Why ordering direct costs you less than ordering through an app
The commission is not a secret and it is not free. Here is where it actually goes, and what the same food costs when nobody is taking a cut of it.
There is a number restaurants do not usually put on a page, so here it is: an ordering app charges a restaurant somewhere between 15 and 30 per cent of every bill. Not of the profit — of the bill. On a ₹1,200 order that is between ₹180 and ₹360 leaving the kitchen before anybody has paid for the chicken.
That money has to come from somewhere, and there are only three places it can come from. It comes out of the food, which is the worst option and the one you notice last. It comes out of the restaurant, which works until it does not. Or it goes on the menu price — which is what almost everybody does, because it is the only one of the three that is survivable.
So the honest version of “order direct and save money” is not a favour we are doing you. It is arithmetic. There is no commission on an order placed here, so there is nothing to build into the price, so the price is lower. Here is the whole sum.
The same ₹1,200 of food, priced both ways
One basket — say a couple of tandoor plates, a main, breads and two mocktails. Delivered, to the same door, cooked in the same kitchen by the same people. The only difference is who takes the order.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Menu price, marked up to absorb the commission | ₹1,380 |
| Platform fee | ₹12 |
| Delivery fee | ₹45 |
| GST at 5% | ₹69 |
| You pay | ₹1,506 |
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Menu price, exactly what is printed upstairs | ₹1,200 |
| Platform fee | ₹0 |
| Delivery, free over ₹799 | ₹0 |
| Packaging | ₹20 |
| GST at 5% | ₹60 |
| You pay | ₹1,280 |
₹226 on one order. It is an illustration rather than a quote — we cannot see anybody else’s pricing, and the 15% markup above is the figure the industry generally works to rather than one we have audited. But the shape of it is not in dispute, and you can check our column yourself: put a basket together on the menu and the packaging, the delivery and the GST are each itemised in the bill before you pay for anything. There is no line on this site that only appears at the end.
The part that is not about money
The commission is the loud argument. These are the quiet ones, and after a year of running both they matter more.
Somebody answers the phone
If a dish arrives wrong on an app order, you are talking to a chat window belonging to a company that did not cook it. It can refund you. It cannot send the correct dish, because it does not have a kitchen.
Call +91 84451 00365 and somebody standing in our restaurant picks up, usually within a couple of rings. They can see your order, they can talk to the chef, and they can send the right thing out. That is not better service as a slogan; it is a shorter chain with fewer people in it.
The menu is the whole menu
App menus get trimmed. Dishes that travel badly come off, dishes that are slow come off, and what is left is the subset that suits the platform rather than the subset that suits you. Ours is not trimmed: everything on the menu — the tandoor, the wok, the pizza oven, the whole cold bar — is orderable, with the same prices as the table upstairs.
The order stays between us
When you order through a platform, the platform learns your address, your phone number, what you eat and how often. The restaurant gets an order ticket. Order here and the details go to the kitchen that is cooking your food and nowhere else — no third party gets the list, because there is no third party. What we hold and for how long is written out on the privacy page in plain language.
What it costs us to say this
Being straight about it: we are still on the apps, and we will be for a while. They bring people who have never heard of us, and a restaurant that is only findable by people who already know it is a restaurant with a problem. This is not a boycott, and we are not asking you to have a view about the delivery industry.
It is narrower than that. If you already know you want our food — you have eaten here, or you are looking us up on purpose — then the order going through a platform costs us a fifth of the bill and costs you more than it needs to, and neither of us gets anything for it. That is the only case this article is making.
How to order direct
- Open the menu and add what you want. Prices are the printed ones.
- Delivery anywhere inside 8 km of MG Road 2, free over ₹799. Minimum order ₹249.
- Pay online, or in cash when it arrives. Nothing is added for choosing either.
- Follow it from the kitchen to your door on the order tracker.
- Or skip all of it and book a table — the roof is better than the box.
That is it. The saving is not a promotion and it does not run out on Sunday; it is what the food costs when nobody is taking a percentage of it.
