A 10-person startup called Bites has set up around 300 restaurants in the Bay Area so that diners can order from them inside ChatGPT, with the order going to the restaurant and not to a delivery app. DoorDash noticed. In August it emailed restaurants to say they might be listed on Bites without having agreed to its terms.
A delivery fee pays for two jobs at once
When a diner opens a delivery app, the app does two things. It helps the diner find a place to eat, and it takes the order. Restaurants pay one price for both, and the more they pay, the more diners see them. The price is 15% to 30% of the order, and restaurants cover it by listing the same food at higher prices on the app.
An assistant pulls those two jobs apart. If you already know you want the pizza place near your office, you don't need anyone to find it for you, and you only need something to carry the order. Bites does exactly that. It connects to the point-of-sale systems restaurants already use, such as Toast and Square, so the menu appears in ChatGPT and the order lands in the restaurant's own system. The restaurant switches it on with one click, and the diner typically pays a flat $1 on top. Bites is built for the diner who already knows where to eat, and it does not promise to help anyone discover a new place.
What a restaurant owner sees
One owner with 13 restaurants on Bites puts DoorDash's share of his orders at 25%, down from 80%, and says his margins are better on the Bites orders. He has not yet turned on ChatGPT ordering, so that move happened through Bites' own app. It shows how quickly regulars go when a cheaper door exists, and an assistant is simply a very easy door.
He also gets something DoorDash does not give him: the customer's contact details. DoorDash typically shares only a first name, a last initial and the items ordered. With a phone number or an email address, an owner can send a discount to a regular who has gone quiet, or call to fix a wrong order.
Here is what that could be worth. A pizzeria gets 300 delivery orders a week averaging $30, and pays a 20% commission. That is $1,800 a week. If half the orders come from people who already know the place and now order directly with the restaurant covering the $1 fee, the restaurant keeps about $750 a week back, close to $39,000 a year. The estimate rests on that half being regulars, which is the number an owner should check.
DoorDash is facing the same question inside its own app
DoorDash has started a text-to-order agent in Apple's Messages app, where a diner can text "order my usual" and the order is placed from their history. About 20,000 people in the United States are testing it. A restaurant normally pays for a prominent spot on the app's screen. A diner who texts "my usual" never sees that screen, so the restaurant has paid to be seen by someone who did not look.
That leaves DoorDash's best answer as discovery, and discovery is worth a fee. Whether it is worth 25% of a customer's fiftieth order is the question every restaurant will now ask, and the apps will answer by charging separately for introductions and orders, or by losing the orders.
Bites is still small, and most restaurants cannot order through an assistant yet. But the owner's question already applies: of last month's delivery orders, how many came from people who knew the place before they opened the app?