F&BosThe Core Challenge
Commissions, ads, packaging, and customer-funded discounts routinely consume 25–35% of an aggregator order's value. Yet most owners can quote their commission rate but can't say what an aggregator order actually earns after all deductions and ingredient costs. That gap — between assumed margins and real margins — is where profit leaks and bad menu decisions happen.
A worked example: A biryani sells at ₹320 on Zomato. Commission (25%) takes ₹80. Restaurant-funded discount averages ₹20. Packaging ₹15. Ingredient cost ₹128 (40%). What's left: ₹77 — a 24% margin, before staff and rent. The same biryani at the counter leaves ₹157. Neither number is wrong; the mistake is not knowing them.
Five Rules for a Profitable Aggregator Channel
1. Price the online menu separately. Build the commission into the price dish by dish, not as a flat 20% bump — low-margin dishes need more, stars need less.
2. Treat restaurant-funded discounts as a marketing budget with a cap. Decide monthly what you'll spend, and track it as its own line — it is invisible inside 'sales' otherwise.
3. Reconcile every payout cycle. Deduction errors, missed refunds and wrongly-attributed cancellations are common enough that a monthly hour pays for itself.
4. Convert repeat aggregator customers to direct. A QR card in the delivery bag with a first-direct-order incentive moves your best customers to a commission-free channel.
5. Know your dish-level numbers before negotiating. Commission renegotiations and ad-spend pitches are won by owners who can show which orders lose money. Data beats sentiment.
What's in This Hub
Registration Guide — Documents needed, timeline, onboarding fees, and five settings to get right on day one.
Commission Structure — What the headline rate hides: gateway fees, ads, discounts, and how to compute your true take-home.
Dashboard Guide — The five numbers that matter weekly and the vanity metrics to ignore.
Payout Reconciliation — Step-by-step monthly method to catch missed orders, wrong deductions, and refund leakage.
Commission Calculator — Enter your own numbers and see your true deduction rate, per-order profit, and monthly channel profit.
Where Software Fits
To bring aggregator, ONDC and direct orders into one kitchen and see margins after commission, read our guide to cloud kitchen POS.
You can run all of this on spreadsheets — the guides show you how. The honest limit of spreadsheets is time: dish-level costing across a 60-item menu, updated when ingredient prices move, reconciled against two aggregators weekly, is hours of clerical work every week.
In F&Bos, every bill is costed against recipe-level ingredient costs and MarginMind shows which dishes earn and which leak. Delivery orders can be recorded alongside counter sales; direct Zomato and Swiggy integration is on the roadmap. Work out your real commission →