Nicholas Upton
The category built for speed and efficiency is taking a larger and larger bite out of the restaurant delivery space.
A new study of delivery trends shows the delivery market that felt mostly settled for the past few years still has some surprises. I’ve been hoping for a nice deep-dive report into delivery providers for a while, and just in time to chat about it during the conference season, analytics firm Intouch Insight released one with the thrilling title, “Third-Party Delivery Study 2025.”
The report has some interesting nuggets and some fresh insights into the differentiators between the major delivery companies. The biggest surprise: Fees are going down?!
There was some evidence of this in earnings calls over the last year as the big players continued to push subscriptions over raising fees. But seeing it laid out year over year is pretty shocking.
Since this industry collided with the restaurant space, there were two exceptionally consistent trends when it came to fees: they always went up, and consumers didn’t care. For years, there was another 10, 20, 30 percent bump in fees and extra layers of “convenience” costs. But with every bump, there were more customers ordering more and more food.
Over the last 12 months, average fees were down $1.10, and DoorDash dropped fees $1.82, the largest decline among the big providers.
The “why” isn’t exceptionally clear. Maybe the economy caught up with the endless cycle of fee bumps, or hey, maybe shareholders said, “We’re back at record highs, chill on the fees.”
Maybe the most meaningful thing noted in the report when it comes to competition within the franchise restaurant space: convenience stores are eating your lunch.
According to Intouch Insight, 72 percent of consumers now see c-stores as a viable alternative to QSRs for prepared food. To think that the majority of respondents to any survey see c-stores as viable alternative to fast food is a high-water mark for me. That’s the market saying c-stores belong in the same conversation as QSRs.
As someone who grew up in a world where eating anything from a convenience store was the last resort, that is an incredible shift. Obviously, the new wave of convenience has changed the concept from scary hot dogs on a roller to something much better, but what a change.
At the same time, the environment for everyone in delivery has grown harsher. As the report put it, customers “don’t just crave your food anymore. They’re sizing up how it arrives, what it costs and whether it’s worth trusting again.”
I’d hazard that has always been the case, but consumers are seeing better quality, accuracy and speed via the convenience sector.
C-stores take advantage
In the study, average delivery time across the third-party platforms rose slightly year over year, to 34 minutes and 11 seconds. When the researchers broke that down by operator type, a gap opened up: Restaurant orders delivered via third parties took about 35 minutes and 39 seconds on average, while c-store orders landed closer to 32 minutes and 41 seconds. Anyone in QSR knows three minutes is meaningful.
A key reason is location. The structural speed advantage for c-stores comes down to location across essential throughfares. While the legacy players have some great real estate, restaurants are still more complex. The Intouch survey found that deliveries were more likely to be direct when coming from a c-store compared to a QSR if both utilized third-party delivery.
When drivers took an order straight to the customer, any delivery arrived in about 30 minutes. When drivers completed other drop-offs first, that stretched to 38 minutes and 19 seconds—an eight-minute gap. Smaller, simpler c-store orders are often easier to route directly, and that pattern shows up in the clock.
That seems to add up to a significant difference in food quality. When drivers took the direct route, the report notes that food had an acceptable temperature 91 percent of the time. Add an extra stop, and that dropped eight points to 83 percent. Simpler c-store orders, with fewer components and less prep time, are less likely to sit cooling on a counter while other orders are made or the driver grabs another delivery.
While it’s more pronounced in delivery, this follows the same trend seen in foot traffic. During the Restaurant Finance and Development Conference, R.J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at foot-traffic analytics firm Placer.ai, said there has been a broad shift toward grocery and convenience players as the economy skewed toward something not so great.
He noted in remarks that fast-casual consumers are skipping their favorites like Chipotle, in favor of grocery chains for hot bars and prepared food. There is a similar dynamic between QSR and convenience stores.
“We’ve seen a class of c-store players become a major threat [to QSR],” said Hottovy. “Looking at the percentage of visits from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., we’ve seen a bigger increase in food-forward c-store players while we see a decline in QSR.”
Consumers are also more satisfied by convenience orders.
In 2024, restaurant delivery satisfaction outpaced c-stores by 11 percentage points. In 2025, restaurants sat at 90 percent satisfaction and c-stores at 83 percent, cutting that gap to seven points. The report’s summary is measured: Restaurants “still outperform c-stores in overall satisfaction, but the distance is shrinking.”
Consumer sensitivity to price is not theoretical. Intouch cites outside research showing 41 percent of consumers cut back on delivery because of rising fees, and the convenience sector is a middle step between restaurant delivery and eating ramen.
For restaurant orders, third-party total fees declined modestly in 2025. For c-store orders, the study’s fee table shows DoorDash cutting its total fees from $7.58 to $4.38, while Grubhub reduced its c-store total from $5.74 to $5.07.
DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub all have announced deeper focus on convenience and grocery, and they’re clearly thinking about the value proposition, so expect these trends to continue.
Any QSR focused on delivery should really think through how this new landscape might affect them. To retain the delivery cohort, smart operators should ponder how they can make the pickup process even easier for drivers to avoid that tack-on order, explore first-party delivery or use their scale to negotiate with delivery providers about direct orders.
Nicholas Upton has reported on retail and restaurant technology for more than a decade. His Tech Stack column aims to distill complex ideas into actionable insights. Send interesting tech topics to [email protected].