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Cutting platform commissions: 6 actions to take back control

16 July 2026·6 min read

Booking and delivery platforms bring in customers — but at a price that eats into an already thin margin, and without ever giving you the customer's contact details. Here are six concrete actions to win back direct volume and reduce your dependence, without turning your back on the digital world.

1. Understand the real cost of an « intermediated » cover

A commission looks painless line by line. Over the course of a month, it becomes your largest variable cost after raw ingredients and staff. Do the maths on your own figures: add up the commissions you paid last month, divide by your gross margin. Many restaurateurs discover that they work one week a month for an intermediary. Once that number is on the table, priorities change.

2. Open a direct booking channel

Bookings are the cheapest entry point to reclaim. A « Book » button on your own website and your listing, connected to your floor plan, costs you no commission per cover. The customer books with you; you keep their name, their history, their preferences. Platforms keep their usefulness for discovery — but they stop being your only route.

3. Offer direct takeaway ordering

For takeaway, every order placed directly rather than through an intermediary means the entire commission stays in your till. An online menu under your name, a simple payment, an order that lands straight in the kitchen: the technology exists today without prohibitive per-transaction fees. The point isn't to switch everything over at once, but to bring your regulars back — the ones who already order every week.

You're not fighting the platforms: you're ceasing to depend on them 100%. Every percentage point of orders brought back in-house is a margin recovered.

4. Turn every intermediated customer into a direct customer

The customer who arrives via a platform can become your customer — just once. A flyer in the delivery bag, a QR code on the table, a loyalty card offered with the bill: each one is a chance to say « next time, order directly — it's the same price for you and a better margin for us ». Repeated, this switch builds a customer database that belongs to you.

5. Reach out without buying an audience

Once your customers have signed up, you reach them for free. A notification about the dish of the day, a special menu, an evening event: that's zero-cost « advertising », addressed to people who already know you. It's exactly what the platforms charge you for — except here, the channel is yours.

6. Show clear prices, including your own

Trust is earned through transparency. A displayed price, with no hidden commission passed on to the customer, is a selling point in itself. And when it comes to tools, choose solutions with a clear, fixed price rather than a percentage: a predictable subscription leaves you the full margin on every extra cover.

Taking back control isn't a single grand gesture, it's a series of small reconquests: a booking here, an order there, a customer signed up at every service. After a few months, the share of your revenue that comes back to you in full grows — and with it, your independence.