If you run a restaurant in Kathmandu, you already know the trade. The delivery apps brought you orders you would never have got on your own — and they take a cut of every single one. Reporting on Nepal's delivery market puts that cut at roughly 20–22%, with one restaurant operator quoted at "about 22 percent".
That is not automatically a bad deal. But most owners have never actually done the arithmetic on what it costs them over a year, or on what the alternative would cost. So let's do it properly, including the cases where staying on the apps is the right answer.
The real number, not the percentage
A percentage is easy to wave away. An annual figure is not. Work out your own:
- Take your monthly delivery-order revenue — only the orders that come through the apps.
- Multiply by 0.22.
- Multiply by 12.
A worked example. Say Rs 300,000 a month goes through the apps:
- Rs 300,000 × 22% = Rs 66,000 per month
- × 12 = Rs 792,000 per year
That is roughly the cost of a full-time employee, paid annually, for a service you do not own and cannot change. If your delivery volume is double that, so is the number.
What you are actually paying for
Be fair to the platforms — the commission is not pure loss. You are buying:
- Discovery. People browsing the app who have never heard of you. This is genuinely valuable and hard to replicate.
- The delivery fleet. Riders, dispatch, tracking. Building this yourself is a business in its own right.
- Payments and support. Someone else handles the failed transactions and the angry calls.
The problem is not that you pay for these things. It is that you pay the same 22% on the customer who discovered you three years ago and now orders every Friday. You are paying a discovery fee, forever, on customers you already own.
The split most restaurants should actually run
The mistake is treating this as a binary — apps or no apps. Almost nobody should leave the platforms entirely. The realistic model is:
- Keep the apps for discovery. New customers, off-peak fill, neighbourhoods you don't reach.
- Own the repeat orders. Regulars, large orders, catering, pre-orders, table bookings — these do not need a marketplace and are where the margin is.
Even shifting a quarter of your delivery volume to your own channel is, in the example above, Rs 16,500 a month back in your pocket. Every month, permanently.
What "your own ordering site" actually needs
This is where people over-build and give up. You do not need to clone a delivery app. A restaurant ordering site that works needs exactly this:
- A menu that you can edit yourself — prices change, items sell out. If you have to email a developer to mark a dish unavailable, you will stop using it within a month.
- Order-ahead and pickup — the highest-margin orders, because there is no delivery cost at all.
- Table booking — most restaurants take these over the phone during service, which is exactly when nobody can answer.
- Payment or cash-on-delivery — both, realistically, in Nepal.
- A WhatsApp button — for a large share of customers this is the ordering channel. Do not fight it.
- Mobile-first everything — nearly all of this traffic is a phone, often on mobile data.
What you do not need on day one: your own rider fleet, a loyalty programme, a mobile app in the app stores. Those come later, if ever.
Getting people to your own site
Owning the channel is worthless if nobody uses it. The restaurants that make this work do a few unglamorous things consistently:
- Put the URL on the packaging. Every bag that goes out via an app is a customer you can convert to a direct order next time — a sticker with "order direct next time, same price" costs almost nothing.
- Make direct ordering slightly better. Not cheaper necessarily — a free item, a bigger portion, priority on busy nights. Undercutting the apps on price can breach your platform agreement, so check yours.
- Fix your Google Business Profile. When someone searches your restaurant by name, your own ordering link should be right there. This is free and most restaurants leave it empty.
- Use the channels you already have. Your Instagram bio and Facebook page should point at your ordering page, not at a marketplace listing.
When staying app-only is the right call
Honestly, do not build this if:
- Your delivery volume is small. If the apps bring you Rs 30,000 a month, the commission is Rs 6,600 — not worth restructuring your operation over.
- You have no repeat customers. Tourist-area restaurants living on one-time visitors get real value from marketplace discovery and little from a direct channel.
- Nobody can maintain it. A menu that is six months out of date is worse than no site at all.
The restaurants this works for are the ones with a base of regulars, steady delivery volume, and one person willing to keep the menu current.
What it costs
A restaurant site with an editable menu, online ordering, table booking and a WhatsApp button is a fixed one-off cost, not a per-order percentage. Our Growth package covers exactly this scope at $550 for restaurants — in the region of Rs 70,000–80,000 depending on the rate on the day. Compared with Rs 66,000 per month in commission in the example above, the payback question answers itself for any restaurant with real delivery volume.
You can see the exact price for your industry, with everything included listed line by line, on our pricing page — no "contact us for a quote".
Four mistakes we see repeatedly
- Building a delivery app clone. Owners ask for rider tracking and a driver app on version one. That is a six-figure project and it competes with companies that have spent years on it. Order-ahead and pickup first.
- A menu only the developer can edit. If updating a price needs an email, the menu goes stale, customers order things you no longer make, and staff quietly go back to the phone.
- Launching silently. The site goes live and nobody tells the customers. No packaging sticker, no Instagram post, no Google Business Profile link. Then "the website didn't work".
- Ignoring WhatsApp. A large share of Nepali customers want to send a message, not fill a form. A WhatsApp button next to the order button converts people the form would have lost.
Common questions
Will the delivery apps drop me if I take direct orders?
Running your own ordering channel is normal and expected. What can breach a platform agreement is undercutting the app's prices on your own site. Read your contract, and if in doubt compete on extras — a free item, priority on busy nights — rather than on price.
How long does it take to set up?
For a standard restaurant site with menu, ordering and booking, two to six weeks depending on how quickly the menu, photos and descriptions arrive. The content is almost always the bottleneck, not the build.
What about deliveries — who rides?
Most restaurants start with pickup and their own existing delivery staff for nearby orders, and leave everything further out on the apps. That split needs no new logistics.
Do I need online payment?
Not necessarily. Cash on delivery still converts well in Nepal. Add a payment gateway when the volume justifies the fees and the setup.
The point
Delivery apps are a marketing channel, and a good one. The mistake is letting them be your only channel, and paying a discovery fee on customers who discovered you years ago. Keep the apps. Own the regulars.
Want your own ordering site?
We build restaurant websites with editable menus, online ordering, table booking and WhatsApp built in — delivered in two to six weeks.
Get your restaurant website — free consultation, a fixed quote, and nothing to pay until you approve the design.