Customer call · Anonymous case story

Are DoorDash Ads Worth It for Your Restaurant?

01 · Direct answer

What to check

Judge delivery ads by the extra contribution they produce after ad spend, commissions, funded discounts, refunds, food and packaging. In this call, an owner questions their marketing spend. A separate restaurant anecdote is discussed, but the clip does not establish whether this owner’s ads were profitable.

02 · Method

How to check it in your operation

Compare ad spend and attributed orders with payout records and order costs. Separate repeat customers from possible new demand. Use a defined comparison period and account for other changes before attributing a sales difference to ads.

03 · Scope limit

What this clip does not establish

The owner reports 13 to 18 percent, but the denominator and period are not stated. The other restaurant story is anecdotal; it is not a controlled test and does not prove that all DoorDash ads fail.

Related guide

Full transcript

Source-reconstructed transcript

Transcript reconstructed from the source words used for this cut. Location labels preserve the video’s anonymization; personal names omitted.

1. 00:00

   One of the bigger leaks that we also found, um,

2. 00:03

   before we get into it all, was, uh, you know, us, um, you know, we were spending on DoorDash marketing. Like I said, we were getting, you know, close to anywhere from 13 to 18%, depending on the location, on marketing spend. And, uh, you know, it was just, uh, not, not reasonable for us to spend that much, obviously, you know, to just get some customers.

3. 00:22

   Yeah. We, you know, we see that as well. Um, we saw it with a restaurant, [name omitted] and I, uh, I think it was last week, where very similar, the owner had turned on the DoorDash advertising, and I think Uber Eats to, to a certain degree as well. He had it on in one store and not his other two,

4. 00:40

   and the other two saw no sales

5. 00:45

   losses by not advertising.

Separate owner conversations

Another owner conversation about delivery costs

A separate owner describes losing track of delivery marketing costs.

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