Restaurant Customers Spend Twice as Much on Delivery Food Than Pickup

Restaurant inflation may have many consumers shifting away from restaurant delivery toward pickup, but when diners do order delivery, they are spending more than ever.

By the Numbers

PYMNTS research for the Connected Dining series found that, as of the start of this year, consumers were spending $36.20 on average per delivery order. This amount marks an increase from the $21.50 an order they were spending in the spring of last year, and it is nearly twice the $18.20 that restaurant customers spend on their average pickup order.

Delivery was the highest-value channel, with the average order 25% higher than even the average in-restaurant sale, which amounted to $28.90.

The Data in Context

The margins of delivery may be narrow, but given the high value, restaurants are still doing everything they can to reach customers on delivery marketplaces.

At the start of this year, Starbucks, the world’s largest restaurant company by revenue, announced the expansion of its partnership with DoorDash.

“As customer behaviors evolve, we continue to innovate the Starbucks Experience to connect with them through meaningful and valuable digital experiences,” Brooke O’Berry, then Starbucks’ senior vice president of digital experiences, said in a statement at the time. “Our partnership with DoorDash allows us to provide our customers with another convenient way to enjoy Starbucks wherever they are.”

Even long-time aggregator holdout Domino’s caved, announcing last month that it is partnering with Uber Eats to appear on the latter’s marketplace, even as orders will continue to be fulfilled by Domino’s in-house network of drivers.

“Now that aggregators are at scale, the next logical marketplace for us to enter is order aggregation,” Domino’s CEO Russell Weiner commented. “Our research in the U.S. and learnings from 13 of our international markets has shown us that taking orders using the Uber Eats Marketplace provides access for Domino’s and its franchisees to a new segment of customers and what we believe will be a meaningful amount of incremental delivery orders once it’s widely available.”