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For years, brands and franchisees watched helplessly as DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub inserted themselves between brands and their customers, collecting commissions as high as 30% per order while hoarding the very data operators need to build loyalty. However, I see things are beginning to shift. Across the QSR and fast casual landscape, leading brands are deploying a new playbook: use third-party marketplaces for customer acquisition, then systematically migrate those guests to first-party channels where the economics and the relationship belong to the brand.
The impact is measurable. When operators shift even a portion of their third-party delivery volume to direct ordering, they reclaim margin, gain access to customer data, and activate the personalization engine that drives repeat visits.
Understanding why consumers choose third-party apps, and where those apps fall short, is the foundation of any first-party conversion strategy.
Why Third-Party Apps Dominate Habit
Third-party delivery apps have invested billions of dollars in perfecting the customer experience. Their core advantage is transparency: real-time driver tracking, accurate ETAs, seamless customer support, and a single interface covering hundreds of local restaurants. Consumers know exactly where their food is and when it will arrive. That peace of mind is powerful, and it is the benchmark that first-party solutions must match.
For many consumers, the delivery app itself is the starting point. They open DoorDash or Uber Eats before they have decided what to eat. This discovery dynamic gives third-party platforms a structural advantage in capturing new or infrequent customers. According to industry data, DoorDash now commands approximately 67% of the U.S. food delivery market, with over 18 million DashPass subscribers generating recurring, platform loyal order behavior.
Why First-Party Apps Are Gaining Ground
Photo: Ayoa
Despite third-party dominance in habit formation, a meaningful consumer preference for direct ordering has emerged, particularly among guests who already know and love a brand. Survey data from Qu's 2025 State of Digital Report found that 70% of guests prefer ordering directly from restaurant apps, citing speed, convenience, loyalty rewards, and exclusive deals as primary motivators. Specifically, restaurant app users report choosing first-party channels to:
• Bypass long in-store lines while placing fast and easy orders (52% of respondents)
• Earn and track loyalty points that have real value (49%)
• Access exclusive deals and coupons not available elsewhere (48%)
The ACSI Restaurant and Food Delivery Study 2025 based on 16,381 completed surveys tells an important supplementary story. Overall satisfaction with third-party delivery platforms scored 74 on a 100-point scale, lagging behind full-service (82) and quick-service dining (79) by a significant margin. Uber Eats led the aggregators at 75, with DoorDash and Grubhub both at 73. First-party channels, by contrast, outperformed third-party on fast delivery times, order accuracy, and customization control in benchmark mystery shop research conducted in 2025.
The experience gap, in other words, closes quickly when a first-party app is well-built, loyalty-enabled, and transparent about order status. The brands that have done this work are seeing the data move in their favor.
The Conversion Playbook
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Loyalty as the Migration Engine
The single most powerful tool for pulling delivery customers into a first-party channel is a well-structured loyalty program. When a guest can earn and redeem points only through the brand app and when those points deliver genuine, personalized value, the friction of downloading and registering becomes worthwhile.
Domino's built the industry's most-studied loyalty-driven digital program. After relaunching its Domino's Rewards program in fall 2023 with a lower redemption threshold that made points meaningful faster membership grew by 2.5 million members in 2024 alone, reaching 35.7 million enrolled members by year end. The company simultaneously invested in a new e-commerce platform and rolled out upgrades through 2025 to minimize checkout friction. The goal is explicit: keep the highest-value customers ordering directly while using third-party partnerships (Uber Eats and, more recently, DoorDash) as acquisition channels for new guests.
Pricing the Direct Channel Competitively
One structural barrier to first-party delivery adoption is customer perception that delivery fees are high regardless of platform. The most successful operators are aggressively using pricing to make the brand app economically attractive.
Brands that have implemented delivery only pricing on third-party platforms where the menu is priced higher to offset commissions have found that communicating lower prices on the brand app becomes a direct conversion argument. The message is simple: order from us directly, pay less.
Delivery Fees: The Hidden Conversion Killer
Some brands are additionally leveraging DoorDash Drive and Uber Direct last-mile fulfillment services that allow restaurants to power delivery through their own app using third-party logistics infrastructure at significantly reduced cost. This hybrid model lets brands own the customer relationship and the data while outsourcing the driver network a compelling middle ground for franchisees who cannot build fleet logistics from scratch.
However, customers are highly sensitive to delivery fees and when first-party platforms charge more than third-party apps, they risk losing the sale. Studies show that high fees are a top reason customers default to DoorDash or Uber Eats, even when they prefer ordering directly. When first-party platforms match or exceed those fees, customers often default to third-party apps for convenience and perceived value.
70% of guests prefer ordering directly from restaurant apps over third-party platforms, but only when the experience is smooth and competitively priced.
What Do Customers Actually Prefer?
The honest answer is nuanced. Customers do not prefer first-party delivery, in the abstract, they prefer the best experience, the best value, and the least friction. Third-party platforms retain strong advantages in customer acquisition, discovery, and habitual use. Their apps are deeply embedded in daily routines, their subscription models (DashPass, Uber One) lock in repeat ordering behavior, and for many consumers, they remain the default starting point for a delivery occasion.
However, once a brand has built a compelling first-party experience, customers who know and love that brand tend to migrate. The data shows that loyalty program participation, exclusive app pricing, and superior order accuracy all shift incremental volume to direct channels. First-party delivery scored measurably higher than third-party aggregators in order accuracy and customization in the 2025 mystery shop benchmarking study, and it outpaced third-party platforms on delivery speed in head-to-head comparison.
The shift from third-party to first-party delivery will not happen in a single quarter. But the brands that are winning this transition understand that it is a compounding investment: each customer migrated to a direct channel generates data, drives loyalty, and feeds a personalization flywheel that makes the next conversion easier.
The operators who will look back on this moment as a turning point aren’t the ones who treated first-party delivery as a marketing experiment. They’re the ones who saw it as a core economic strategy and built the tech stack, loyalty architecture, and unit-level culture to execute it.
Sources: Qu 2025 State of Digital Report; InTouch Insight 2025 Third-Party Delivery Study; American Customer Satisfaction Index Restaurant & Food Delivery Study 2025; Delaget 2023 QSR Operational Index; QSR Magazine; Restaurant Business Online; Restaurant Dive; Nation's Restaurant News; Fast Casual; Food on Demand.
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