Every café that delivers food faces the same question sooner or later: keep selling through Glovo, Wolt or Bolt Food, or build its own ordering channel? The honest answer is that these are different tools, and the cost comparison only makes sense once you see what each one does.
What aggregators charge
Aggregators are paid with a commission, a percentage of every order. Wolt describes it on its merchant pages as a percentage of the order subtotal charged for each order, with the exact rates set in the agreement with each business (Wolt, Czech Republic).
Published numbers are rare, because the rates are negotiated, but the reports that exist point the same way:
- In Ukraine, Forbes Ukraine reported in September 2020 that restaurants paid Glovo and Raketa a commission of 30-35% of the order amount (Forbes Ukraine).
- In Finland, entrepreneurs quoted by Helsingin Sanomat in February 2026 put the commission of platforms such as Wolt at around a third of each order (Yle News).
Your own contract may differ. Check it before you calculate anything.
What an own ordering channel costs
An own channel replaces the commission with a fixed fee, but it does not make everything free. A fair comparison counts:
- Software: a subscription for the ordering website, the app and the back office.
- Card payments: the payment provider's fee on each online payment, paid to your bank or provider.
- Delivery: your own couriers or a delivery service, which the aggregator otherwise organises.
- Marketing: the aggregator brings people who have never heard of you; your own website does not.
A worked example
Take a café with 1,000 online orders a month and an average order of 400 hryvnias, which is 400,000 hryvnias of online sales. These are example numbers, not statistics.
- Through an aggregator at a 30% commission (the lower end of the Ukrainian range above), the café pays 120,000 hryvnias a month.
- Through its own channel on Vitrina, the Restaurant plan costs 3,490 hryvnias a month, plus 1% of online orders, which is 4,000 hryvnias: 7,490 hryvnias a month before card payment fees and delivery costs. These prices are as of October 2026; the current ones are on vitrina.cafe.
The gap is large enough that an own channel is usually cheaper per order even after card fees and your own couriers. But the example assumes the same 1,000 orders arrive either way, and that is the real question.
Where aggregators are worth it
An aggregator is a marketing channel. A guest who has never heard of your café finds you in the app, orders once and pays through the platform. For a new venue, or a venue far from its guests, that discovery can be worth the commission.
The expensive case is the regular guest: someone who already knows you, orders every week and still pays through a platform that takes around a third of the bill. That is the guest to invite to your own channel, with a reason to come: a loyalty programme, a dish that is only on your site, or simply a faster way to order.
What we recommend
- Keep the aggregator for discovery if it brings you new guests.
- Move regular guests to your own website or app, where the order, the guest's contact details and the loyalty points stay with you.
- Count every cost on both sides: commission against subscription, card fees and delivery.
Vitrina is built for that second channel: an ordering website (and, if you want, an app) under your own name, your own couriers with a courier app, loyalty and stock in one system, and guest payments that go straight to your merchant account. If you want to run the numbers for your venue, write to us.