How much should you charge on delivery apps?

A delivery app commission is the percentage the app keeps from every order placed through it, sometimes with a payment fee or a fixed charge per order on top. This delivery app commission calculator is built for restaurants and cafes in Saudi Arabia: enter the dish's in-store price, its cost, its packaging and the commission written in your contract, and it compares your profit on the dish in store with your profit on the app, then suggests the app price that keeps your profit where it was.

How to price a dish on a delivery app

The commission comes off the new price, not the old one, so you divide by (1 − commission) instead of multiplying by (1 + commission). For a VAT-registered business the calculator applies the commission to the price before VAT, because the VAT charged on the commission is reclaimed in your VAT return; switch to the VAT-inclusive base in the advanced mode if your contract works that way.

App price (net) = (Store profit + Cost + Packaging + Fixed fee) ÷ (1 − Commission %)

Delivery app commission rates: what goes into them

Read your contract with each app before you price, because the commission rate is not the only number that matters. Look for the commission per order, whether it is charged on the price before or after VAT, any separate online payment fee, any fixed charge per order, and who pays for discounts on promotions the app runs. Each of these has a field in the advanced mode, "Payment fees, fixed fee and pricing goal".

If your business is not registered for VAT in Saudi Arabia, untick the registration option: your price carries no VAT, and the VAT the app adds to its commission becomes a cost you cannot reclaim, so the calculator counts it as part of the fees.

Menu pricing on delivery apps: same profit or same margin?

By default the calculator keeps your profit per dish in riyals the same as in store. In the advanced mode you can choose to keep your percentage margin the same instead, which pushes the price higher because the margin is now earned on a bigger number. The first option gives a price customers are more likely to accept; the second suits owners who want delivery orders to earn exactly what dine-in does.

Download the price list in Excel to price the whole menu: enter each dish's name, price, cost and packaging on its own row, and the remaining columns work out with formulas that read the commission and fees from row 2, so every price updates when you change the commission.

Common mistakes when pricing app orders

• Raising the price by the commission percentage itself, which still leaves you earning less than in store.
• Forgetting packaging and takeaway items, a cost a dine-in order never carries.
• Applying the commission to the price before VAT when your contract charges it on the VAT-inclusive price.
• Joining discount campaigns without checking who funds the discount.
• Raising every dish by the same percentage even though each dish has a different cost and margin.

What to do after you get the result

Apply the suggested price to your best sellers first, round it to a figure that reads easily, and watch order numbers for two weeks. If they drop sharply, look at the dishes with a weak margin on the app and consider a different portion size or a delivery-only dish rather than relying on price alone.

When orders are split between dine-in, takeaway and apps

Each sales channel has its own price and its own costs, and the picture gets lost when they all go into one book. For restaurants and cafés in the Kingdom, Microtec offers O-Red, a cashier and point-of-sale system. Try it on a week of dine-in and takeaway orders.