Convenience or compounding cost? I’ve stopped paying the “delivery app tax”
3 Nov 2025
I see a pattern in clients’ bank feeds—and in my own habits when I’m tired. Tap, tap, order. Ten minutes saved; twenty bucks gone. At small scale it feels harmless. At scale it compounds into real money.
Consumer tests keep finding the same thing: app orders cost roughly a third more than buying direct. Add the small-order fees, service fees and inflated menu prices, and the “convenience premium” quietly turns into a compounding cost. Meanwhile, restaurants are squeezed by commissions that can run north of 30%. The bill lands in our budgets and in their margins.
What the data says
Groceries via apps can be up to ~39% pricier than buying from the supermarket’s own site or in-store, once item mark-ups and delivery fees are counted. Choice’s October 2025 comparison found Uber Eats the most expensive overall in its test basket.
Meals delivered can cost close to double vs pickup in overseas testing once all platform fees and mark-ups are included (method differs, direction is the point).
Restaurant side: platform commissions are widely reported around 30–35% of order value, a level that forces either higher app menu prices, lower margins, or both.
The subsidy era is over. Uber reported its first operating profit in Q2 2023 and keeps touting profitability—translation: less cross-subsidising your dinner. Expect the true cost of convenience to keep showing up on your receipt.
The compounding cost (and why it matters more now)
Let’s run the boring maths once so you don’t have to run it every week:
$14 extra per order × 3 times a week × 52 weeks = $2,184 a year (AUD).
At a plain-vanilla 5% after-tax return, that forgone $2,184 is $11,200 not in your portfolio after five years; ~$28k after ten. The meal is gone in 20 minutes; the compounding doesn’t even get to start.
When mortgages, childcare and rents are doing the heavy lifting on cost-of-living pressure, the goal isn’t to turn life into austerity. It’s to stop paying “convenience interest” on autopilot.
The restaurant side of the ledger
As a small-business adviser, I’ve watched hospitality owners try to square the circle: eat a third of the order in commissions, or raise app prices and risk losing volume. Big chains can swallow margins; your local can’t. That’s why you’ll often see higher prices on the app than at the counter—they’re backfilling platform fees. And yes, sometimes even app pickup costs more than ordering direct. The app is a marketing channel; the rules and incentives are set so you order through the platform, not around it.
A simple rule I use (and suggest to clients)
Default to pickup or direct order inside a 1–2km radius.
Use delivery for edge cases (sick, newborn, mobility issues, late finishes). No guilt—just label it a premium.
Batch one “lazy dinner kit” into the weekly shop (dumplings, salad kit, rotisserie chicken—whatever fits your diet). It’s the cheap alternative to the 8pm doom-scroll-and-order.
If you must app, compare: open the restaurant’s own site (or phone them) and check the menu price difference before you tap. Two screens; hundreds a year.
For owners: nudge customers to order direct (QR on the bag, “10th pickup free”, website ordering). Every 5–10% you can reclaim from platforms is margin you don’t have to claw back via price rises.
A calmer take on “time is money”
The defence of delivery is always time. Fair. But make the trade-off explicit: if it’s a $22 premium to save 20 minutes, you’re valuing your downtime at $66/hour after tax. If that’s truly your number tonight, enjoy the pad thai. If not, a walk and a pickup might be the cheapest stress relief you get all week.
Bottom line
Convenience is a feature. Compounding cost is a bug that ships with it. Name it, box it to its proper use cases, and put the savings back to work—whether that’s on your mortgage offset, into super, or just breathing room in the weekly grocery run.
Sources & notes (for readers who want the receipts)
Choice’s 2025 price comparison: groceries via delivery apps averaged higher item prices plus delivery fees; up to ~39% more in the tested basket.
US basket test (directional): delivery totals up to ~2× pickup once fees and mark-ups included (study method differs from Australian tests).
Typical platform commissions: widely reported around 30–35% in Australia.
Profitability shift: Uber’s first operating profit (Q2 2023); continued profitability discussion in 2024–25 earnings coverage—less scope to subsidise deliveries.
Why app menus cost more / even for pickup: restaurants raise app prices to cover platform fees; platforms nudge parity or penalise heavy mark-ups, creating messy incentives.