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How Oregon Restaurants Are Escaping Grubhub and Uber Eats Commissions
Thomas David Jacob Team
If you own a restaurant in Portland, Oregon City, Beaverton, or anywhere in the metro area, you already know the math on third-party delivery apps is brutal. Grubhub takes 15–30% per order. Uber Eats is similar. DoorDash can hit 30% on some plans. On a $45 dinner order, you're handing $9–$13 to a platform that owns the customer relationship, controls the experience, and will happily promote your competitor in the same app.
The restaurants figuring this out are building direct ordering infrastructure — and the results are significant.
The Commission Problem in Real Numbers
Let's be specific. A restaurant doing $30,000/month in delivery revenue through third-party apps at a 25% average commission is paying $7,500/month — $90,000/year — to platforms that own your customers, collect their data, and send them promotions from your competitors.
That's not a software cost. That's a profit drain that compounds every single month you stay on the platform.
Moving even 50% of those orders to a direct channel at 5–8% processing fees (standard for first-party systems) saves roughly $4,000–$5,000 per month for that restaurant. Over a year: $48,000–$60,000 back in the business.
What “Direct Ordering” Actually Means
Direct ordering means customers place orders through your own system — your website, your app, your Google Business Profile — rather than a third-party marketplace. The order routes directly to your kitchen through your POS. You collect the customer's contact information. You own the relationship.
The technology to make this work has matured enormously in the last two years. Platforms like Toast, Square for Restaurants, and Olo provide first-party online ordering that integrates directly with your kitchen display system, loyalty program, and marketing tools.
Toast's Direct Ordering System
Toast has become the leading POS platform for independent restaurants specifically because of its integrated first-party ordering. Toast Online Ordering is built directly into the Toast ecosystem — meaning an order placed on your website flows seamlessly to your kitchen without any manual entry, third-party middleware, or commission leak.
Toast also integrates with Google — meaning your Google Business Profile can show a “Order Now” button that routes directly to your own ordering page, not to a delivery app. Customers who find you on Google search can order from you in two clicks, with zero third-party commission.
The Toast platform also captures customer data from every direct order — email, order history, preferences — that you can then use for loyalty programs, re-engagement campaigns, and personalized promotions. Data that third-party apps collect and keep for themselves.
The Customer Migration Strategy
The most common question from Oregon restaurant owners: “How do we get customers to order directly when they're used to using the apps?”
The answer is incentive and education. A simple strategy that works:
- Offer 10% off first direct orders — still far cheaper than the commission you were paying
- Print table cards and bag inserts directing customers to your direct ordering link
- Loyalty points for direct orders — none for app orders
- Text/email marketing to your existing customer list announcing the direct ordering option
- Google Business Profile updated with the direct ordering link prominently featured
Most restaurants see 20–40% of their delivery volume shift to direct within 90 days of launching this strategy. The savings begin immediately.
You Don't Have to Abandon the Apps Entirely
Third-party apps still serve a discovery function — new customers find you there. The strategy isn't to disappear from Grubhub and Uber Eats overnight. It's to treat them as acquisition channels and then convert those customers to your direct platform over time.
Every bag that goes out through a delivery app should include a flyer, a QR code, or a note that drives the next order to your direct channel. The app introduces them. Your system keeps them.
If you're a restaurant in the Portland metro area and you want to map out what a direct ordering system would look like for your specific setup, reach out to Thomas+David+Jacob for a free consultation. This is exactly the kind of AI-connected system infrastructure we build.
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