Why delivery sales look profitable but aren’t

Delivery sales are one of the biggest traps in modern restaurants.

Orders keep coming in. Revenue grows. Cash hits the account daily. On paper, delivery looks like easy growth. In reality, for many restaurants, delivery is where margins quietly collapse.

The problem isn’t delivery itself.
The problem is how it’s priced, measured, and misunderstood.

Delivery hides its real cost better than dine-in

In-house service makes costs visible. You see staff, waste, prep time, and service friction every day.

Delivery doesn’t.

Fees are deducted automatically. Packaging is ordered in bulk. Commissions are summarized monthly. The pain is spread out, delayed, and disconnected from individual orders. That makes delivery losses harder to feel — and easier to ignore.

Same dish, same price, completely different outcome

One of the most common mistakes is selling the same dish at the same price across all channels.

In-house, that dish might be healthy.
On delivery, it often isn’t.

Delivery adds:

• platform commissions
• payment processing fees
• extra packaging
• higher prep friction
• higher error rates

If pricing doesn’t change, margins absorb the difference. Over time, dine-in profits subsidize delivery losses — until there’s nothing left to subsidize with.

Delivery volume accelerates bad economics

A slightly unprofitable delivery order doesn’t feel dangerous.

Until it happens hundreds of times per week.

High delivery volume doesn’t “make up for” bad margins. It magnifies them. What starts as a small pricing oversight turns into a structural drain on profitability.

This is why some restaurants feel busier than ever and still struggle to pay suppliers or staff on time.

Reports don’t tell you which orders hurt you

Most restaurants track delivery performance at a high level:

• total delivery revenue
• total commissions
• monthly margin

That’s not enough.

What matters is knowing which dishes perform well on delivery and which ones don’t. Without item-level, channel-specific margins, restaurants push volume blindly and hope the math works out later.

It rarely does.

Delivery must be treated as a separate business

Profitable operators treat delivery as its own model, not an extension of dine-in.

They:

• price per channel
• adjust menus for delivery economics
• remove items that don’t survive commissions
• protect margins before chasing volume

Delivery becomes a growth lever only when its economics are controlled.

Revenue isn’t the goal. Retained profit is.

Delivery sales feel good because they inflate revenue quickly. But revenue that doesn’t translate into retained profit is just noise.

If delivery looks profitable but cash never seems to stay in the business, the issue isn’t demand — it’s visibility. And seeing exactly how each dish performs on delivery versus dine-in is the only way to stop growing sales that quietly drain margins, which is precisely what Kyze is built to make clear before delivery volume turns into a long-term liability.

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