What Does Food Delivery Commission Really Cost Your Restaurant?
Food-delivery aggregator commissions in Pakistan are commonly reported at 25-35% of order value. On a PKR 1,000 order that is PKR 250-350 gone before you pay for food, packaging or staff, and 500 such orders a month means roughly PKR 125,000-175,000 in commission.
The alternative is owning the channel: a QR smart menu, WhatsApp ordering, your own delivery zones and riders, and RAAST / 1LINK bank-QR payment. Restozay runs all of it for a flat PKR 10,000 per month (Basic) or PKR 20,000 (Premium, with AI modules) — no commission, no per-order fee — about what commission on 30-40 such orders would cost.
The quick math on aggregator commission
Food-delivery aggregator commissions in Pakistan are commonly reported at roughly 25-35% of order value as of 2026, and rates are negotiated per restaurant — so your own signed contract is the only number that really counts. What owners agree on is where the cut lands: off the top, before you have paid for chicken, oil, packaging, gas, or the cook who made the meal.
Run the arithmetic at a commonly reported rate and the scale is hard to ignore:
| Aggregator orders / month | Sales (PKR 1,000 average order) | Commission at a commonly reported 25-35% |
|---|---|---|
| 300 | PKR 300,000 | PKR 75,000 – 105,000 |
| 500 | PKR 500,000 | PKR 125,000 – 175,000 |
| 1,000 | PKR 1,000,000 | PKR 250,000 – 350,000 |
Now put a fixed number beside that. Restozay's Basic plan is PKR 10,000 per month flat — the complete system, whatever your sales are — and Premium with the AI modules is PKR 20,000. On the 500-order row, commission at commonly reported rates works out to roughly twelve to seventeen times the Basic subscription. That is not an argument that aggregators are useless; it is a reason to know your own numbers before a quarter to a third of every order walks out the door.
Where the money actually goes
The headline commission is only part of the picture. Restaurant owners commonly report three other drains, though the details vary by platform, city and contract:
- Promo pressure. Discount campaigns and paid visibility slots are commonly funded partly or fully by the restaurant. The "40% off" banner the customer sees is often coming out of your side, on top of commission.
- Inflated menu prices. To survive the cut, many restaurants list higher prices on the app than in-house. Customers notice the gap, and it is usually your brand that takes the blame, not the platform's.
- The customer relationship sits with the app. Phone number, address and order history typically stay on the platform rather than with you. You cannot message last month's biryani customer about this week's deal; the platform can, and it decides whose listing appears first.
That last one is the quiet cost. Commission is a fee you can calculate. Losing the customer relationship means losing the very asset the fee was supposed to buy.
The 0% alternative: owning your ordering channel
A direct channel means the menu link, the orders, the delivery and the payment all run on rails you control, and nobody takes a percentage. That is what Restozay is built for: PKR 10,000 per month for the complete Basic system, or PKR 20,000 for Premium with the AI modules — no commission, no per-order fee, no setup fee and no long-term contract.
Setup is free and includes menu import and staff training. Most restaurants are live the same day, with setup usually finished in under an hour. The system runs in a browser on any laptop, desktop or Android tablet, so there is no special POS terminal to buy, and a companion app on the billing computer keeps you billing through power and internet cuts, syncing everything once the connection returns.
Every direct order also builds something you keep: customer profiles with favourites and one-tap reorder, loyalty points, promo codes, and star ratings with written feedback per item — inside your own system rather than a platform's.
How customers order: WhatsApp and the QR smart menu
Two direct channels do most of the work. The first is the QR smart menu: the customer scans a code on the table, a flyer or a delivery bag and gets your live digital menu — item photos, variations, flavours and add-ons — with nothing to install. Orders can be verified with a customer OTP and land on the same POS screen as dine-in and takeaway. A waiter-call button and live customer chat handle questions, and menu visit analytics show what people actually browse.
The second is WhatsApp ordering on the official Meta WhatsApp Business Cloud API: a chat dashboard for your staff, plus automatic receipts, order-status updates, delivery tracking links and OTP messages. On Premium, AI WhatsApp ordering can take the order in chat, and AI call answering covers missed calls — staff phones ring first, and the AI only steps in if nobody picks up.
One honest note on cost: Meta charges its own per-conversation fees for the WhatsApp Business API. Restozay adds no per-order fee, but those Meta conversation charges are real, are set by Meta, and change — check Meta's current WhatsApp pricing before you budget.
Can you run your own delivery?
Yes, and the software side is the straightforward part. Restozay lets you draw delivery zones directly on a map: a radius with distance tiers, or named area polygons — Model Town, Satellite Town, a specific DHA phase — each with its own delivery charge. The customer sees the fee before confirming, and out-of-zone addresses are blocked automatically instead of turning into an argument on the phone.
For the road, riders get their own mobile app, you get a live rider map, and the customer gets a tracking page sent over WhatsApp — the live "where is my order" link people now expect. At the end of the shift, COD reconciliation per rider shows how much cash each rider should hand over, matched against the orders he carried.
Many restaurants start small — one or two riders covering nearby streets — and grow the zone map as direct volume grows. You do not need a fleet on day one.
Getting paid directly, and invoicing it properly
Direct ordering also changes how you get paid. On an aggregator, your money arrives on the platform's payout schedule, after deductions. On your own channel, a RAAST / 1LINK bank QR can print on the bill: the customer scans it in a banking app that supports RAAST or 1LINK QR and pays your account directly, with no aggregator taking a cut in between. Your own bank's terms and any transaction charges still apply.
Cash on delivery still works, and per-rider COD reconciliation keeps it honest. Restozay's accounts ledger posts sales, purchases, expenses and salaries automatically into your cash, bank and wallet accounts, so opening and closing balances are there without a separate register or Excel sheet.
Taking orders direct also means you issue the invoice. Restozay has PRA e-IMS fiscal invoicing built in: completed orders are reported to the Punjab Revenue Authority's e-IMS cloud system, and the fiscal invoice number and QR print on the receipt automatically. Whether and when fiscal integration applies to your restaurant depends on the current rules — check the latest PRA notification or ask your tax adviser. Receipts themselves can go to the customer on WhatsApp, carrying your tax block and a feedback QR.
When do aggregators still make sense? An honest take
Aggregators are genuinely good at one thing: discovery. A new restaurant with no following gets in front of thousands of app users on day one. If you are opening in a new area, launching a second brand, or chasing office lunch traffic, that reach is real and hard to replace quickly.
The mistake is not being listed — it is letting your regulars keep ordering through the app forever, paying a commonly reported 25-35% on people who already know and like your food. The practical play is hybrid:
- Treat the aggregator as paid marketing for first-time customers.
- Put a QR menu flyer in every delivery bag and a feedback QR on every receipt.
- Reward direct orders with loyalty points and promo codes.
Move 200 of 500 monthly orders onto your own channel at a PKR 1,000 average and, at commonly reported commission rates, that is roughly PKR 50,000-70,000 a month you keep instead of paying out.
Keep the margin you cook for
Commission is not automatically bad, but it should be a marketing cost you choose — not a permanent tax on every order. With a QR smart menu, WhatsApp ordering, your own delivery zones and RAAST / 1LINK bank-QR payment on a flat PKR 10,000-20,000 monthly system, the arithmetic is simple: at commonly reported commission rates on PKR 1,000 orders, the Basic plan costs about what commission on 30-40 orders a month would.
Restozay is built by Star Logics in Rahim Yar Khan and runs in 100+ restaurants across Pakistan. Setup is free, includes menu import and staff training, and most restaurants go live the same day. To see the direct-ordering flow on your own menu, WhatsApp us at +92 303 3930338 or email [email protected] — we will set up a demo with your actual items and your actual delivery areas.