GrabFood vs GoJek Commission 30%: Restaurant Delivering SGD 100K/Month Loses SGD 30K to Platforms
- The Platform Commission Structure
- The Real Math on Delivery Orders
- Why Restaurants Stay on Platforms Anyway
- AskBiz Delivery Profit Tracking
- The Bangkok Noodle Shop That Redesigned Its Delivery Menu
- Why the Break-Even Order Volume Matters More Than the Commission Rate
- The Hidden Cost of Chasing Platform Promotions
- Using Delivery Data to Negotiate Better Terms Elsewhere
Restaurant: dine-in average check SGD 25, margin 25% = SGD 6.25 profit/customer. GrabFood order: average SGD 30 (delivery premium), commission 30% = SGD 9 to Grab, restaurant receives SGD 21. COGS same = SGD 12, overhead allocation SGD 5 = profit SGD 4 per delivery order (13%). 20% worse margin than dine-in. At SGD 100K/month delivery: SGD 4K profit vs SGD 25K equivalent dine-in profit. Delivery is destroying margin.
- The Platform Commission Structure
- The Real Math on Delivery Orders
- Why Restaurants Stay on Platforms Anyway
- AskBiz Delivery Profit Tracking
- The Bangkok Noodle Shop That Redesigned Its Delivery Menu
The Platform Commission Structure#
GrabFood: commission 30% of order value (exclusive restaurant). Non-exclusive: 25%. GoJek/GoFood: 20-25%. Deliveroo: 30-35%. FoodPanda: 25-30%. Commission is on gross order value including tax. Restaurant receives net: order value minus commission. Payment settlement: D+7 to D+14. Most restaurants don't calculate true delivery margin — they see "revenue" without deducting commission.
The Real Math on Delivery Orders#
Menu item: Nasi Lemak SGD 12 dine-in. Delivery listing: SGD 14 (restaurant adds 15% delivery premium). GrabFood commission 30% = SGD 4.20. Restaurant receives SGD 9.80. Cost of goods: SGD 4.50, packaging SGD 0.50 = COGS SGD 5. Gross profit: SGD 4.80 (34%). Overhead allocation (kitchen, electricity): SGD 3. Net: SGD 1.80 per Nasi Lemak (13%). Same item dine-in at SGD 12: gross SGD 7.50, overhead SGD 3, net SGD 4.50 (38%). Delivery earns 60% less profit per dish.
Why Restaurants Stay on Platforms Anyway#
(1) Volume: delivery adds 30-50% more orders (kitchen runs at higher utilisation = fixed costs spread across more orders). (2) Discovery: new customers find you on Grab, convert to dine-in. (3) Off-peak revenue: delivery fills slow periods (2-5pm when dine-in is empty). (4) Fear: competitors are on Grab, you can't afford to be absent. Strategy: use delivery for volume and discovery, not as primary profit driver.
AskBiz Delivery Profit Tracking#
Pulls GrabFood/GoJek settlement data. Calculates per-channel profit. "This month: dine-in SGD 80K revenue, margin 28% = SGD 22.4K profit. GrabFood SGD 60K GMV, commission SGD 18K, net SGD 42K, margin 18% = SGD 7.6K profit. GoJek SGD 20K GMV, commission SGD 5K, net SGD 15K, margin 20% = SGD 3K profit. Delivery total profit: SGD 10.6K vs dine-in SGD 22.4K. Per-revenue: dine-in 28%, delivery 13%. Action: raise GrabFood prices 10% (test price elasticity — reduce order volume but maintain profit)."
The Bangkok Noodle Shop That Redesigned Its Delivery Menu#
Copying the dine-in menu straight onto GrabFood is the single most common margin mistake ASEAN restaurants make, because dishes that are profitable across a table are frequently unprofitable once packaging, spillage, and a 30% commission are layered on. A Bangkok noodle shop with eleven dine-in dishes discovered this the hard way after six months of steady GrabFood volume that never seemed to translate into visible profit growth. Working through the numbers dish by dish, the owner found that her signature boat noodles — cheap, broth-heavy, and requiring careful packaging to avoid leaking — actually lost THB 8 per delivery order once commission, packaging, and a higher-than-average refund rate for spilled orders were accounted for, despite looking healthy on the dine-in P&L. Her dry-style dishes and fried items, by contrast, travelled well, packaged cheaply, and cleared a comfortable THB 22 profit per delivery order even after the same 30% commission. Rather than pull boat noodles from GrabFood entirely and lose the discovery value, she redesigned the delivery menu to feature the dry and fried dishes prominently at the top of the listing, added a THB 15 delivery-specific packaging surcharge to the soup items to cover the real cost, and quietly reduced the soup items' visibility in the app's category ordering. Delivery profit rose 34% over the following quarter without any change in overall order volume — she had simply stopped subsidising the dishes that delivery was structurally bad for. The broader lesson: a delivery menu should be curated by delivery economics, not copied from the dine-in menu by default.
Why the Break-Even Order Volume Matters More Than the Commission Rate#
Restaurant owners tend to fixate on the commission percentage as the single number that determines whether delivery is worth it, but the more useful question is what order volume is needed to cover the fixed cost of being on the platform at all — packaging inventory, a dedicated expeditor during peak hours, and the opportunity cost of kitchen capacity. A Kuala Lumpur casual-dining chain calculated this explicitly for a new outlet considering GrabFood exclusivity, which came with a reduced 25% commission versus the standard 30% non-exclusive rate. Exclusivity required committing kitchen capacity during the 6-9pm peak specifically to Grab orders, effectively capping dine-in table turns during the restaurant's highest-margin hours. Modelling both scenarios against expected order volume, the chain found that exclusivity only made financial sense above roughly 45 delivery orders a night; below that threshold, the 5-point commission saving was smaller than the dine-in revenue sacrificed by reserving kitchen capacity. Their actual average was 30 orders a night at the new outlet, so they stayed non-exclusive and kept dine-in capacity unconstrained. The commission rate alone would have suggested exclusivity was the obviously better deal — it was the break-even volume calculation, not the headline percentage, that showed it wasn't. AskBiz's delivery profit tracking runs this kind of break-even scenario automatically against actual order history, so the exclusivity decision is based on a restaurant's real volume pattern rather than the commission rate in isolation.
The Hidden Cost of Chasing Platform Promotions#
GrabFood and GoJek both run frequent in-app promotions — percentage-off vouchers, free delivery days, bundle deals — that restaurants can opt into for a visibility boost, and many owners opt in reflexively without modelling what the promotion actually costs against the commission already being paid. A Manila fast-casual restaurant opted into a platform-wide "20% off orders above PHP 300" promotion for two weeks, expecting the visibility boost to outweigh the discount. Order volume did rise 40% during the promotion, which felt like validation. But when the owner reconciled the settlement report afterward, the real picture was worse than expected: the 20% discount came directly off the restaurant's share after the 28% commission was already deducted, not off the pre-commission order value, meaning the effective margin on promoted orders fell to just 4%, compared to a normal 16% on non-promoted delivery orders. The extra volume generated barely more absolute profit than the restaurant would have made at normal volume without the promotion, while creating a spike in kitchen stress and a wave of new customers anchored to a discounted price point that proved hard to walk back afterward. The restaurant now reads every promotion offer against its own margin structure before opting in, specifically checking whether the discount is deducted before or after commission — a detail platforms rarely make obvious in the opt-in screen, and one that determines whether a promotion drives real profit or simply drives volume at a loss.
Using Delivery Data to Negotiate Better Terms Elsewhere#
One underused benefit of the detailed settlement data GrabFood and GoJek provide is that it doubles as leverage in conversations that have nothing to do with the platforms themselves — landlord rent reviews, supplier pricing, and staffing decisions all benefit from the granular hourly demand data delivery orders generate. A Jakarta food court tenant used six months of GrabFood and GoJek order timestamps to demonstrate to her landlord that her unit generated meaningfully higher foot-traffic-equivalent revenue during the 2-5pm off-peak window than the food court's own occupancy data suggested, winning a reduced rent-per-square-metre rate for a lease renewal on the strength of that evidence. Separately, the same order data showed her which ingredients had the most volatile delivery-hour demand, letting her negotiate a more flexible just-in-time delivery schedule with her main produce supplier instead of holding excess buffer stock that tied up cash. Neither outcome required new software or new relationships — both came from treating the delivery platforms' settlement exports as a genuine data asset rather than just a monthly payout notice to file away. Most SMB restaurant owners only look at the top-line payout figure and never open the underlying order-level detail, which is exactly where the useful patterns live. AskBiz consolidates that order-level data automatically across GrabFood, GoJek, and dine-in POS, so patterns like these surface without a manual export-and-pivot-table exercise every time a rent review or supplier negotiation comes up.
People also ask
Should I raise prices on GrabFood to offset commission?
Yes — most restaurants raise delivery prices 15-25% above dine-in to offset commission. Customers generally accept 10-15% premium (delivery convenience). Beyond 20%, order volume drops significantly. Test: raise 10%, monitor volume change over 2 weeks. If volume drops <5%, raise another 5%.
Is it worth negotiating commission with Grab/GoJek?
Possible if you do >SGD 50K GMV/month on the platform. Request account manager meeting. Leverage: exclusive listing offer, or threatening to reduce prominence. Realistic saving: 2-5% commission reduction. On SGD 50K/month: SGD 1K-2.5K saved.
Our team combines expertise in data analytics, SME strategy, and AI tools to produce practical guides that help founders and operators make better business decisions.
Calculate True Delivery Profitability (Dine-In vs GrabFood vs GoJek)
AskBiz pulls platform settlement data and compares true margin by channel. Shows which channel is worth growing. Try free.
Connects to Shopify, Xero, Amazon, QuickBooks, Stripe & more in minutes