For food entrepreneurs, one of the biggest decisions is how to reach customers. Choosing between D2C vs food delivery apps can shape your costs, brand, and long-term growth. Should you open your own café, restaurant, or retail unit? Or should you rely on delivery platforms like Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat?
The Cost of Food Delivery Apps
Food delivery apps make it easy to reach customers instantly, but they charge heavily for the privilege. Commission rates can be as high as 30% of turnover, which means that on a £10 order as much as £3 goes to the app before you have even covered food, labour or overheads.
Many new businesses also find they must pay for in-app advertising in order to appear prominently and attract orders. This adds further costs and eats into already slim margins. While apps are useful for quick exposure, they can lock businesses into a model where profitability is always under pressure.
Dark Kitchens and Lease Commitments
One common way to operate on food delivery apps is through a dark kitchen, also known as a ghost kitchen or cloud kitchen. These are kitchens with no customer facing space, set up solely for preparing food for delivery.
Dark kitchens usually come pre fitted with basic equipment and can be rented on short term or flexible leases, sometimes even month to month. This makes them attractive for testing concepts with low upfront investment.
However, monthly rent can be high, and because all sales go through food delivery apps, businesses face both rental costs and platform commissions, leaving little room for profit. You also lose the chance to build a direct relationship with customers since the app owns the data.
The D2C Model
With a D2C approach, you invest in your own physical premises such as a café, restaurant or retail food unit where customers can come directly to you. You keep the full sale value without paying commissions to delivery apps.
The main downside is the higher upfront cost, particularly the fit out of the premises to meet food safety and trading standards. Leases are usually longer term commitments, often three to five years, which adds risk. You will also need to budget for your own marketing to attract footfall since you will not benefit from the ready made customer base of food delivery apps.
That said, having your own location gives you control of your brand and customer experience. You can create a loyal community, experiment with menu ideas in real time, and diversify income by adding extras such as a website for online orders or click and collect for regulars. Over time, this can make the business more resilient and profitable than relying solely on third party delivery platforms.
Risk and Reward: A Side by Side View
Food Delivery Apps and Dark Kitchens
Pros: Quick market entry, pre fitted kitchens, flexible leases, instant customer access
Cons: Commission fees up to 30 percent, additional advertising costs, ongoing rent, no customer data
D2C with a Physical Premises
Pros: Full control of sales and brand, no commission fees, build long term customer loyalty, potential to add web orders and click and collect
Cons: Higher upfront fit out costs, longer lease commitments, need to invest in marketing to drive footfall
Which Should You Choose?
For testing a concept, food delivery apps and dark kitchens can be a cost effective way to get started quickly. But with high commission fees and reliance on third parties, scaling can be difficult.
A D2C premises based model requires more investment upfront, but it offers independence, stronger margins, and the ability to build a long term brand with loyal customers. Many successful food businesses use a hybrid strategy, starting on food delivery apps to validate demand, then investing in their own physical premises once they are ready to grow.
Final Thoughts
The decision between food delivery apps and running your own premises comes down to short term speed versus long term sustainability. Apps offer reach and convenience but at a high ongoing cost. A D2C location requires more upfront commitment but allows you to build a real presence, create lasting customer relationships, and keep more of your hard earned revenue.
