70% of restaurants have fired their delivery apps. Here's what they did instead

A new industry report has confirmed what many restaurant owners already knew: third-party delivery platforms are no longer the default. According to TechRyde's 2026 food delivery report, 70% of restaurants in the US now operate their own in-house delivery fleets. The reason is simple. Commission fees that range from 25% to 40% per order have become impossible to justify at scale.

For restaurants across India running on platforms like Petpooja POS, the same shift is underway. More owners are hiring their own drivers, investing in branded vehicles, and taking back control of their last-mile delivery. But building an in-house fleet is only half the solution. The other half is operational infrastructure.

The real cost of third-party delivery

When a customer orders through Swiggy or Zomato, the convenience is real, but so is the cost. Restaurants typically pay 25% to 30% commission on every order placed through the platform. On top of that, there are additional charges for priority listing and promotional campaigns. And most importantly, restaurants lose access to their own customer data entirely since the platform owns the relationship, not the restaurant.

A restaurant doing ₹5 lakh per month in delivery revenue could be losing ₹1.25 to ₹2 lakh every month in platform fees alone. Over a year, that's ₹15 to ₹24 lakh, enough to hire, train, and equip a full in-house delivery team with significant savings remaining.

What owning your delivery actually means

Restaurants that successfully operate their own fleets report three consistent advantages.

Brand control. Your driver represents your restaurant from kitchen to doorstep. Uniforms, conduct, and packaging are all in your hands, not a gig economy contractor's.

Customer loyalty. When your branded driver delivers the order, the customer remembers your restaurant, not the app. This is the difference between a one-time transaction and a repeat customer.

Data ownership. Every delivery your own fleet makes generates intelligence about delivery time by zone, peak hour patterns, driver performance, and customer location clusters. This helps you make better operational and marketing decisions every single day.

The missing piece: POS-integrated delivery management

The challenge most in-house fleets face isn't hiring or training. It's the operational gap between the POS system and the delivery team.

Most restaurants on Petpooja POS have no native tool to automatically assign orders to available drivers, send live tracking links to customers, monitor all active deliveries from a single dashboard, or measure driver performance and delivery time metrics.

Without this infrastructure, in-house delivery relies on WhatsApp groups, phone calls, and manual coordination. This works at low volumes but breaks down fast as orders scale.

How Menuthere bridges the gap

Menuthere is built specifically for restaurants on Petpooja POS that operate their own delivery team.

When an order is confirmed in Petpooja, Menuthere automatically assigns it to an available driver, triggers a live GPS tracking link to the customer via WhatsApp or SMS, and updates the manager's dashboard in real time. No separate app is required for the customer and no manual dispatch is needed for the manager.

The result is faster deliveries, fewer customer complaints, and a delivery operation that actually scales.

Is in-house delivery right for your restaurant?

If your restaurant is doing more than 30 to 40 delivery orders per day and losing 25% to 30% to platform commissions, the economics of an in-house fleet are hard to ignore. The operational challenge is real but it is a solvable one.

The right technology stack makes the difference between a fleet that saves you money and one that adds to your stress.

Menuthere integrates natively with Petpooja POS to give you complete control, from the moment an order is placed to the moment it reaches your customer's door.

Book a free demo and see how restaurants like yours are managing in-house delivery at scale.