The Complete list of Doordash fees for Restaurants

It’s sad we have little information on the internet when it comes to restaurants, monetizing their platforms through food delivery apps like Doordash.

Perhaps, it’s because restaurants are more of hand labor or the industry is more “independent” – whichever way, this article should provide you with a detailed note on the list of Doordash fees for restaurants.

Doordash fees for restaurants Explained

In the early days of Doordash, the fees restaurants had to pay were a bit wild and even more, confusing.

Typically, the whole thing was grouped into a generic commission fee –a percentage, usually 10 -25%– that takes a cut of sales you make through Doordash.

The bad part about this was the fact it had no certain value.

Doordash would have to put in your location, market demand, and the specific agreement you had with them, to give you a certain percentage you’d have to pay.

So you couldn’t just come off the bat to estimate your commission rate unless you do that at the higher end (25%+).

However, this changed in 2021, with Doordash introducing “plans” to its merchant, each having a definite commission rate that’d be cut off per order, as well as features they come with.

These commission rates go from 15% to as much as 30% depending on the plan you choose to sign up with.

Also, all plans cover the following:

1. Processing fee
2. Advertising and promotion (Standard) – such as being featured on “Fastest Near You,” “Local Favorites,” etc.

Hence, you’re less likely to be faced with extra fees, aside from the charges on plans or any unfortunate situations in the delivery of a customer order.

Without further ado Below are the packages:

Doordash Basic Fee

As the name, “basic,” implies, the Doordash basic is the lowest tier of the 3 main merchant packages.

It comes with a standard commission rate of 15%, and works well for businesses that are just starting out or maybe trying to find their way through Doordash – this is because it comes with a handful of limitations, as you’d expect for being on the lower end of the price range.

There are, of course, some pros:

1. Provide Reach for customers nearby
2. It’s cheap and still gets you on Doordash

But then you may also want to take a quick look at some of the cons…

While you could get orders with the plan, your reach won’t be as high as for other packages. And for customers at far locations, it can only get worst.

Secondly, your customers would get a relatively higher delivery fee, while being signed to Doordash Basic.

And lastly, while on Doordash Basic mode, you would be regarded as a non-dash pass-approved store.

Hence, customers who are registered with the Dashpass service can’t make orders on your store with their subscription.

Editors note: Dashpass is one of the few products on Doordash for customers. It serves as a coupon, waiving the delivery fee, when customers subscribe to a monthly fee of $9.99.

Doordash Plus Fee

Next, we have Doordash Plus – the recommended option for most people.

The fee for the plus is a commission rate of 25% per order processed through Doordash.

And for a commission rate as high as that, it should have an upper hand, right? Well here they are:

1. All features: To sum it up, you get all features available to be on a Doordash Merchant plan with just a single exception with the premier (guaranteed sales of at least 20 orders per month)
2. Better reach: With the Plus plan, Doordash promises a wider reach to customers, whether nearby or further away.
3. Customer satisfaction: Unlike the basic plan, there’s a lower customer delivery fee.
4. Dashpass approved: Stores registered under the Doordash Plus and Premier are seen as Dashpass approved, hence are open to getting customers signed to the service.

Doordash Premier Fee

The premier is basically the Doordash Plus with an additional service – a guarantee of at least 20 orders from Doordash.

In essence, you get everything the Doordash Plus has to offer while having a guaranteed sale.

According to the company, if you’re not able to make up to 20 orders for each month, your commission for the month would be refunded.

This may also mean, there’s little more promotion for customers on the Premier plan.

So if you’re a bit desperate to make your first sale, you might want to give it a try.

However, it comes with a price – a 30% commission rate.

This is 5% more than what is charged on the Plus plan.

Other Programs and Fees on Doordash

Now, the 3 plans aforementioned are not just the whole thing on Doordash for Merchants – they’re the basic, and most in cases, you should be fine with them.

If you, however, choose to increase comfortability, advertising, and several other add-ons, you can still them, but would be willing to spend more. Yeah, extra fees.

So let’s take a quick look at a number of them:

Self Delivery:

What if you wanted to use Doordash to promote your restaurant, but still make deliveries by yourself – perhaps you already have your logistics. Is this feasible?

Well, it is, with the Self-delivery service.

With the Self Delivery, you get your store listed on Doordash but still handle the delivery yourself.

The standard charge for this is a 6% commission rate.

Note that you don’t have to be in any of the 3 aforementioned plans to join Doordash for self delivery.

Storefront Fee:

This is an extra service available for merchants, where they pay more (per month) while Doordash helps create their own branded online stores, allowing customers to place and receive orders through them.

Delivery, customer, and payment services are included as well.

So what is the charge here?

The charge for storefront follows a per-order system costing $0.30 per order with a payment card processing fee of 2.9% of the total transaction amount.

Drive Order Fee:

The Drive orders service is basically the traditional Doordash-to-merchant service but with additional flexibility for branding.

Here, instead of customers interacting directly with Doordash, they interact with you (a platform like Doordash you should have set up already), while Doordash offers the delivery service.

Doordash is basically a delivery service here.

So what about the fee?

The fee for the drive orders is calculated dynamically using the distance of pickup and dropoff orders.

There’s a base rate of $9.75 for all orders within 5 miles. And for orders above 5 miles, there’s an additional 0.75 per mile up to a maximum of 15 miles.

Editors note: A business would only need this service when they already have a functional store as well as platform but needs the help of a delivery fleet

How to recover from these fees as a Merchant

If you’re a constant customer of Doordash and someone who also goes out to buy some food in local restaurants once in a while, you’d surely notice that there are usually differences in the menu prices between these two.

Well, this is because most restaurants raise the prices of their menu for food delivery companies, in order to cover the extra expenses.

This is basically a standard in the industry and as a restaurant, you may want to participate in it, to cover overhead expenses Doordash comes with.

Do your calculation. Know how much on average you’d be spending on Doordash, and then add a percentage of that to each one of your menus.

Typically, the ultimate goal is to make more sales with Doordash, while covering the extra expenses it comes with – hence, making a profit.

Final thoughts

Thanks to the 2021 update, Doordash fees for restaurants are pretty much simplified, but are, however, still expensive – no doubt.

Regardless, following the tip we shared above, you should be able to accomodate.