Restaurant Break-Even & ROI Calculator: Is Direct Ordering Worth It?

Three numbers drive the entire model: monthly orders, average order value (AOV), and commission rate. Multiply them together and you get the dollars you currently send to the marketplace each month. Subtract a flat $249/month and the difference is what direct ordering keeps in your bank account. The break-even formula is the simplest piece. The flat fee divided by your commission per order ($249 / (AOV × commission rate)) gives the order count at which both options cost the same. At a $35 AOV and 25% commission, that is $249 / $8.75 = 28.5, which we round up to 29 orders. Below 29 orders/month, the flat fee is more expensive. At 30 orders, you save four cents. By 100 orders, you save $626 a month. By 500 orders, you save $4,126 a month, or $49,512 a year. The customer-list side of the model is where direct ordering compounds. Marketplaces own the customer relationship, so they keep the email, phone, and order history. With direct ordering, every checkout captures contact data. Industry data from Toast and Square restaurant trend reports show that roughly 60% of orders in a typical month come from unique customers (40% are repeat orders from existing customers within the same month). At 500 orders/month, that is 300 new contacts each month, or 3,600 per year. The retention revenue figure assumes $1.80 per subscriber per month in incremental order value once the contact is on your list. That number reflects average industry performance for restaurant SMS and email campaigns: roughly a 3-5% campaign-driven order rate, multiplied by the AOV, divided across the full subscriber base. The calculator uses the conservative end of that range and assumes no churn, which is reasonable for a 12-month window if you maintain at least quarterly campaign cadence. Over a longer horizon, expect a 20-30% annual list-decay rate, which the calculator does not model. What the calculator does not include: payment processing (typically 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, which both marketplaces and direct platforms charge), refunds and chargebacks (about 0.5-1% of gross revenue), delivery costs if you offer delivery (Uber Direct/DoorDash Drive at $7-10 per delivery), and your own marketing spend if you actively promote the direct channel. These are real costs but they are roughly equivalent across both options, so they wash out of the comparison.

The calculator output is not a sales pitch. It is a planning input. Once you know your break-even point, your year-1 savings, and your contact-list size, you can decide what to do with each number. First, treat the break-even as a sanity check, not a goal. If your break-even is 29 orders and you do 500, the question is no longer 'is this worth it' but 'how fast do I shift volume from marketplace to direct'. Most restaurants that already do 100+ orders/month on marketplaces should treat direct ordering as table stakes. The break-even number matters most for restaurants under 50 orders/month who are deciding whether to start at all. Second, use the year-1 commission savings as a marketing budget. A restaurant saving $4,126/month can afford to spend $200-500/month on customer reactivation campaigns (SMS, email, paid social to your owned audience) and still bank ~$3,500/month net. Most restaurants that fail to capture the full ROI of direct ordering do so because they treat the savings as immediate margin and never reinvest into list growth. Third, treat the contact list as the actual asset. Year-1 commission savings stop the month you stop using direct ordering. The contact list compounds. A 3,600-person marketing list at month 12 is worth more than a 300-person list at month 1, not because the customers are different but because each subsequent month's campaign reaches all 3,600 instead of 300. By year 3, with healthy hygiene, that list reliably drives $7,000-12,000/month in incremental order revenue. Fourth, plan the marketplace exit gradually, not abruptly. Most restaurants run marketplaces and direct ordering side by side for the first 6-12 months. Marketplaces stay good at acquiring new customers (because the platform pays for the ad budget); direct ordering gets the repeat traffic. Bag inserts, GBP swaps, SMS reactivation, and table tents move 40-60% of repeat orders to direct within 90 days. After year 1, you can decide whether to drop marketplace tiers (move from Premier 30% to Basic 15%) or stay multi-channel for top-of-funnel. Fifth, watch the cohorts, not the totals. The number that matters in month 6 is not 'total orders this month' but 'what percentage of customers from month 1 ordered again in month 6'. Healthy cohort retention is 25-35% by month 6 and 15-25% by month 12. If your cohort retention is below those bands, the issue is not your platform, it is your menu, photography, or operational consistency, and the calculator output will overstate your real ROI until you fix that.