53% of Restaurant Operators Are Cutting Ties with Third-Party Delivery. Here's What Smart Restaurants Are Doing Instead

According to a newly published Market Leader report from Restaurant Business and Nation's Restaurant News based on a survey of nearly 450 restaurant operators 53% are actively trying to reduce their reliance on services like Uber Eats.

The reason? The economics simply don't work anymore.


The Real Cost of Third-Party Delivery

Let's put the numbers in perspective. Restaurants pay anywhere from 10% to 30% of each order to delivery platforms as commission. That covers the delivery service and a marketplace listing but doesn't include the additional advertising and marketing that apps are increasingly pushing operators to pay for.

When you layer this on top of rising food costs, labor inflation, and rent increases, many restaurant owners are discovering that delivery revenue through third-party apps is, as one Colorado restaurant group owner put it, "bad revenue."

That owner Dave Query of Big Red F, a 12-restaurant group in Boulder pulled his restaurants off delivery apps entirely in September 2025 after realizing that as third-party delivery grew, his profit margins shrank. The result? Total revenue dipped temporarily, but profitability improved.


What Operators Are Saying

The Market Leader report paints a clear picture of operator frustration:

50% say third-party fees are the biggest challenge to growing their off-premise business by far the most common answer
33% cited order accuracy as a concern
24% pointed to speed of service issues

But beyond fees, there's a deeper structural problem: restaurants are losing control of their customer relationships. When orders flow through a delivery app, the platform owns the interface, the data, and the customer experience. Restaurants fulfill the order, but someone else owns the relationship.


The Shift Toward First-Party and In-House Delivery

Smart operators aren't just complaining they're building alternatives. According to the report:

59% are linking loyalty rewards to direct orders
51% are offering exclusive deals for direct orders
51% are advertising direct channels on packaging for third-party orders
38% are investing in their own mobile apps

And perhaps the most significant trend: approximately 70% of US restaurants now use in-house drivers for delivery, especially in suburban and densely populated urban areas. The hybrid model using in-house drivers for the majority of orders and third-party platforms for overflow is becoming the new standard.


Why POS Integration is the Missing Piece

Here's what many restaurants discover when they try to build their own delivery channel: the technology stack becomes fragmented. Online ordering on one platform, POS on another, driver management on a third, customer data scattered across all of them.

This is where integrated solutions become critical. When your online ordering system connects directly to your POS like Menuthere's integration with Petpooja everything flows through a single ecosystem:

Orders come in through your own channels
They're processed directly in your POS
Drivers are assigned and tracked in real-time
Customer data stays with you
No commission on your own orders

The restaurants seeing the strongest results in 2026 aren't choosing between technology and tradition. They're using technology to take back control.


The Bottom Line

The restaurant industry is projected to hit $1.55 trillion in sales this year. Consumer demand for delivery continues to grow customers spent over $72 billion on DoorDash alone through the first three quarters of 2025, a 23% year-over-year increase.

The demand isn't going away. But the way restaurants fulfill that demand is fundamentally changing.

The operators who will thrive aren't the ones paying 30% to be a supplier on someone else's marketplace. They're the ones who own their ordering channels, manage their own drivers, and keep their customer relationships and their margins intact.

The third-party delivery breakup isn't a trend. It's a correction. And it's long overdue.


Menuthere helps restaurants take control of their delivery operations with seamless Petpooja POS integration, in-house driver management, and direct online ordering. No commissions. No data loss. Your restaurant, your customers, your margins.