The mistake: pricing delivery the same as dine-in
Dine-in pricing already accounts for your cost of goods and the margin you want. Delivery adds another deduction on top, commission, that dine-in pricing was never built to absorb. Using the same price on both channels means your delivery margin is thinner than your dine-in margin by exactly the commission percentage.
This is one of the most common reasons restaurants feel like delivery is busy but not actually profitable.
The method
Work backward from three numbers you already know: cost of goods per item (including packaging), the margin you want to keep, and your commission rate from your merchant dashboard.
- Cost of goods (COGS): raw ingredients plus packaging for one item.
- Target margin: the percentage of the final price you want left as profit after COGS and commission.
- Commission rate: the GP percentage shown in your GrabMerchant or Wongnai Merchant App.
| Commission rate | Delivery price needed |
|---|---|
| 15% | ฿90 |
| 22% | ฿105 |
| 30% | ฿129 |
The four-step pricing method
Find COGS
Ingredients plus packaging
Set target margin
What you want left as profit
Check commission
From your merchant dashboard
Calculate price
COGS ÷ (1 − margin − commission)
Get help pricing your delivery menu
The formula and a worked example
Delivery price = COGS ÷ (1 − target margin − commission rate).
Example: a dish costs 45 THB to make, you want a 35% margin, and your commission is 22%. Delivery price = 45 ÷ (1 − 0.35 − 0.22) = 45 ÷ 0.43 ≈ 105 THB. At that price, after commission and cost of goods, you keep roughly your target 35% margin on the item.
If that price feels too high next to competitors, the honest options are to either accept a thinner margin on that item, work on reducing cost of goods, or lean on higher-margin items elsewhere on the menu rather than quietly absorbing the loss.