Your Own Restaurant Delivery, Commission-Free: 2026 Guide

What own delivery means for a restaurant

Own delivery means the customer orders directly from you, on the restaurant's website or app or by phone, at your prices. You also decide who takes the order to the customer and what the customer pays for delivery.

On a delivery platform, the customer orders in the platform's app. The platform brings you orders and usually delivers them with its own couriers, but it keeps a commission on every order, and the customer goes back to its app, where they see you next to dozens of other restaurants.

The difference that matters in the long run is who keeps the customer. On your own channel, their phone number, email and order history stay in your customer database, so you can tell them about an offer and bring them back without paying a commission on every order.

Own delivery does not have to mean hired drivers. The order stays yours even when a courier called through Wolt Drive carries it: unlike orders placed in the Wolt app, the customer orders from you, and Wolt only provides the courier, paid per delivery.

What delivery platform commissions really cost

Delivery platforms usually keep between 20% and 45% of the value of every order, depending on the contract and the services included, such as delivery by their couriers or promotion in their app. The commission is worked out on the value of the whole basket, not on the cost of the delivery.

An example: 300 orders a month, with an average value of 60 RON and a 30% commission, means 18 RON from every order and 5,400 RON a month paid in commissions. The calculator below, at the end of this guide, does the same sum with your own figures.

Own delivery is not free either. You pay your drivers, including in the hours with no orders, or each delivery made by an on-demand courier, plus packaging and the card processing fees for online payments.

The point is that you pay for the delivery, not a percentage of the basket. The commission grows with the value of the basket, while the cost of a delivery depends on the distance or on the driver's time, so the saving is even bigger on large orders.

• Commission-free online orders, with the saving worked out on your figures

Three ways to deliver: own drivers, on-demand couriers or hybrid

Once the order is yours, you still need to settle who takes it to the customer. You have three options, and you can use all of them in the same restaurant, order by order.

Own drivers make sense when you have a steady volume of orders in a compact area: you pay them per shift anyway, so every extra delivery lowers the cost per delivery. On-demand couriers suit the early days, when you do not know your volume yet, as well as quiet days and the lunch and dinner peaks, because you pay per delivery, only when you call a courier.

The hybrid option combines them: your drivers cover the usual volume, and when none of them is free you call an on-demand courier. The table sets the models side by side, with the delivery platforms for reference.

• The APPY POS delivery system, with your own drivers and Wolt couriers

How to run restaurant deliveries: what you need

To deliver on your own you need three things: a channel where customers order directly, delivery zones with their fees, and someone to take the order. The kitchen matters just as much: a menu that travels well and a pace you can keep at peak time.

The channel can be the restaurant's online store, under your brand, with the menu and prices synced from the POS and online card payment or cash on delivery. You can add a mobile app of your own, in the App Store and Google Play, and phone orders: with APPY Phone or a cloud PBX, the customer's number shows in the POS while the phone is still ringing, and for a known customer the order opens with them already selected.

You draw the delivery zones on a map. Each zone can have its own delivery fee, a minimum order value and an estimated time, so you do not accept orders you cannot deliver on time. What the customer pays for delivery is up to you, even when a Wolt courier carries the order.

That leaves who delivers: your own drivers, couriers called on demand, or both. The next two sections show how you work with each in the POS.

• The restaurant's online store, under your brand
• Phone orders, with the customer recognised in the POS

Own drivers: working with them from the POS and Courier App

With your own drivers you control the whole journey of the order, but you also pay them in the quiet hours. It pays off when orders come in steadily and the area is small enough for the driver to get back to the restaurant quickly.

In APPY, the dispatcher assigns the delivery from the POS, and the driver sees it on their phone. If you give them the right, drivers take ready orders themselves, from the list or by scanning the QR code on the ticket, and the order is assigned to them at once.

Drivers work in Courier App, on Android and iPhone, or in the POS driver mode, opened in the phone's browser, with nothing to install. In the app they get a notification for every order assigned to them, see the next stop on top, start navigation in Waze or Google Maps and call the customer with one tap.

Each step, Picked up, On the way and Delivered, is confirmed with a slide and shows in the POS at once. The app shows the amount to collect on every order, and the location and notifications work only while the driver is "On duty". The customer gets a tracking link, with the map and the estimated arrival time.

• Courier App, the app for your restaurant's own drivers

On-demand couriers for restaurants: Wolt Drive, called from the POS

Wolt Drive is Wolt's on-demand delivery service: you keep the order and the customer, and Wolt sends the courier, paid per delivery. You need a Wolt Drive account of your own, that is a contract with Wolt, and the APPY team links it to your POS; settings are made per location. APPY is listed among the integration partners on Wolt’s developer portal.

Over 10,000 Wolt Drive deliveries have been sent through APPY since April 2026. Measured in October 2026, the median time between the requested pickup time and the Wolt courier reaching the restaurant is 2.4 minutes.

In the POS, you put the "Wolt" driver on the order, from the order window, the list or the delivery map, and press "Save". The rest happens by itself:

• The courier is requested when the order reaches the status you chose: "In progress", to arrive around the time the food is ready, or "Ready for delivery". You can tick both statuses, and the order still requests a single courier.
• An order that is ready goes to Wolt with 0 minutes of preparation, so the courier comes at once. While it is still in progress, the POS asks you how many minutes it needs.
• Wolt sends the customer a text with the tracking link. The text is fixed and in Romanian.
• The statuses change by themselves: "Picked up by driver" when the courier picks the order up, "Out for delivery" when they head to the customer, and the delivery Wolt confirms closes the order.
• For cash payments, the courier collects the amount the POS sent and Wolt pays you by bank transfer; the payment moves to "Virament WoltDrive" (bank transfer) by itself when Wolt takes the delivery. Card on delivery does not work with Wolt Drive: APPY asks the courier to collect cash only.
• If Wolt turns the delivery down, the order history says so and "Wolt" comes off the order: you request it again or give it to one of your own drivers.

• On-demand Wolt couriers, called from APPY POS

How to follow deliveries and check what they cost

On the POS delivery map you see the orders, your own drivers and the Wolt couriers: for a Wolt courier you see their stage and the estimated times at the restaurant and at the customer, and a courier carrying several orders shows up once. The APPY team turns on the Wolt courier's position on the map, on request; with it on, the courier shows greyed out while carrying other orders. Wolt gives neither the courier's name nor their phone number.

The customer follows the delivery on a link: with your own drivers they see the map and the estimated arrival time, and with Wolt couriers the link comes by text from Wolt. If they call anyway, the answer is on the POS map.

In the POS Control section, Delivery performance shows the delivery times, both for your own drivers and for external couriers, on the same page. Based on them, you decide how many drivers you need and when to call on-demand couriers.

For Wolt Drive, the cost of every delivery is saved when the courier is called and shows on the POS map, for those allowed to see payments, and in the sales reports, in a column of its own. For the Wolt invoice you get a statement per location, with the requests, the deliveries made and not made, the cost, the order value and the cash collected by the courier, with the list per order and export.

• The POS Control section, with Delivery performance

Keep the delivery platforms for new customers

You do not have to leave Glovo, Wolt or Bolt Food to run your own delivery. The platforms bring you customers who do not know you yet, and your own channel keeps those who come back, with no commission per order.

The strategy we recommend is simple: use the platforms to win new customers. Then give them reasons to order directly next time, with offers only on your own channel, loyalty points or notifications in the restaurant's app.

So that you do not work in two systems, orders from Glovo, Wolt and Bolt Food can go straight into APPY POS and to the kitchen, with no separate tablets on the counter. The menu, prices and availability go from APPY to the platforms, and order statuses are sent back.

With every order in the same POS, you see month by month how many orders come from each channel and what margin each one leaves you. That way you move customers to your own channel based on figures, not on gut feeling.

• Glovo, Wolt and Bolt Food integration with the restaurant POS

How to start your own delivery in 5 steps

You do not need the whole city and a fleet on day one. Start with one zone you can serve well, follow the first weeks in Delivery performance and expand from there. The steps below are in the order we recommend.

• The kitchen and the delivery menu: choose the dishes that travel well and the right packaging, and work out how many delivery orders you can prepare at peak, on top of the dining room.
• Zones and fees: draw the zones you can serve on time and set the delivery fee and the minimum order value for each.
• The ordering channel: the online store under your brand, the mobile app or phone orders, all with the menu and prices from the POS.
• Who delivers: your own drivers, with Courier App, a Wolt Drive account (that is a contract with Wolt) linked to the POS by the APPY team, or both. Send a test order before the first day.
• The customers you already have: tell them in the restaurant, on social media and with a QR code to your store. Before you put flyers in orders that come through the platforms, check what your contract with the platform allows.

• The restaurant's own mobile app, in the App Store and Google Play