customers.
Before you ditch Uber Eats and DoorDash, run the math. Owning delivery can look profitable on paper, but the economics are rarely simple.
Platform Commissions
- Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub: typically charge 15–30% per order in commissions.
- Add marketing boosts or sponsored listings and fees can climb another 5–7%.
- For restaurants running on 10–15% margins, this often wipes out profits on delivery orders entirely.
That’s the main reason operators dream of going direct.
In-House Delivery Costs
But replacing commissions with your own drivers comes at a price:
- Driver wages: $15–22/hour depending on state.
- Additional costs: payroll taxes, liability insurance, fuel, car/bike maintenance.
- Average cost per drop-off: often $6–8 per delivery, even with tight delivery zones.
Suddenly, DoorDash’s fees don’t look so outrageous, they’ve just spread those costs across thousands of restaurants.
What Others Tried
- Panera Bread invested heavily in in-house delivery fleets. Within a couple of years, they rolled back and started partnering with third-party platforms again. Why? The logistics costs outpaced the benefits, and scaling across hundreds of stores was a nightmare.
- Sweetgreen doubled down on tech. They acquired Spyce (robotic kitchens) and pushed digital ordering as part of their DNA. It works because they’re VC-backed and designed as a delivery-first brand. For a mid-sized operator, this level of tech investment is often unsustainable.
- Domino’s is the poster child of success. In 2023, more than 70% of Domino’s orders came through digital channels. With tens of millions of orders annually, the economics of owning delivery tech make sense. Scale is everything.
- Failed delivery startups like Maple (NYC) and Ando (Momofuku-backed) prove the flip side. Both burned through millions in funding but collapsed under the weight of customer acquisition costs (often $10–15 per user/month) and operational inefficiencies.
Without scale, an independent delivery platform’s advantages can get buried under real costs.
Hidden Expenses
Even if you get the tech right, other costs creep in:
- Customer support (angry calls, refunds, “where’s my food?” at 2 AM).
- Continuous app maintenance and security patches.
- Marketing spend to convince customers to use your app instead of the aggregator they already know.
Running your own delivery system can work. But you’re not just a restaurant anymore, you’re suddenly also a logistics company, a payments processor, and a 24/7 tech operation. If that excites you, great. If it terrifies you, maybe start smaller.
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