Food Delivery Margin Playbook: Four Tools, One Workflow

The price hike calculator is your starting point when you need to set or revise menu prices on the platform to protect margin. You enter your food cost, target gross margin, and the platform's commission rate. The calculator outputs the minimum menu price you must charge on the app to hit your margin target after commission is deducted.

This tool is most useful when you are onboarding to a new platform, when commission rates are renegotiated, or when input costs (raw materials, labour, packaging) have changed. It answers the question: given what this dish costs me to make and what the platform takes, what must I charge so I'm not working for free?

The calculator also handles quick-mode percentage deals. If you want to offer a flat 20% discount during a promotion window while protecting a minimum margin, enter your target post-discount margin and it calculates the pre-discount price that still works. This prevents the common mistake of discounting from a menu price that already has no buffer.

When a customer compares your dine-in price to your delivery price on the same dish, the delivery version often looks overpriced. That is because delivery prices must include commission and packaging overhead. The exact item match calculator helps you explain — and justify — the price difference in hard numbers.

Enter the dine-in price, food cost, delivery commission rate, and packaging cost. The calculator shows what the delivery price must be to earn the same net profit per dish as the dine-in version. It also shows the markup percentage required, which you can use in your own pricing decisions or in conversations with platform managers about rate renegotiation.

This calculator is also valuable for identifying which dishes should not be on the delivery platform at all. Some low-margin, high-effort dishes (like thalis or items with expensive packaging) generate respectable dine-in margin but negative platform margin. The exact item match tool surfaces those mismatches dish by dish.

The discount price calculator is built for promo planning. You enter the original menu price, the discount structure (flat discount, percentage discount, or free delivery), and your co-funding share. It calculates your effective revenue per order and your net margin after commission and promo co-funding. Use this before accepting any platform promotional campaign to verify you are not funding orders at a loss.

The full margin ledger is the most comprehensive tool — use it for contract review and payout reconciliation. It models a complete transaction: menu price minus discount minus platform commission minus GST on commission minus packing charge deduction equals your net payout per order. You can then stack in your food cost and overhead to arrive at the net profit or loss per order.

The recommended workflow is: use price hike to set your baseline menu prices when onboarding or repricing, use exact item match to audit individual dishes, use discount price before agreeing to promotions, and use the full ledger for end-of-month payout reconciliation or before signing a new contract. The four tools answer four different questions — using the wrong one for the wrong decision leads to margin errors.

Aggregator commissions in India are not simple percentages. Swiggy and Zomato both use tiered structures where commission rates vary by city, restaurant category, order volume, and contract type. New restaurant onboarding rates are often lower for the first few months, then step up. Premium placement and advertising products are charged separately on top of the base commission.

GST adds another layer. The platform charges GST at 18% on the commission it takes from you. So if your commission rate is 20% on a ₹300 order (₹60 commission), you also owe ₹10.80 in GST on that commission as the service receiver under reverse charge. This means the real effective commission rate is 23.6%, not 20%. Many restaurant operators do not account for this and consistently underestimate platform cost.

ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) operates differently. There is no single platform commission; instead, you deal with your logistics provider and buyer app separately, and the economics depend heavily on which apps your orders come through. ONDC can offer lower total cost for high-volume operators who have stable logistics partnerships, but the setup complexity and inconsistent order volume make it better suited to established businesses than to new entrants still figuring out platform economics.