Food Delivery Commission in Singapore: Platforms vs Your Own Channel

The economics of food delivery in Singapore come down to one decision: how much of your volume you route through a platform that charges a commission versus a channel you own. Grab has publicly stated its merchant commissions run 25% to 30% of order value, and that cut comes off your revenue before food cost, rent or labour — which is why a delivery-heavy menu can be busy and still thin on profit. After Deliveroo’s March 2026 exit narrowed the field to GrabFood and foodpanda, getting your channel mix right matters more, not less. This guide walks through what delivery actually costs, what changed in the market, and when building your own channel is worth the effort.

What does a food-delivery platform actually cost a Singapore restaurant?

The headline number is the merchant commission. Grab has publicly stated that its commissions range from 25% to 30% of order value, deducted from your payout on every order. The single most common mistake operators make is conflating that with the delivery fee the customer pays — they are different charges. The commission is yours to absorb; the delivery and platform fees sit on the diner’s bill. Because commission is taken off the top line, it often lands as one of the largest single costs on a delivery order, before you have paid for ingredients, packaging, gas or staff. The practical implication: an order that is comfortably profitable for dine-in can be break-even or worse once 25–30% is removed and you have added the cost of disposable packaging that delivery requires.

What changed when Deliveroo left Singapore in 2026?

Deliveroo wound down its Singapore operations and its app went offline after 4 March 2026, ending an 11-year presence as part of a wider portfolio review by its parent. That leaves GrabFood and foodpanda as the main delivery platforms operators deal with. A narrower market raises a fair question about pricing power, and the government has addressed it directly: in an April 2026 written parliamentary reply, the authorities said the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCS) is closely monitoring the sector and that, to date, it “has not observed any systematic shifts in commissions or fees” following the exit. For operators the takeaway is practical: do not assume commissions will fall because a competitor left, and do not assume a regulator will cap them — plan your channel economics around the rates as they stand.

Is it cheaper to run your own ordering channel?

An own channel — your own website, a WhatsApp or QR-based ordering link, or a direct-order page — removes the platform commission, but it does not remove the work the platform was doing. The platform brings discovery (millions of app users browsing), the delivery fleet, payments and customer service. Run ordering yourself and you take on each of those: getting found, arranging delivery (your own drivers or a third-party logistics provider such as Lalamove or pandago), payment processing fees, and the admin of managing it. So the honest framing is not “commission-free,” it is “commission traded for marketing and logistics effort.” That trade pays off most clearly with customers who already know you and would have come back anyway — regulars, office caterings, standing orders — where you are paying a commission purely on demand you generated yourself. It pays off least for cold, first-time discovery, which is exactly what the big platforms are good at.

Should you go exclusive with one platform?

Platforms sometimes offer better commission terms or marketing support in exchange for exclusivity — listing only with them. Weigh that carefully. Back in 2016, Singapore’s competition regulator examined the sector and found it competitive at the time, but warned that exclusive agreements “could be problematic in future” if any one provider became dominant. With the market now smaller, that concern is more relevant, not less. Staying on more than one platform (“multi-homing”) keeps your bargaining position, spreads your risk if one platform changes terms or exits as Deliveroo did, and exposes you to more customers. Unless an exclusivity deal materially improves your unit economics and you have modelled what you lose by leaving the other platform, the default for most operators is to stay multi-homed.

How can operators protect their margin on delivery?

Treat delivery as its own P&L, not an extension of the dine-in menu. A few levers operators in Singapore use:

• Engineer the delivery menu. Push items that travel well and carry healthy margins; drop or rework dishes that arrive poorly or barely cover the commission. Bundles and minimum-order thresholds lift the average basket so the fixed costs of an order are spread further.
• Price the channel deliberately. Many operators set in-app prices that reflect the commission rather than matching dine-in one-for-one. Decide consciously whether to absorb, partly pass on, or fully pass on the cut — and keep it consistent so it does not erode trust.
• Convert platform customers to your own channel. Use packaging inserts, a QR code or a loyalty offer to move repeat customers to direct ordering over time, where you keep the commission.
• Know your true cost per channel. You cannot manage what you cannot see. Track the margin on a delivery order after commission, packaging and any in-app discount — separately from dine-in — so you know which channel and which items actually make money.

It is worth remembering the support that existed is not permanent. During the pandemic, Enterprise Singapore’s Food Delivery Booster Package funded 5 percentage points of the commission charged by delivery platforms to help F&B businesses go online — but that was a temporary 2020 measure, long since expired. Today the commission is a cost you manage, not one you can expect to be subsidised.

How should you decide your channel mix?

There is no single right answer — it depends on how much of your demand the platforms genuinely generate for you versus how much is your own regulars ordering through an app out of habit. A useful exercise: look at your delivery orders and estimate what share are repeat customers you could plausibly serve direct, versus genuine new discovery. The first group is where an own channel earns its keep; the second is what you are paying the platform commission for. Most established operators land on a blend — keep the platforms for reach and new customers, build an own channel for loyalty and repeat, and watch the margin on each. The decision is only as good as your data, which is why it helps to have a point-of-sale and operations setup that shows margin by channel and by item in one place — the kind of operational visibility we build toward at Warely.

Frequently asked questions