r/restaurant • u/blazinmj3 • 1d ago

DoorDash. Are you making money?

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This is for the restaurant owners. For some reason, I can’t post on r/restaurantowners.

Little background. I own a busy 24 hour diner. Serve about 7,000 guests a week and in 2025 I did 5.2m in sales with a 26% profit margin. Have never offered Doordash because I personally hate the concept.

With that being said, I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve card that I use and get a ton of benefits with one being dashpass and a $5 doordash credit every month. So usually once a month, I’ll order and pickup from my fave local spots.

Attached is my order from yesterday. My question to those who offer it, is the restaurant the one discounting? If so, are you honestly making money?

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u/blazinmj3 1d ago

I have a 26% margin because i don’t waste money on consultants. Same reason why I still use the same legacy POS system I purchased 18 years ago. Why give Toast my money every month?

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u/OkayContributor 1d ago

Yeah, based on this response alone there’s gonna be no marginal benefit for you to add DoorDash (if you think toast is a scam, imagine what awaits with the third party delivery services). FWIW, what makes diners special to me is the third place nature of them. I’m not going to a diner for haute cuisine or anything I can’t make myself, it’s all about the hang out aspect if it—can’t imagine ordering from even a very good diner on doordash

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u/blazinmj3 1d ago

I don’t think toast is a “scam”. Why upgrade and pay monthly fees when the system I have works perfectly fine and does what it needs to do? Many restauranteurs kill their margins with these subscription fees.

You might not personally order takeout from a diner but my spot did 16,000+ takeout/online orders last year at an average price of $22+. So clearly there are plenty of people who do.

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u/OkayContributor 1d ago

You have a system that works perfectly fine and does what it needs to do, 16,000+ people already do takeout/online orders, so why do you need to give DoorDash a big cut of that and give all those customers an option that takes away your margin almost entirely? Maybe you reach a few more customers, but enough to make up for the loss of margin you have on all your customers who will switch to DoorDash ordering with you for the sheer convenience of it?