Major QSRs hiking delivery menu prices by over 15%

Restaurants may have leverage to raise delivery menu prices now because dining rooms remain closed or are re-closing in many areas, and delivery remains one of the only access points to their food. As dining rooms closed in March, for example, delivery orders increased 67% while restaurant traffic declined 22%, according to data from The NPD Group emailed to Restaurant Dive. 

Brands with a strong following have more "pricing power" to do this, which could explain why Chick-fil-A's delivery menu prices are the highest, according to the Gordon Haskett report. The chain has been named consumers’ favorite restaurant by the American Customer Satisfaction Index for six years in a row.

Of course, as restaurants rely more heavily on delivery aggregators to keep their businesses afloat during this crisis, they’re also on the hook for notoriously high commission fees charged by those delivery companies. Some cities have put commission fee caps in place to help operators, but those fees still exist in much of the market, and operators may not have a choice but to pass some of those added costs onto consumers.   

Limited-service brands are more likely to adopt this pricing model than their casual dining counterparts, according to Business Insider, which is likely due to lower ticket, lower-margin items. Chipotle, for example, would make just $1.10 on an order of 20 burritos at a 15% commission rate (which is low for most aggregators), versus about $4.10 on the same order for pickup, according to the analysis.