AI for food delivery in 2026: 15 tools that help you stop working for the aggregator
Aggregator commission is 20–35%, packaging takes 4–7% of revenue, and then there are platform discounts. With food cost at 32% and a 30% commission, an order leaves 10–15% before payroll and rent. More orders does not mean more money. Below are the services that show the real margin of delivery and bring customers back to your own channel, with links.
What an order actually earns
Without a 10–20% delivery markup or separate bundles for the platform, the aggregator earns more from your kitchen than you do. Calculate the margin of every item after commission and packaging at least once a month, because platform terms and promotions keep changing.
- Glovo Partners ↗partners.glovoapp.comPartner dashboard: export orders, commissions and refunds.
- Wolt Merchant ↗merchant.wolt.comThe same for Wolt.
- Bolt Food for restaurants ↗food.bolt.euThe same for Bolt Food.
- Gemini in Google Sheets ↗workspace.google.comItem margin after commission and packaging, from dashboard and POS exports.
- Claude for Excel ↗claude.comThe same in Excel, plus scenarios such as "what happens with a 15% markup".
Your menu on the platform sells less than it could
Customers decide in seconds based on the photo and the first line of the description. Listings without photos and with a dry list of ingredients lose to the neighbors, even with the same food.
The customer belongs to the aggregator
The platform does not give you the customer's phone number or order history, and every repeat order carries commission again. The fix: your own ordering channel plus a flyer in the bag with a code for the first direct order. Running your own delivery pays off from roughly 25–30 orders a day per courier; below that, your own channel plus pickup makes more sense.
- BotFather ↗t.meThe token for your own Telegram ordering bot.free plan
- Railway ↗railway.comBot hosting without your own server.
- Lovable ↗lovable.devA simple ordering site built from a description.free plan
- Klaviyo ↗klaviyo.comEmail and SMS based on order history: win customers back without commission.free plan
Complaints and refunds
It arrived cold, it was late, the sauce was wrong. An AI chat handles routine questions, and once a week complaints are grouped by cause: if 40% of complaints are about delivery time in one district, the fix is in logistics.
Where off-the-shelf tools stop
A commission spreadsheet answers the question once a month. A delivery owner needs the answer every morning: which channel brought in money and which only brought turnover, which items on the platform sell at a loss.
ERA Daily does this breakdown: it connects to your POS, accounts for each aggregator's commission and shows money after commission, not turnover. Write to us and we will show it on your data.
Key Takeaways
- 01A 20–35% commission and 4–7% packaging eat most of an order's margin
- 02Export your Glovo, Wolt and Bolt Food dashboards and calculate item margin after commission every month
- 03Without a 10–20% markup or platform bundles, the aggregator earns more than you
- 04Photoroom and AI descriptions improve menu listings without a photographer
- 05Your own Telegram bot or ordering site plus a flyer in the bag brings customers back to you
- 06Your own delivery pays off from roughly 25–30 orders a day per courier
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