Are Your Delivery Orders Really Profitable?

A Dubai Operator’s Guide After the New Delivery Rules
Dubai’s restaurant scene looks busy from the outside: full dining rooms on weekends, riders lined up for pickups, and new concepts opening all the time.

But a lot of owners are quietly asking:

“If my delivery business is so busy… why is there so little left in the bank?”

For years, delivery platforms took 25–35% commissions on orders, often with extra marketing and service fees layered on. Many restaurants also complained that it was hard to see their true all-in cost.

In September 2025, Dubai’s Corporation for Consumer Protection and Fair Trade (part of Dubai Economy and Tourism) introduced official Guidelines for Online Food Delivery Platforms. These rules are meant to make pricing and contracts fairer and clearer for restaurants and customers.

The rules give you better visibility. Whether delivery is profitable still depends on your numbers.

Transparency doesn’t fix the math. It just makes the math harder to ignore.

This post is a practical guide to using that new transparency to:

Understand your real delivery margins
Decide which items and channels are worth pushing
See how tools like TableWise can help you manage this without living in spreadsheets

1. What the new delivery rules change (in plain English)

You don’t need to memorise law numbers. What matters is what changed for customers and restaurants.

1.1 Clear pricing for customers

Delivery apps must now:

Show a detailed breakdown of charges before checkout:
- Food
- Delivery fee
- Service/Platform fees
- Taxes (e.g., VAT)
Use plain, easy-to-understand language
Avoid hidden or last-minute charges added after payment

So when a customer complains about “mystery fees,” you can point to a clearer bill.

1.2 Clearer contracts and statements for restaurants

Platforms are expected to:

Provide clear, accessible terms and conditions
Give notice before changing key terms
Allow restaurants to terminate contracts if they disagree with new terms
Share monthly itemised statements showing:
- Food
- Delivery fee
- Service/Platform fees
- Taxes (e.g., VAT)

That means you finally have better raw data to run your own numbers.

1.3 Uniform base pricing (this part is crucial)

The official guidelines include a “price parity / uniform pricing” clause:

Your base menu prices for a given item must be consistent across:
- All delivery platforms
- Your own website and app
- Your physical outlet and any other consumer-facing channels
Exception: You are allowed to run legitimate discounts, loyalty rewards, or promotions that differ by channel, as long as:
- They are transparent
- They don’t become a disguised permanent base-price change

In plain terms:

You can’t just make shawarma 30 AED in-store and 40 AED as its normal base price on one app.
You can keep the base price at 30 AED everywhere and then run:
- App-only promos for a week
- Direct-channel loyalty points
- Dine-in specials on certain days

1.4 What the rules do not change

They do not:

Your base menu prices for a given item must be consistent across:
- Cap commission rates
- Reduce your rent, labour, or food costs
- Guarantee that any given order is profitable

They give you clarity and rights. You still have to decide how to use that clarity.

So yes, transparency is better than opacity. But if your margin on a dish is 10% and an app charges you 30% commission, the order is still underwater — now you’ll just see that more clearly on the statement.

The new rules are a step forward. A big one. But they don’t magically create profit. That part is still on you.

2. A simple delivery math example (no jargon)

Let’s take a single delivery order and see why “busy” can still mean “losing money.”

This is only an example, but it’s close to what many Dubai operators describe.

Order value on app (after VAT): 80 AED

Approximate cost breakdown:

Delivery apps must now:

Food cost (ingredients): 24 AED (~30%)
Kitchen + packaging labour: 16 AED (~20%)
Rent & overhead allocation: 12 AED (~15%)
Packaging (boxes, bags, labels, cutlery): 4 AED
Promotions/discounts you agreed to: 6 AED
Delivery platform commission at 30%: 24 AED

Total cost: 24 + 16 + 12 + 4 + 6 + 24 = 86 AED

Revenue from order: 80 AED

You lose 6 AED on that order.

The guidelines make the breakdown more visible — both to the customer and to you. But they don’t change the basic economics of that 6 AED loss.

3. Costs operators still underestimate (even when they’re visible)

The guidelines clamp down on hidden fees and unclear terms.

There are still costs that many restaurants mentally “round down.”

3.1 Packaging

Delivery-grade packaging isn’t just a plastic bag:

Sturdy boxes for hot items
Tamper-evident seals
Branded bags and sleeves
Extra napkins, cutlery, sauces

So when a customer complains about “mystery fees,” you can point to a clearer bill.

3.2 “Optional” marketing that quietly eats margin

Under the guidelines, marketing tools must be optional and transparently priced.

In practice, operators may still feel pressure to:
- Join deep-discount campaigns
- Pay for boosted visibility or banners
- Co-fund free delivery or other perks

These are business choices — but they must be counted when you ask, “Is this channel actually worth it?”

3.3 Operational friction

Even with clearer statements:

Your base menu prices for a given item must be consistent across:
- Staff still spend time reconciling payouts
- Mistakes on incoming orders still lead to remakes and comps
- Managing tablets and tickets still has a labour cost

How much time does your manager spend each week just reconciling the different app statements? What if that time was spent training staff, tightening recipes, or engaging with dine-in guests instead?

Those hours are real money, just harder to see.

4. Three core numbers every Dubai operator should track

You can do this with:

Spreadsheets (using platform statements + your POS exports), or
A restaurant management system like TableWise that automates the boring parts.
Branded bags and sleeves
Extra napkins, cutlery, sauces

4.1 Channel mix

First, understand where your money comes from.

Break revenue into:

Dine-in
Takeaway
Each delivery app (listed separately)
Your own direct channels (website, QR, WhatsApp, phone)

If one app dominates your off-premises sales (e.g., >60% of delivery volume), that’s a dependency risk — even if the relationship is now more transparent.

4.2 Item-level margin by channel

For your top 10 delivery items on each app, estimate:

Base price (which must be the same across all channels)
Food cost
Packaging cost
Average discount or promotional value
Commission percentage

You’ll quickly see:

Green items: still healthy on delivery
Red items: break-even or loss-making on delivery
Items that may need recipe or promo redesign

You can absolutely build this in Excel or Google Sheets using the platform statements and your recipe costs.

Where TableWise helps:

Stores your recipes and packaging costs centrally
Lets you keep base prices consistent across channels, while configuring channel-specific promotions, discounts, and loyalty within the Dubai rules
Generates item-level margin reports per channel without manual number-crunching

4.3 All-in effective commission

Don’t just look at the headline “30% commission.”

Using your monthly statements, calculate this for each platform:

All-in effective commission =
Total fees and deductions ÷ Total sales for that platform

Include:
- Standard commission
- Paid advertising / campaign fees
- Subscription / service fees
- Adjustments and chargebacks

This tells you the true percentage of revenue leaving your pocket.

You can:
- Calculate it in a spreadsheet once a month, or
- Have a system like TableWise map payouts to sales and show the effective rate on a dashboard.

5. “Delivery Margin Gap” — name the problem so you can manage it

Let’s put a name to the central issue.

Delivery Margin Gap – the difference between what a dish earns in-house vs through each delivery channel.

If your chicken biryani makes you 25 AED in profit when sold directly, but only 5 AED (or a loss) on a delivery app, that’s a 20 AED Margin Gap you need to manage.

Once you define it:

Your team stops saying “delivery is good” or “delivery is bad” in general.
You start asking, “What is the margin gap by dish and by channel — and what are we going to do about it?”

That’s where both spreadsheets and systems like TableWise become powerful: they give you enough visibility to make those calls.

6. What a Dubai-ready system like TableWise adds on top of manual methods

You can do all of this with exports and spreadsheets. Many owners do.

The problems:

It’s time-consuming.
It’s easy to make mistakes.
It rarely happens in real time — you only see the picture at month-end, if that.

A Dubai-ready system like TableWise is helpful because it:

Centralises order data
- Dine-in, takeaway, each delivery app, and direct orders flow into one system.
Respects uniform pricing while giving promo flexibility
- Helps you keep base prices aligned across dine-in, direct online, and platforms, in line with Dubai’s uniform pricing requirement.
- Lets you manage and track channel-specific promotions, discounts, and loyalty rewards transparently, rather than relying on inconsistent workarounds.
Stores recipe and packaging costs
- Margin reports are based on real data, not guesswork.
Automates channel and margin dashboards
- You see:
  - Which channels are growing
  - Which dishes make or lose money where
  - How your effective commission changes over time
Helps grow direct channels without breaking the rules
- QR ordering, direct payment links, and simple loyalty tools — so you encourage repeat direct business while keeping base prices consistent.

The message is not “you can only do this with TableWise.” It’s: You can do this manually.
TableWise makes it faster, more accurate, and continuous.

7. A realistic 7-day plan using the new transparency

Here’s how to turn the new rules into action in one week.

Day 1–2: Gather your data

Download the latest itemised statements from each delivery platform.
Export your POS data for the same period (sales by item and channel).

Day 3: Map your channel mix

In a spreadsheet (or in TableWise), group revenue into:
- Dine-in
- Takeaway
- Each app
- Direct orders

Note where you are most exposed.

Day 4: Audit your top delivery items

For each platform:

List your top 10 dishes by sales.
For each, estimate:
- Base price
- Food cost
- Packaging cost
- Average discount / promo
- Commission

Mark:

Green – healthy margin on delivery
Red – break-even or loss-making

Day 5: Adjust menu and promos (within the rules)

Using the uniform pricing requirement as your guardrail:

Consider adjusting recipes, portion sizes, or overall base pricing (across all channels) if needed.
Remove fragile or chronically unprofitable dishes from delivery channels entirely.
Use channel-specific promotions (not base price differences) to:
- Encourage direct orders
- Support items that can handle a discount
- De-emphasise items that are margin killers

Day 6: Review platform terms and tools

From the statements, compute your all-in effective commission for each platform.
Look at every marketing or boost fee and ask:
- “Did this actually pay for itself?”
- “If I took this same budget and invested it in my own direct channel, what would happen?”

Day 7: Design your direct channel strategy

Simplify direct ordering:
- QR codes on tables, receipts, and packaging
- A clean ordering link in your social profiles
Offer modest, sustainable incentives for repeat direct orders:
- Loyalty points
- Occasional add-ons after a certain number of orders
Track direct vs platform orders monthly in a sheet or in TableWise.

“The Story of a 100 AED Delivery Order: Why Being Busy Doesn’t Mean Being Profitable”

One bar, segmented into:

Food
Labour
Rent/overheads
Packaging
Discounts/promos
Platform fees
Net profit (small or negative)

Infographic showing how a 100 AED delivery order is split across food, labour, overhead, packaging, discounts, and platform fees, leaving a small or negative net profit.

Dubai’s new rules make fees clearer. Your next step is to run the numbers and decide which delivery items and channels truly earn their keep.

Summary and next step

Dubai’s 2025 delivery guidelines are a big step forward:

Customers see clearer, itemised pricing.
Restaurants get better contracts and monthly statements.
There’s a clear rule for uniform base pricing with flexible promotions.

But the key question is still yours:

“Does this channel make money for my restaurant?”

If you:

Use the new statements to calculate your Delivery Margin Gap
Adjust menu, channels, and promotions within the uniform pricing rules
Track margins over time — manually or with TableWise

…you stop guessing and start managing.
Transparency is a tool, not a guarantee. What you do with it is what will show up in your bank account.

If you’re running a restaurant or café in Dubai and want an easier way to track delivery margins and channel performance:

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