Uber Eats alternative for a pizzeria: sell direct
Uber Eats charges US restaurants a 20%, 25% or 30% marketplace fee on delivery orders depending on the plan, 15% if you deliver yourself, and 7% to 10% on pickup. The alternative is not leaving the app tomorrow. It is taking the orders from people who already know your name on your own site, where the same order costs you a card fee.
What an Uber Eats order actually costs
Uber Eats publishes its US plans. Lite is 20% on delivery (15% in some cities), Plus is 25% and Premium is 30%, with more visibility and lower customer delivery fees as you go up. Pickup is 7% if your app prices match your in-store prices and 10% if they don’t. For a pizzeria doing 150 delivery orders a month at a $30 average ticket:
| Lite (20%) | Plus (25%) | Premium (30%) | You deliver (15%) | Your own site | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per order | $6.00 | $7.50 | $9.00 | $4.50 | ~$1.17 |
| Per month | $900 | $1,125 | $1,350 | $675 | ~$176 |
| Per year | $10,800 | $13,500 | $16,200 | $8,100 | ~$2,106 |
Uber Eats US merchant pricing, October 2026. Own-site cost is card processing estimated at 2.9% + 30¢ per order; Super Pizza Premium adds $19 a month plus sales tax. Your contract may differ.
Run it with your own numbers. The yearly figure is the one nobody ever sees, because the fee comes off each payout one order at a time.
Caps in New York and San Francisco
Some American cities have stepped in. In August 2021 the New York City Council approved a permanent cap of 15% on delivery commissions, 5% on other services such as advertising and 3% on transaction fees, and San Francisco passed its own permanent 15% cap too. The delivery companies sued over both. Uber Eats’ own rate card now lists a 15% Lite fee “in select cities.” If you trade in a capped city, check that your statement reflects it.
When Uber Eats is still the right choice
- You are new. The app puts you in front of people who don’t know you exist yet. No website does that in year one.
- You have no drivers. At low volume, hiring and insuring a driver costs more than the fee.
- Your area is an Uber Eats area. Uber Eats is strongest in the big coastal metros. Where your neighbors live in the app, not being listed means not being considered.
- Most of your orders come from new customers. Then the fee is what you pay to acquire them, not money leaking out.
What “going direct” actually means
- Your web address on every box, bag and receipt.
- A card in the bag on app orders, the one moment you can talk to a customer the app owns.
- An offer that only exists on your own site.
- Your site as the link on your Google Business Profile, where most local searches start.
Move a third of those 150 orders direct from the Plus plan and you keep around $4,500 a year, while the app goes on doing the one thing it is genuinely good at: finding you strangers. Most US pizzerias run DoorDash alongside Uber Eats, and the same math applies to DoorDash.
Worth reading in your contract
- The end of the 0% period. Plus and Premium start with 30 days at 0%; after that, the full rate applies.
- Uber One orders. On Plus, participating in Uber One costs an extra 5% on those orders.
- Promotions. Offers shown to customers are usually funded by you.
- Pickup pricing. Pickup is 7% only with validated in-store pricing; inflated app prices push it to 10%.