Table booking and food delivery apps and what they cost a brewpub

Two kinds of app, two kinds of cost

Brewpubs in Indian cities usually deal with two kinds of platform. Dining-out apps list your venue, take table reservations and often run discount programmes on the bill. Food delivery apps take orders for food to be delivered, with their own delivery fleet.

Note what delivery apps cannot do for you. Beer delivery is not permitted in most states. Where home delivery of alcohol has been allowed it has come with its own licences and conditions. For most brewpubs, delivery apps sell food only. Your beer earns nothing on that order.

How the charges stack up

Commission rates, fees and terms are negotiated per contract and change, so we will not quote figures. Read your own agreement and look for each of these layers:

• Commission as a percentage of order value or of the bill for bookings and in-app payments.
• Payment processing fees on orders paid through the app.
• Discounts funded by you, either fully or shared with the platform. A flat percentage off the bill comes straight out of your margin.
• Advertising spend for better placement in search results.
• Packaging for delivery orders, which you usually pay for.
• GST treatment of commissions and fees, which your accountant should check.

Each layer looks small on its own. Together they can take a large share of the order before food cost, staff and rent are paid.

Work out what an order really earns

Take one typical delivery order and do the sum line by line. Start with the order value. Subtract the commission, payment fee, any discount you fund, packaging and the food cost of what went in the bag. What remains is the contribution that order makes to rent, salaries and profit.

Do the same for a booking-app table. Start with the bill, subtract the discount and the commission, then subtract food and beer cost. Compare it with a walk-in table of the same size. Our guide to brewpub food menus and margins covers food costing in detail.

Many owners are surprised at the result. A booking app that fills a quiet Tuesday with discounted tables can be good business, because you would otherwise have had an empty room. The same discount on a Saturday night, when you would have filled the room anyway, is money given away.

Use the apps where they add guests

Treat the apps as a tool for filling gaps, not as the default way guests find you:

• Switch discounts on for slow days and hours, off for peak nights.
• Build a smaller delivery menu of dishes that travel well and carry decent margins.
• Price delivery items to cover commission and packaging, where your agreement allows.
• Track app orders separately in your point-of-sale system so you can see their margin each month. Our guide to POS and inventory software for brewpubs covers setting that up.

Build your own channels alongside

Every guest who books through an app is a guest the app knows better than you do. Build direct routes too:

• A complete Google Business Profile with current hours, menu, photos and a booking link.
• WhatsApp booking for regulars and groups, answered quickly by a named person.
• Instagram that shows what is on tap this week, not just pictures of beer.
• A simple list of regulars and corporate bookers who hear about new releases first.

Direct bookings carry no commission. They also give you a relationship you can build on. Getting this right is ordinary digital marketing done consistently, which is harder than it sounds when you are also running a kitchen.

Review it every month

Put a line for each app in your monthly taproom economics: orders, revenue, total fees and contribution after food cost. If an app's contribution keeps falling, renegotiate or pull back. A floor detail worth copying: print the weekly app summary and pin it next to the kitchen pass, so the chef and the manager see the same numbers the owner does.

The apps are not good or bad. They are expensive in some hours and cheap in others. Only your own numbers will tell you which is which.

Renegotiate from evidence. When your contract comes up for review, bring the monthly figures: order count, average order value, total fees and your contribution after food cost. A platform's account manager is more willing to talk about commission or discount sharing with an owner who knows exactly what each order earns.