How much do delivery refunds really cost restaurants?

An €8 refund looks like a small loss.

But for a restaurant handling several hundred delivery orders a week, small complaints can add up to a significant amount.

Above all, the amount refunded is only part of the cost.

First cost: the amounts deducted

The first metric to measure is simple:

the total amount of refunds charged to the restaurant over a given period.

For example:

• delivery revenue: €50,000
• refunds charged: €750

The financial refund ratio is then:

750 / 50,000 = 1.5% of delivery revenue.

This figure lets you track the trend regardless of business volume.

Second cost: lost margin

A refund isn’t simply a sale that didn’t happen.

The restaurant has already incurred some of the costs:

• ingredients
• packaging
• staff
• energy
• preparation

The product was made and delivered, but some or all of the corresponding revenue disappears.

The impact on margin is therefore proportionally greater than the refund amount alone suggests.

Third cost: handling time

Next, measure the administrative cost.

For each case, a manager may have to:

• identify the order
• understand the complaint
• look for evidence
• review a video
• submit a dispute
• track the outcome

Say just 10 minutes per case.

30 refunds already add up to 5 hours of work.

Without an efficient way to search, the cost of handling can quickly exceed the value of some cases.

Fourth cost: errors that go unanalysed

Refunds for genuine errors are costly too.

But they contain valuable information.

If a restaurant refunds €200 of forgotten drinks every month without looking into it, it never tackles the cause.

Conversely, spotting a pattern can lead you to change:

• the packing station
• storage
• the checklist
• how drinks are organised
• the check before sealing

Tracking refunds then becomes a tool for operational improvement.

Calculating the annual cost

A simple extrapolation shows what’s at stake.

A restaurant bearing on average:

€500 in refunds a month

reaches:

€6,000 a year.

With ten similar restaurants:

€60,000 a year.

Small amounts soon become significant when multiplied by volume and number of sites.

Not every refund is recoverable

It would, however, be wrong to treat every refund as abusive.

You need to distinguish between:

1. 1errors genuinely made by the restaurant
2. 2situations that can’t be determined
3. 3cases where evidence can challenge the complaint

The amount genuinely recoverable is therefore lower than the total refunded.

The aim should be to measure each category.

Metrics to track every month

A simple dashboard might include:

• number of orders
• delivery revenue
• number of refunds
• amount refunded
• refunded order rate
• amount refunded / revenue
• number of cases checked
• number of disputes
• amount disputed
• amount recovered
• main reasons

These metrics take you from a feeling – “we get a lot of refunds” – to an objective measure.