You already know the shape of this problem. An order comes in through an app, your kitchen does all of the work, and a meaningful slice of the ticket never reaches your account. Sooner or later every owner asks whether to take those orders on their own website instead. The honest answer has two halves, and the people selling websites usually tell you only the flattering one.
What the apps charge, in their own numbers
Two of the three platforms most Ottawa restaurants deal with publish a rate card, and the rates are not small. DoorDash's Canadian merchant pricing page lists three partnership plans: Basic at 20% commission per delivery order, Plus at 25%, and Premier at 29%. A footnote limits those plans to restaurants with 75 or fewer locations in Canada. Pickup is cheaper — the same page says merchants "only pay 8% commission per pickup order on the Plus and Premier plan, and 10% commission on the Basic plan" — and a further footnote adds that DashPass delivery orders on the Plus plan are charged 27%.
Uber Eats' Canadian pricing page runs the same ladder: Lite at a 20% Delivery Fee, Plus at 25%, Premium at 30%. Its pickup fee is 10%, but the page says that rate is "conditioned on submission of proof that pricing for in-app pickup is the same as in-store", and that without validated in-store pricing the pickup fee is 15%. Deliver with your own staff while staying listed and the self-delivery fee is 15%, rising to 25% on orders handed to Uber's couriers. On the Plus plan, Uber One benefits apply "for an additional cost of 5% for members' orders" — which puts a Plus-plan restaurant at 30% every time a member orders.
To be fair to both companies: DoorDash's page states that its marketplace plans come with "zero payment processing fees", and that DoorDash "does not charge an activation fee, subscription fee, software fee, cancellation fee, contract fee, or any hidden fees". The optional order tablet is listed at CA$3 per week in Canada after the trial. So that 20% to 29% is all-in on the platform side, not a commission with card fees stacked behind it. That matters for the comparison below.
SkipTheDishes is the odd one out. Its restaurant-partner site describes the marketplace, delivery as a service and POS integration, then asks you to fill in a form — but it names no rate anywhere. No percentage, no dollar figure. Every Skip commission number you have seen quoted comes from somebody other than Skip, so the only rate you can trust is the one on your own agreement.
The law is not going to help an Ottawa restaurant here. British Columbia caps this permanently. Its Food Delivery Service Fee Regulation sets a "base tier fee" of 20% of the order, excluding taxes and gratuities, for core services — delivery plus ordering — on platforms serving 500 or more restaurants, and BC Gov News described the province as the first in Canada to implement a permanent cap. There is a lawful way above it: a platform can charge more only through an optional "enhanced tier offer", and only if it first put a genuine offer at the cap on the table. Ontario has a cap on paper — O. Reg. 748/20 sets a maximum of 20% all-in before HST, 15% for delivery and 10% for pickup or self-delivery — but the Supporting Local Restaurants Act, 2020 applies it only to a restaurant that is not a chain of 10 or more premises in Canada, has an indoor dining area, and is prohibited from permitting indoor dining by order. Ontario's e-Laws now lists every regulation made under the Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Response to COVID-19) Act, 2020 under "Revoked/spent regulations". The Act is not repealed; on the evidence it is dormant. Same apps, same rates, and a Vancouver restaurant has a ceiling that you do not.
What a direct order costs instead
On your own site you pay a card processor rather than a commission. Stripe's Canadian pricing page lists 2.9% + CA$0.30 per successful transaction for domestic cards, with "no setup fees, monthly fees, or hidden fees", plus 0.8% for international cards and 2% where currency conversion is required. Square's Canadian fees page lists 2.8% + 30¢ for online payments and online invoices, 2.5% per in-person credit transaction and 0.75% + 7¢ per Interac debit transaction, with an additional 1.5% on cards issued outside Canada.
Put a $50 pickup order through both. On DoorDash's Basic plan, 10% is $5.00. Taken on your own site at Square's online rate, the card fee is $1.70. On a $50 delivery order the raw gap looks even wider — 29% on DoorDash Premier is $14.50 — and this is exactly where the dishonest version of this article stops.
A commission is not only a payment fee. It buys the courier, the marketplace listing and the people already sitting in the app deciding what to eat. A card rate buys none of that. Going direct means you supply the ordering page, a way to get food to the door, and some means of telling people the page exists. Both platforms sell that direct version themselves, and price it far below their own marketplace. DoorDash lists Drive On-Demand — delivery from your own site with no marketplace listing — as a flat CA$6.99 to CA$10.99 per delivery order with no commission, and describes ordering through your own channels as commission-free with payment processing fees only. Uber's Webshop is listed at a "2.9% order processing fee", and Uber Direct as no commission with pricing based on distance. The marketplace is simply the more expensive of their own two options.
So the real comparison on that $50 delivery is not $14.50 against $1.70. It is $14.50 against roughly $1.70 in card fees, plus CA$6.99 to CA$10.99 to have someone drive it, plus whatever it costs you to find that customer without the app. Chargebacks add a little: Stripe's Canadian page lists CA$15.00 for each dispute received and CA$15.00 for each dispute you respond to manually, returned when you win and kept when you lose. Pickup is where the arithmetic gets genuinely simple, because there is no driver to pay.
Who this actually suits
Direct ordering pays where the customers already know your name. If regulars are a real share of your week, if pickup and catering matter, if the average ticket is high, or if you have a following who would order from you directly given somewhere obvious to do it, the numbers above start working for you. Being findable without the app is a separate job: an accurate Google Business Profile with correct hours and a link straight to your menu is the cheap version, which is what the map listing work covers, and ranking for what people type at 6pm is the slower version, which is search work.
It suits you less if the apps are genuinely how people find you. A new place, a location with no foot traffic, a menu nobody searches for by name — there the commission is buying real demand, and dropping the marketplace to save a percentage means selling less food at a better margin. That is not a win.
For nearly everyone the answer is both rather than either. Stay listed for discovery. Give the people who already love you a faster, cheaper way to order, then actually tell them it exists: a printed card in every app bag, a sticker on the door, the link on your receipts and in your email signature, the link at the top of your website instead of three taps down. The technology is the easy half. Moving regulars off the app is a habit change, and habit changes need repeating.
The same arithmetic turns up in shops selling through marketplaces. Wherever a platform sits between you and a customer who already knows you, the fee is buying discovery — and that is worth less as your own name gets stronger.
If you want to know what an ordering page would involve for your restaurant — menu, payments, pickup times, whether direct delivery is worth it at your volume — the planning session is free and carries no obligation. You get a written fixed price within two to three business days. Tell us what you are running now and we will say plainly whether this is worth doing.
Sources: DoorDash Canada merchant pricing, Uber Eats Canada pricing, SkipTheDishes partner site, B.C. Food Delivery Service Fee Regulation, BC Gov News, O. Reg. 748/20, Supporting Local Restaurants Act, 2020, Stripe Canada pricing, Square Canada fees.
Frequently asked questions
On the fee alone, the gap is large. DoorDash's Canadian pricing page lists 20% to 29% commission on delivery orders and 8% to 10% on pickup, while Square Canada lists 2.8% + 30¢ for online payments and Stripe lists 2.9% + CA$0.30. But the commission also pays for the driver and for putting you in front of people who were not looking for you by name. Whether you come out ahead depends on how many of your customers already know you, which is why we would rather look at your actual order mix than promise a number.
Usually no. The apps are a discovery channel, and for a newer restaurant or one with little foot traffic they are buying real demand that you would not otherwise get. The version that works for most places is both: stay listed, and give your regulars a direct route that is faster and cheaper for you.
Skip does not publish it. Its restaurant-partner site describes the marketplace, delivery as a service and POS integration, but names no percentage and no dollar figure anywhere. Any Skip rate you see quoted online comes from somebody other than Skip, so treat your own signed agreement as the only reliable source.
There is one on the books, and on the evidence it is dormant. O. Reg. 748/20 sets a maximum of 20% of the order all-in before HST, 15% for delivery and 10% for pickup or self-delivery, but the Supporting Local Restaurants Act, 2020 applies it only to a restaurant that is not a chain of 10 or more premises in Canada, has an indoor dining area, and is prohibited from permitting indoor dining by order. Ontario's e-Laws now lists every regulation made under the Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Response to COVID-19) Act, 2020 under "Revoked/spent regulations". The Act itself has not been repealed. British Columbia, by contrast, has a permanent 20% cap on core services under its Food Delivery Service Fee Regulation, applying to platforms that serve 500 or more restaurants.
Three options. You hire or redeploy a driver, you buy delivery as a service, or you offer pickup only. On the second, DoorDash lists Drive On-Demand at a flat CA$6.99 to CA$10.99 per delivery order with no commission, and Uber Direct as no commission with pricing based on distance. Pickup is the simplest place to start, because there is no driver cost at all.