Guides
Restaurant Delivery App Comparison Canada: What to Check
Restaurant delivery app comparison Canada: assess commission terms, GST/HST, Quebec menu rules and regional fit before choosing a platform.
What to take away
- Commission is negotiated, not published. Treat a quoted band such as 15 to 30 percent as an opening position and model your margin at the top of it.
- SkipTheDishes holds the deepest diner habit in Prairie cities and smaller markets. DoorDash and Uber Eats are denser in the big metros.
- GST/HST runs through both sides of the deal, so reconcile commission invoices against your point of sale instead of netting them out.
- Quebec language rules reach the delivery menu you publish, including the fields you fill inside an app.
- Run the two week test before you add a second platform. Net per order after packaging and tablet time decides it.
If you run a courier or local delivery business, the same contract questions apply when you carry restaurant orders or compare dispatch and last-mile platforms. Commission, per-order fees, promotional charges, tax treatment, platform control and net per order are the variables to test.
Replace diner habit with merchant demand, and replace packaging and tablet time with your own vehicle, driver and dispatch costs. The platform that clears your margin floor after those costs is the one to keep.
The criteria that decide the comparison
A restaurant delivery app comparison in Canada tends to become an argument about brand recognition. The variables that actually move margin are contractual, and they come down to what you pay, who owns the customer, and how easily you leave.
Deciding how delivery sits beside your own channels comes before any platform negotiation, and delivery marketing works through that order of decisions.
None of the three publishes a Canadian commission rate card. Rates are quoted per account, so the table below carries only what is public.
SkipTheDishes
- Relative strength in Canada
- Prairie cities, smaller markets
- Habit it rides on
- Longstanding regional use
- Reporting detail
- Partner portal: payout schedule, per order fee lines, no diner email or phone
- Contract terms
- Negotiated province by province
DoorDash
- Relative strength in Canada
- Ontario and BC metros, dense suburbs
- Habit it rides on
- Subscription bundling
- Reporting detail
- Merchant Portal: payout schedule, itemized fee and promotion lines, no diner email or phone
- Contract terms
- Negotiated market by market
Uber Eats
- Relative strength in Canada
- Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal cores
- Habit it rides on
- Subscription bundling
- Reporting detail
- Uber Eats Manager: payout schedule, order level fee detail, no diner email or phone
- Contract terms
- Negotiated market by market
Commission structures and GST/HST
Commission is usually a percentage of the order subtotal. Some contracts add a delivery fee charged to the diner, and a promotional fee charged back to you. Rates are set per account, so two businesses on the same block can pay different amounts. Ask for the number in writing in CAD before you move a menu over.
With no published rate card to anchor on, negotiate against your own numbers. Ask for commission on the food subtotal only, not on tax or on the delivery fee, and ask for promotional fees to be capped at a fixed monthly amount. The rate has to leave the contribution margin your in-house menu earns on the same dish.
GST/HST applies to the food sale and generally to the delivery fee. The commission your business pays also carries the tax, and a registered business can usually claim an input tax credit on that portion. The CRA GST/HST pages set out registration and filing.
Promotional fees are advertising bought at the moment of the order. Your own advertising covers the spending you control before a customer ever opens the app.
Quebec and the French-language menu
Quebec's Charter of the French Language, section 58, requires commercial advertising to be in French. Amendments that took effect in 2022 require French to be markedly predominant where another language also appears. A delivery menu is commercial advertising.
In the platform dashboard, check the item name, the item description, the allergen notes, the modifier and add-on names, and any promotion or banner text you write. Verify each field after a price edit. A platform representative may not raise the requirement with you. The owner carries it.
Where each platform is the right choice
SkipTheDishes is the right first channel for an independent in Saskatoon, Winnipeg or a smaller Ontario town. It is the Canadian entrant that predates the global platforms across most of the Prairies, and diner habit there is real.
DoorDash suits the Greater Toronto Area, the Lower Mainland and suburban Alberta, where subscription bundling pulls repeat orders. Operators who want promotional reach without building an app tend to get more from it.
Uber Eats fits a downtown Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal address where office lunch demand dominates. Its customer base also arrives from outside food delivery, which widens the pool.
Example: two weeks on three platforms
The comparison that settles the question is a timed test. Run it like this:
A platform that wins on order volume can still lose once tablet time and packaging are counted.
The figures below are an illustrative model built on stated assumptions, not published rates. Assume a $30 average order, packaging at $1.20 an order, and five minutes of tablet work an order at $20 an hour. Swap in the rates and volumes you were quoted.
| Two weeks | SkipTheDishes | DoorDash | Uber Eats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orders | 100 | 80 | 60 |
| Food subtotal | $3,000 | $2,400 | $1,800 |
| Commission at 25, 28 and 30 percent | $750 | $672 | $540 |
| Packaging at $1.20 an order | $120 | $96 | $72 |
| Tablet time at $20 an hour | $167 | $133 | $100 |
| Net before food cost | $1,963 | $1,499 | $1,088 |
| Net per order | $19.63 | $18.74 | $18.13 |
Net here is after commission, packaging and tablet time, and before food cost. Food cost is about the same on every platform, so it does not change the ranking.
Track four numbers for every order: the food subtotal, every fee on the invoice, packaging, and tablet minutes. Put refunds and funded promotions in the fee column, because they come out of your money.
A platform clears the margin floor when net per order after those costs is at least the contribution margin your own menu earns on the same dish. Write that floor down in dollars before the test starts.
Drop a platform when it stays below the floor and the rate is not negotiable. Keep the channel that clears, and renegotiate or drop the rest.
Two weeks is short, but it usually shows whether the volume is coming from customers you already had. hospitality marketing analytics covers the metrics that survive this kind of test.
What none of the three solve
The customer relationship stays with the platform. The platform controls the ranking, the pricing levers and the customer file, so you cannot email that customer after a poor order or stop a competitor being promoted two screens away. Commission is set by the platform's pricing team, not by yours.
A guest loyalty program is the counterweight, because it is the only channel where you hold the list. Delivery still costs packaging, tablet time, refunds and funded discounts. Those sit with your business either way.
