How a Restaurant Can Depend Less on DoorDash and Delivery Apps

The last delivery driver left at 11:12. Gus turned off the grill, pulled a stool up to the register and did something he had never done in six years of running the burger joint: he took the week's payout statement and set it next to the app's sales report.

He didn't use a calculator. He used the back of an order ticket and a pen that kept skipping.

In the left column, what customers had paid. In the right, what had landed in his account. Between the two, a gap he knew by name but had never looked in the eye.

He stayed still for a while. Then he wrote underneath, in small letters: "the grill cook's salary."

The grill cook who had been with him since opening day.

The question the ticket didn't answer

What bothered Gus wasn't the fee. He accepted the fee: the app brought people who would never have found a burger joint on a dead-end street in the neighborhood. What bothered him was something else, which he noticed as he ran his finger down the list of orders.

The names repeated.

The woman in apartment 4B ordered every Friday. An older gentleman ordered the same cheeseburger every Tuesday, no onions. An accounting office three blocks away ordered six combos on the last business day of the month. They were his customers. They knew how he cooked the patty, the house sauce, the fries that arrived crisp. And even so, every time they came back, he paid for them as if it were the first time.

That night, Gus understood the difference between a new customer and a returning one. And he understood that he was paying a toll on both.

The short answer: how to depend less on delivery apps

A restaurant depends less on DoorDash when it uses the app for what it does best, which is introducing the house to new customers, and builds its own channels for people who already know the food to order again. In practice, that means having a direct way to receive orders (a text-message line, counter pickup, your own ordering link), a contact list of your customers and at least one entry channel that doesn't go through the platform, like partnerships with neighborhood businesses or your Google Business Profile. The app stays. It just stops being the only door.

An acquisition channel is any path through which a customer reaches you and places an order. The platform is a good channel. The problem is having only that.

Michelle, two streets down

The following Saturday, Gus went to lunch at Michelle's.

She had opened a meal-prep kitchen two years after he opened his burger place, in a converted garage two streets down. She was on the app too. She paid the fees too. But at noon on a Saturday, her delivery bag went out more than his, and he wanted to understand why.

She made no secret of it. She turned her phone toward him.

There was a text line just for the kitchen, with a catalog and the week's menu. A text list called "Our Street's Buildings," made up of people who had bought once at the counter and left their number to receive Monday's menu. An agreement with a clinic and a real estate office on the avenue, who ordered lunch for the whole team every Thursday. And a Google profile with photos of the real meals and a button that went straight to the text line.

"The app introduces me to people," she said, snapping a lid shut. "After that, I'm the one who takes care of them."

She hadn't abandoned the platform. She had built other doors. And those doors were hers.

Gus went back to the burger joint with the same food, the same prices, the same neighborhood. The distance between the two fit in one sentence: he had one channel, she had four.

Six channels to get customers ordering direct

This isn't fixed in a week or with a desperate promotion. It's fixed by opening simple channels, one at a time. The ones Michelle used are among the cheapest to test:

1. A text line with a catalog and menu. First step: one number just for orders, a catalog with real photos and a defined response time. People who order that way have to be served faster than on the app, or they won't come back. So you don't become a pest in their inbox, it's worth reading how to sell over messaging without being annoying.

2. Your own customer list. First step: with every counter, pickup or text order, ask for a name and number with a clear reason, like getting the weekly menu or the daily special. Before using any contact that came through the app, check the platform's rules. The list that counts is the one the customer hands you of their own free will.

3. Partnerships with neighborhood businesses. First step: pick five businesses a few blocks away (offices, clinics, gyms, stores with staff who eat out) and offer a group order on a fixed day of the week. A single office can become a large, predictable order every week.

4. Google Business Profile. First step: complete your address, hours and photos of the dishes and add your direct ordering link. Someone searching "burgers near me" finds you before opening any app.

5. Counter pickup with a perk. First step: a small, fixed benefit for people who come to pick up, like a drink, an extra side or a spot at the front of the line. It's the simplest channel of all and one of the best at teaching customers to order direct.

6. A loyalty program. First step: a punch card or a running count in the text thread. After so many direct orders, a reward. What matters is that the customer sees that ordering direct is worth more.

None of these channels requires leaving the app. All of them require routine.

How to know if it's working

Gus built a five-minute habit. Every Monday, on the back of an order ticket, he wrote down how many orders had come from each door the previous week: app, text line, counter, businesses.

That's how predictability begins: knowing where each order comes from and what happens when you adjust one channel. If the text line grows and the app holds steady, you haven't lost a single customer. You've gained margin on the ones who come back.

The hardest rule was the one he followed to the letter: one channel at a time, consistently, for thirty days, before judging. He started with the text line. Only after the first month did he knock on the door of the accounting office with the six combos.

What the ticket taught

There's one kind of restaurant owner who looks at the payout and complains about the platform.

And there's another, who looks at the same payout and asks: how many of these customers were already mine?

Both work until midnight. Both depend on delivery drivers, grill cooks, bread suppliers. But one lives at the mercy of a rule that can change without warning. The other has a kitchen that keeps selling if the app goes down on a Friday night.

The list Gus made that night had six lines. Yours may need others, because your restaurant isn't his and your neighborhood isn't Michelle's. There are channels neither of them tested: free samples at the school fair, sponsoring the neighborhood amateur team, a booth at the Sunday farmers market, a QR code on the packaging that leads to the direct menu.

That's what The 100 Acquisition Channels Guide is for. It covers 100 channels in 10 parts, from word of mouth to local offline, including partnerships, platforms and prospecting. For each one: what it is, a practical example, the first step to test it, who it works best for and what it costs to test. And two bonuses that do the job of the back of the order ticket: a worksheet to score each channel by cost, speed and fit and choose your first three, and a 30-day plan, day by day, to launch your first new channel and decide whether to keep it, adjust it or swap it.

Next step

Don't depend on a single way to win customers

Everything in this article works better when new customers arrive every month. Most businesses depend on two or three channels and suffer when one of them slows down. The 100 Acquisition Channels Guide shows 100 ways to win customers, a practical example of each one and the first step to test it spending little or nothing.

• ✓The 100 channels, one by one, from the best known to the ones almost nobody uses
• ✓A practical example and a low-cost first step for each channel
• ✓A simple way to choose the channels that fit your business now
• ✓Bonus: Channel scorecard
• ✓Bonus: 30-day test plan

Get the 100 acquisition channels guide for $49

One-time payment · Instant access · 7-day guarantee

It's a PDF that reaches your inbox right away and reads on your phone between one order and the next. It costs less than a night of app fees, and you don't have to change anything all at once: you pick a channel, test it for thirty days, measure.

If you read it and decide it isn't right for your kitchen, Hotmart refunds the payment within 7 days. The bigger risk is staying with one door.

Gus and Michelle are characters created for this text.

Frequently asked questions

Is it worth leaving DoorDash completely?+

For most restaurants, no. The app is a good channel for being discovered by people who don't know the place yet. The goal is to have other channels working, like a text line, pickup, partnerships and Google, so the platform stops being the only source of orders and returning customers can order direct.

How do I move customers from the app to direct orders?+

Give them a reason to order direct: faster service, a perk on pickup, a loyalty program or the week's menu by text. Ask for contact details in situations where the customer is talking to you, like at the counter, and always respect the platform's rules on using customer data.

Which sales channels work for restaurants besides app delivery?+

The most accessible are a text line with a catalog, a Google Business Profile, partnerships with neighborhood businesses, counter pickup, a loyalty program and local actions, like samples at events. The ideal is to test one at a time, for thirty days, and measure how many orders each one brought in.

What's inside The 100 Acquisition Channels Guide?+

The guide brings together 100 customer acquisition channels in 10 parts, each with an explanation, a practical example, a first step to test, who it works best for and a cost to test. It comes with two bonuses: a scoring worksheet to choose your first three channels and a 30-day, day-by-day test plan. It's a PDF with immediate access through Hotmart and a 7-day guarantee.

Does it work for my type of business?+

Yes. The channels cover local businesses, service providers, online stores, B2B companies and professionals. The guide helps you pick the ones that fit your case.

How do I receive the guide?+

Right after payment, Hotmart sends the access to your email. You can read it on your phone, computer or print it.

What if I don't like it?+

You have a 7-day guarantee. If it isn't for you, ask for a refund through Hotmart within that period.

The 100 Acquisition Channels Guide

100 ways to win customers without depending on a single source of sales

Get the 100 acquisition channels guide for $49

One-time payment · Instant access · 7-day guarantee