Raise your hand if you ordered delivery this week. There you go, good job. Now take a guess: of those €25 you spent on pizza, how much actually ended up in the pizza chef's pocket? About €17. The rest? App fees. Delivery fees. Packaging costs. The restaurant, in the end, makes less than half as much as if you sat down at a table. And it's not just their problem: it's everyone's problem. Because while you're ordering from the comfort of your couch, restaurants are transforming into something else. No longer places where people go to eat, but factories that produce canned food for an algorithm. Welcome to the era of delivery.
The American Model: When Convenience Becomes Blackmail
Colin Wallace he just wanted a snack during class. It was the 2006, an engineering student at Georgia Tech, thought the internet could help. He built an online ordering system that automatically synchronized orders with restaurants. That project became a company, that company was acquired by Grubhub in 2011. Wallace was just experimenting, having fun with friends. Then he found himself leading a company that would help change restaurants forever.
Since then in the USA the delivered It did what great technological innovations do: it created a need that didn't exist before, made it indispensable, and then presented the bill. According to an investigation by The Atlantic, in 2024 almost three out of four restaurant orders are not consumed on the premises. Half of people under 45 order at least once a week. 5% do it several times a day. You read that right: several times a day.
The problem? In the USA Apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub charge commissions between 25% and 35% on each order. For every burger delivered to a home, the restaurant loses nearly a third of its revenue. Some establishments have tried raising prices to compensate. In New York, according to the Wall Street Journal, a hamburger delivered to your home it ended up costing $40. Double the normal price. Result? Fewer orders, less earnings, less work for the riders, and still less physical presence. A vicious circle.
Dining rooms are emptying, menus are simplified (everything has to survive twenty minutes in a plastic box), staff is being reduced. Some restaurants are closing. Others are turning into dark kitchenGhost kitchens with no customers, designed solely to churn out food for delivery. Like a laboratory. Or a factory.
Europe is not immune: the contagion has already begun
Think this is an American problem? Let's look around. In Italy, the delivery market is worth 1,5 billion euros and is growing by 10% per year. The delivery sector in Italy has grown from 5% to 19% of the restaurant market between 2016 and 2022. Six years. An explosion, also thanks to the pandemic. Today, it is positioned around 20-25% of the total restaurant turnover.
And the commissions? According to an Inapp survey of 40.000 Italian companies, the average is 18,2%. But for one restaurateur in three it exceeds 20%. And if you want the platform riders, not just the digital showcase, you get to 25-30%. Giacomo Pini, consultant in the restaurant sector, confirms: “It can reach 30%.”
Be careful: this seems to be the same dynamic as in the US, just a few years apart. Apps promised salvation during Covid, now they've become almost mandatory. If you don't use these platforms, you won't be in business. Delivery has become a weapon: if your competitor has it, you can't do without it. Even if you lose out.
Dark Kitchens and the Soulless Future
The most disturbing sign? Applebee's has opened a restaurant on Long Island with just a few tables and a row of lockers., designed to "maximize delivery speed." It's not a restaurant. It's a pickup point. A warehouse with a chain logo.
In Italy, many restaurants have already implemented dark kitchen models To streamline operations. Ghost kitchens, dedicated solely to preparing food for delivery. No dining, no waiters, no experience. Just efficiency. Food becomes a commodity, the restaurant becomes a production line.
A McKinsey research calculated that Restaurant profit margins range between 7% and 22%Delivery fees are higher. You do the math. For many businesses, every order placed through an app is a lost order. But if you don't, you lose customers. A dead end.
Who really pays the bill?
Wallace, the snack guy at Georgia Tech, rarely orders delivery these days. After a year as Grubhub's chief innovation officer, he left the company. “When I realized the impact of what I was doing, it hurt. Like, really hurt. I was pretty disappointed in myself.”, he said. He had been in meetings where they were discussing raising commissions, knowing that the restaurants wouldn't be able to absorb them. “The thought of stepping on those people to climb to the next step left a bitter taste in my mouth.”.
Not everyone has these scruples. In Italy, in 2021, Just Eat, Glovo and Deliveroo together had a turnover of over 358 million euros, with a 40% growth compared to the previous year. Partner restaurants? 79,8% reported increased revenue, compared to 77,8% of those without delivery. A difference of two percentage points. To give up 30% of their revenue.
Delivery didn't save restaurants. It just transformed them into something else. Algorithm-optimized canned food factories where experience matters less than speed and margins evaporate into commissions. We already wrote it during Covid, the transition to a delivery-based model was a necessity. The point is that that necessity has become a trap.
The next time you order, think about this: that food delivered to your home costs a lot more than you think. And not just financially.
