A commission percentage does not show every cost of fulfilling an order. It also does not justify adding fees that your restaurant was never charged.
DoorDash’s merchant FAQ states that Marketplace merchants are not charged separate card processing fees. Online Ordering, its commission-free product for orders from your own channels, has separate payment-processing terms. Keep those products apart when checking a statement.
Start with the statement
For each order, record the food subtotal, commission, merchant-funded promotions, refunds or adjustments, and net payout. Exclude customer taxes and tips from the sales base unless the line being reconciled explicitly includes them. Match every deduction to that same base and period.
| Item | How to treat it |
|---|---|
| Marketplace commission | Use the rate and dollar charge in your agreement and statement |
| Card processing | Do not add an assumed processing fee to Marketplace commission |
| Merchant-funded promotions | Count the amount charged to you, once |
| Sponsored Listings or other ads | Record the actual charge; show any allocation across orders separately |
| Refunds and adjustments | Use posted amounts and check whether they already reduced reported sales |
| Customer delivery or service fees | Do not treat customer checkout charges as merchant deductions without statement evidence |
| Food, packaging, extra preparation time | Record separately from platform deductions |
The Marketplace page describes available plans. Your agreement and order records determine the charges used in your calculation.
A fictional $30 order
The following inputs illustrate the arithmetic. The 30% commission is an assumption for this order; the other amounts are not standard DoorDash charges or averages from merchant statements.
| Item | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Food subtotal, excluding tax and tip | Given | $30.00 |
| Commission | $30 × 30% | −$9.00 |
| Merchant-funded promotion | Assumed actual charge | −$0.90 |
| Refund adjustment | Assumed actual charge | −$0.60 |
| Amount after merchant deductions | $30 − $9 − $0.90 − $0.60 | $19.50 |
| Food cost | Given | −$9.00 |
| Packaging | Given | −$2.20 |
| Incremental fulfilment labour | Given | −$0.90 |
| Contribution before other costs | $19.50 − $9 − $2.20 − $0.90 | $7.40 |
Merchant deductions in this example are $10.50, or 35% of the $30 subtotal. Contribution is $7.40, or about 24.7%. With no promotion or refund adjustment, the same other inputs would leave $8.90. Neither result is net profit: rent, base staffing, utilities, and other excluded expenses still need funding.
If a statement already reports sales after a refund, do not subtract the same refund again. Match the gross sales and deduction lines before using this table.
Testing a proposed price
A useful planning formula separates percentage deductions from fixed dollar costs:
Price = (food + packaging + incremental labour + fixed per-order charges)
÷ (1 − percentage deduction rate − target contribution rate)Both rates must use the proposed selling price as their denominator. The denominator must be positive. Refunds and advertising do not necessarily scale with price, so use scenarios or actual dollar allocations instead of treating every historical deduction as a permanent percentage.
For a fictional 30% commission, a chosen 25% contribution target, $12.10 in food, packaging and labour, and no other charges:
$12.10 ÷ (1 − 0.30 − 0.25) = $26.888…A price of $26.89 meets that arithmetic target under these assumptions. It is not a price recommendation or a guarantee of demand. Add any real promotion or other charge before deciding whether the target remains achievable.
Compare channels on the same basis
Use the same recipe quantities for dine-in and delivery, then show packaging, channel charges, and extra work as separate lines. Compare retained dollars per order and the kitchen time needed to earn them. More orders can consume capacity without covering the additional work.
KitchenCost can store ingredient purchase prices and recipe quantities so you can update the recipe’s ingredient cost. Calculate platform deductions, fulfilment labour, and the full channel comparison separately. The app does not import a DoorDash payout statement or calculate the fee stack described here.
Review one week of orders
- Reconcile a sample of orders to the payout statement before averaging rates.
- Separate optional marketing charges from commission.
- Check refunds against the sales base to avoid double-counting.
- Compare packaging and preparation costs with the recipe cost.
- Recalculate the proposed price with and without promotions.
Related Guides
- Uber Eats merchant fees
- Uber Eats order costs
- Delivery platform fee comparison
- Delivery order contribution
- Delivery and dine-in pricing