The real cost of Swiggy and Zomato for restaurants — and how to track aggregator profitability

Aggregators bring real volume — and a bill for it that most owners never compute per order. The commission line is only the visible part. By the time you stack every deduction, a ₹300 order routinely returns ₹180-210 to the restaurant. That can still be profitable. The point is to know, dish by dish, instead of feeling busy and wondering where the money went.

The full deduction stack

• Commission — typically 18-28% of the order value depending on your contract, city and exclusivity.
• Payment & platform fees — gateway charges and assorted platform fees on top of commission.
• Discount funding — those "50% off up to ₹100" coupons are partly or fully funded by you.
• Ads ("CPC boosts") — visibility on the listing page is increasingly pay-to-play in competitive areas.
• GST mechanics — the platform collects and deposits the 5% GST on the food (section 9(5)), and charges 18% GST on its own commission invoice to you — which, on the 5% no-ITC scheme, you cannot claim back.

Compute one number: net realisation per order

Take one week of aggregator settlements. Divide what actually hit your bank by the gross order value of those orders. That percentage — usually 60-72% — is your net realisation. Now apply it per dish: a ₹250 biryani at 65% realisation returns ₹162; if its food cost is ₹95, your margin is ₹67 before packaging and labour. Some dishes survive that math; some don't.

Run a delivery-specific menu

The classic fixes once you see per-dish numbers: price delivery 10-15% above dine-in (everyone does; guests expect it), drop low-margin dishes from the aggregator menu entirely, bundle combos to lift average order value, and push repeat customers toward direct WhatsApp/phone orders where realisation is ~100%. This is why multi-rate menus matter in your POS — Dakaar keeps separate dine-in, takeaway and delivery price columns per item, so your delivery pricing is a setting, not a nightly manual edit.

Track aggregator orders as their own channel

If Swiggy and Zomato orders enter your POS as ordinary takeaway, your sales report overstates revenue you never receive and you cannot reconcile settlements. Track each platform as its own order type with its commission percentage recorded — then your reports show net channel profitability, and your accountant can reconcile 9(5) GST cleanly. Dakaar tracks Swiggy, Zomato, website and phone orders separately with commission accounted per platform, out of the box.

The decision framework

Aggregators are a paid customer-acquisition channel, not a sales channel — treat them like advertising. Profitable at the margin? Scale it. Marginal? Use it for discovery and convert regulars to direct orders. Loss-making per order with no repeat conversion? Cut the dishes that bleed. You can only make that call with per-channel, per-dish numbers in front of you — which is, in the end, a five-minute report if your billing system tracks channels properly.