Commission calculator

What is the commission costing you?

Not our averages — your volume, your own commission rate and your own average order. A marketplace charges a percentage of every order forever; we charge a flat monthly fee whether you sell nothing or half a million. This page works out where those two lines cross, with the card fees and our own fee subtracted, because a number that leaves those out is a sales pitch rather than a calculation.

If you do not sell through a marketplace at all, this page has no argument to make and will say so: at zero volume the answer is simply our fee. The other half of the case is on the home page — the quote that takes ten days to write by hand.

Your numbers

What you sell through marketplaces a year

Everything that comes through ezCater, Sharebite, Hungry, Forkable or a hotel's preferred list — anywhere a percentage comes off before the money reaches you. Use last year's total.

Their commission

The headline cut. Fifteen per cent is what ezCater publishes for its standard listing; yours may be negotiated lower, or higher if you are paying for placement. Put in your own.

Their payment fee, on top

Charged separately from the commission and easy to miss on a statement. This is the line people forget when they say “they take fifteen”.

Average order

Only used to count orders, because card processing has a fixed 30¢ per transaction on top of the percentage. A drop-off lunch and a wedding are very different here, so use the one you actually run most.

Of that, how much would come to you directly

This is the honest one, and the one that decides the answer. A marketplace does bring you customers you would never have met — but a repeat office that orders from you every fortnight is not one of them. Count the repeats and the ones who already know your name. If you think it is none of them, set it to zero and see what the page says.

Through the marketplace, as it is now

Sold through them—

Commission and payment fee—

Reaches your bank—

The same year, with your own site

The same orders—

Still through them—

Card processing (2.9 % + $0.30)—

Our fee—

Reaches your bank—

—

more in your account over the year, after our fee and after the card fees.

Orders that move to your own site: —
What you pay us: —
Pays for itself after: —
If every one of them moved: —

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What is in the number

Every assumption, written down

A calculator that hides its assumptions can produce whatever number it likes. Here are ours, including the ones that work against us.

What we subtract

Our own fee comes off the total

Twelve months of subscription are taken off before we call anything a gain. There is no setup fee to add, and the card fee is in there too — it goes to Stripe, never to us. If what is left is negative, the page says so in plain words.

What we refuse to assume

We do not tell you what a marketplace is worth

The one number that decides this answer is how many of those customers would have found you anyway, and only you know it. We default it to sixty per cent because repeat office orders dominate this trade, but it is a field and not a claim. Set it to zero and the page will happily argue against itself.

What we do not count

No made-up upside

No extra orders because the website looks better, no higher prices, no “SEO uplift”, and nothing for the quotes you stop writing by hand. The number moves for one reason only: the same money arriving without a percentage taken out of it.

Where it is conservative

Rounding goes against us

Their commission is rounded down and our card fee is rounded up, so every stray cent lands on their side of the comparison. Order counts are whole orders before anything becomes money, because a third of an order is not a thing you can bill.

Not tax advice and not an offer. Sales tax is left out because it is the same either way, and it is collected from the customer rather than paid by you. The domain (about $12 a year) is paid by you to the registrar, in your own name. Prices are in US dollars. A marketplace listing and your own website are not mutually exclusive, and for most kitchens the sensible answer is to keep both — which is exactly what the middle field is for.