How delivery works when your restaurant has no drivers

For a long time delivery meant one of two things: put drivers on payroll, or list on a marketplace and pay commission. There is a third arrangement. The guest orders on your own page, and a courier from a delivery network carries the order.

What Uber Direct is

Uber Direct is Uber’s delivery service for businesses that take orders on their own channels. Uber describes it as a white-label product, separate from the Uber Eats marketplace, and prices it per delivery with no commission and no monthly minimum.

Kitchn has Uber Direct built in, so you do not need an Uber account of your own.

How an order flows

• The guest picks delivery on your ordering page and enters an address
• The delivery fee is shown before they pay
• The guest pays and the order appears in your dashboard like any other
• Kitchn requests a courier through Uber Direct for the pickup
• The courier collects the order from your counter and delivers it

Your kitchen’s part is the same as a pickup order: cook it, bag it, label it with the guest’s name and order number, and hand it over.

Who pays for what

The guest pays the delivery fee at checkout. It has two parts: the delivery charge itself, which is either the courier quote passed through or a fee you have set, and a $2.00 courier delivery fee that Kitchn charges. The guest also pays the standard 5% service fee that applies to every order.

You pay no commission on the food. Your cost on the order is card processing, as on any other order.

How you are paid

Courier orders are handled a little differently from pickup orders. Kitchn charges the guest, pays the delivery network, and transfers your share to your Stripe account. It then pays out to your bank on your usual Stripe schedule.

What stays yours

The guest ordered from your page, under your name. Their order history sits in your dashboard, not in a marketplace app. The courier is the last leg of the trip and nothing more.

When it fits

Courier delivery suits a restaurant whose delivery volume is too low or too uneven to keep a driver busy. If you already have drivers, you can keep using them, and you can run pickup only. Each restaurant chooses its own service types.

Catering is handled separately. With CaterCart Delivery, Kitchn books and pays a driver for a flat $30 per delivery, for addresses within about 10 miles of the restaurant.