A customer has ordered from your restaurant 11 times through DoorDash over the past eight months. Every Friday night, they're ordering the same thing. They've never had a complaint. They would probably say your restaurant is one of their favorites.
You cannot contact them. You don't know their name. You have no email address, no phone number, no way to send them a birthday offer, no way to tell them about a new menu item, no way to reach them when you need to fill a slow Tuesday. The only entity that has all of that information is DoorDash.
This is the data problem underneath the commission problem, and it's the one that compounds over time in a way the commission alone does not. Every DoorDash customer who orders from you regularly is a potential direct customer who is currently paying an intermediary for the privilege of ordering from you. The commission is a transaction cost. The data problem is a structural one.
The strategies for addressing it exist, but they require intentionality because DoorDash is not going to help you do it. The most simple one is the packaging insert: a card in every delivery bag that offers a direct ordering discount, a loyalty enrollment QR code, or a simple reason to visit in person. "Order direct at [your website] and skip the delivery fees" is a message that appeals to the customer's own interest, not just yours. A small percentage will act on it. Over volume, a small percentage adds up.
If you have a direct ordering option — Toast Online, ChowNow, your own website with an ordering widget — the comparison is easy to make for the customer. Their order costs less. They might get a first-order discount. They're building toward a loyalty reward. These are real incentives that make the switch worth the marginal effort of bookmarking a different URL.
The longer game is building an email list of guests you can actually reach. Customers who visit in person and pay with a card can be enrolled in a loyalty program at the point of sale. Customers who order directly through your website or Toast Online can be asked for an email address with an incentive attached. Over time, this list becomes the most valuable marketing asset you own — a group of people you know have already spent money at your restaurant and can be reached directly without paying a platform for the access.
The reality is that most independent restaurants have been building DoorDash's customer database for three to five years and their own for much less than that. The customers who have ordered from you 12 times through a delivery app represent a loyalty that exists but is invisible to you. Building systems to capture that loyalty directly — one customer at a time, through every order and every visit — is a slow process, but it's the one that reduces platform dependency over time.
Michelle Onizuka is co-founder and Systems Architect at Onizuka Studio. She builds automation and AI systems for small businesses — including restaurant & food service operations across Tampa Bay and beyond.