For independent restaurants

Find the leak.
Keep the margin.

The food-cost tool that also does the delivery math: your true plate cost, what every dish nets on DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub after each platform's real cut, and the exact price that puts what they’re leaking back in your pocket.

Start setup — $79/moSee a sample report

No demo. No sales call. No contract. Month-to-month, 30-day money-back guarantee.

Restaurant owner relaxing with coffee while reviewing his MarginLeaks margin dashboard on a laptop in his sunny dining room.
This month’s leakSample
$7,212/ mo
found across 3 delivery channels, each now priced to keep it.
The silent leak

You set that price in October. October is gone.

Nothing announces the drift. Cheese goes up twice. The consommé under half your menu quietly costs more to make. Packaging gets re-quoted. And the platform’s cut, the one you penciled in at 25%, lands closer to 30% once every fee hits the payout.

Your POS still shows delivery sales climbing. Your P&L blends your healthy dine-in take over the erosion: $8.74 a plate at dine-in and $4.60 on DoorDash average out to “we’re fine.” The first honest witness is the bank balance, and by then the quesabirria has been paying DoorDash for months.

The Signature Quesabirria
Sample dish · illustrative
DoorDash listing · menu price never moved
Date
What moved
Per order
Oct 2Listed on DoorDash at $14.00. Pays $6.10 an order after food, packaging, and the 25% cut you penciled$6.10
Jan 13Oaxaca cheese $4.85 → $5.40 / lb, dish + consommé · −$0.08$6.02
Feb 10Consommé re-batched: bones, chiles up · −$0.12$5.90
Mar 4Beef chuck +6% on the Sysco invoice · −$0.10$5.80
Apr 22Bags, cups, lids re-quoted · −$0.20$5.60
May 30Settlement check: you're on Premier, a 30% cut, not the 25% you penciled · −$0.70$4.90
Jun 12Avocados spike, again · −$0.24$4.66
Jun 18Oaxaca again, +11% on the invoice · −$0.06$4.60
TodaySame $14.00 listing. $1.50 an order gone to drift.$4.60

Costs move weekly. Menu prices move yearly. The gap between those two clocks is the leak, and it never shows up as a line item. At 150 orders a month, the drift on this one listing is about −$225, from one dish, on one app. With independent net margins running 3–9%, that’s the entire bottom-line profit on $2,500–$7,500 of sales.

The same story, faster

Inflation didn’t change the leak. It changed the clock.

October-to-June drift was the slow version. When ingredient costs move every month, a menu price goes stale in weeks, not quarters — and the question stops being whether your prices are behind and becomes which ones, and by how much.

That’s the job of the Repricing Radar: it watches your price book, and when a cost rises enough to matter it names the exact plates it hit and what each one’s margin is now — on the menu, on DoorDash, on Uber Eats — with the price that protects it. You reprice the plate. Nobody fights a supplier.

How long a menu price stays right
A slow yearstale in quarters

A menu price could coast a season before the math broke.

Costs rising monthlystale in weeks

The same price goes stale before the next menu reprint.

The Repricing Radar answers it

Cost up +11%the 6 plates it hiteach one’s margin now, per channel, with the price that fixes it.

Sample data · illustrative
What MarginLeaks does

The same dish. The same $14. Three different businesses.

MarginLeaks prices every dish against each platform’s real economics: the tier you’re actually on, back-calculated from your own settlements once you import them. Then it hands you the exact price that protects your margin, with the volume risk in writing.

Chef garnishing a plated dish at the pass of a warm open kitchen.
At the pass
app.marginleaks.com/channel-margins/signature-quesabirria
Sample item · illustrative

The Signature Quesabirria

Dine-in price
$14.00
Dine-in
Card processing 2.9% + 30¢
Menu price$14.00
Food cost−$4.55
Card processing−$0.71
You keep$8.74
62% keptYour baseline
No change needed. This is the profit every other channel gets measured against.
Uber Eats
Lite · 20% commission
Menu price$14.00
Food cost−$4.55
Packaging−$0.65
Platform commission−$2.80
You keep$6.00
43% keptTrailing dine-in
−$2.74 an order vs dine-in
Price to protect your margin
$17.43+25% vs dine-in
Relist here → this order pays you $8.74, same as your dining room.
DoorDash
Premier · 30% commission
Menu price$14.00
Food cost−$4.55
Packaging−$0.65
Platform commission−$4.20
You keep$4.60
33% keptMargin crushed
−$4.14 an order vs dine-in
Price to protect your margin
$19.91+42% vs dine-in
Relist here → this order pays you $8.74, same as your dining room.
Steep markup: platforms can throttle visibility. Or drop to DoorDash Basic (15%) and protect the same $8.74 at $16.40 (+17%).
Margin crushedTrailing dine-inHolding dine-inbreak-evenyour dine-in margin · 62% here
Food cost = $4.55 from the sample recipe’s ingredients and invoices: 32.5% of the $14.00 dine-in price. Packaging $0.65, delivery only. You keep is what’s left to pay labor, rent, and profit; we never guess payroll from your recipes, so it’s never baked into the math. Same dish, same $14.00 price, three outcomes your blended P&L averages into one. Commission tiers per published DoorDash & Uber Eats merchant pricing; each platform’s smaller per-order processing fees are left out of this simplified view; importing your settlements captures every fee in your real effective rate. All figures illustrative.
How we find your real cut:1 − (payouts ÷ gross sales)In the sample settlements: 1 − ($8,573 ÷ $12,460) = 31.2%, points above the tier price you remember agreeing to.

“Just raise delivery prices” is a trap. Platforms throttle visibility on naive markups. You don’t need a guess. You need the right price, per platform, with the volume risk in writing.

Start setup — $79/mo
Your number

That was a $14 dish. Run your own.

Three numbers you already know. The arithmetic is on the screen. Check it with a calculator if you like. That's rather the point of us.

My delivery channels do about orders a week at around $ an order, and the apps’ effective cut is

The platforms’ side of that
$5,923/mo
120 orders/wk × 4.33 wks × $38 × 30% = $5,923/mo

MarginLeaks can’t shrink the commission. It shows the exact price per dish, per platform, that keeps your margin whole against it, with the volume risk in writing, and you approving every change.

Start setup — $79/mo
app.marginleaks.com/recipes/signature-quesabirria

The Signature Quesabirria

Sample recipe · illustrative
Components
Birria beef (chuck, braised)5 oz$1.85
Consommé↳ sub-recipe4 oz$0.62
Oaxaca cheese↑ +11%1.5 oz$0.60
Corn tortillas3 each$0.30
Avocado0.5 each$0.55
Onion & cilantro0.6 oz$0.18
Lime0.5 each$0.10
Salsa roja↳ sub-recipe2 oz$0.35
Plate cost
$4.5532.5% food cost · 30% target
Last 90 days
$4.25 → $4.55
Cost updated from the Jun 18 vendor invoice · every line expands to its conversion, yield, and price date.
The fundamentals, covered

Everything you’d buy food-cost software for. That’s the floor, not the pitch.

The delivery math only matters if the plate cost under it is right. MarginLeaks builds that from the bottom up and shows its work on every number.

True plate cost

Sub-recipes roll up: the consommé's cost flows into every plate that uses it. Unit conversions are explicit, yields are visible. Never a silent zero.

Invoice-driven price tracking

Snap the Sysco invoice; Smart Import drafts the price changes and your manager approves them, with a preview of exactly which margins move before anything goes live.

Cost versioning

Last month's margins stay computed on last month's costs. History doesn't get quietly rewritten under you.

Menu profitability

Every dish ranked by margin dollars, not gut feel, so the next menu decision has a number under it.

Sanity guards

Stale-price chips (“priced 94 days ago”) and wrong-unit outlier flags catch a bad number before it reaches your menu math.

Where the category stops, we keep going.

Back-office food-cost suites
MarginLeaks
True plate cost from recipes & invoices
Yes
Included
Menu profitability ranking
Yes
Included
What a dish nets per delivery app, settlement-true
Not their lead
Included
The exact price to relist at, per app
Not their lead
Included
Setup
Onboarding packages; their own customers report months
Manager-led, first report in about a week
Price
$350/mo published, or quote-gated behind a demo
$79/mo flat — or $790/yr, two months free — on the page

Suite pricing and setup as published on the leading suites’ own pricing pages (or quote-gated) and reported in their customers’ public reviews, mid-2026. No tool named; the point is the category’s shape, not a takedown.

How it works

You spend 15 minutes. Your kitchen manager does the rest.

MarginLeaks is built around how restaurants actually run: you read the report; the person who already knows what's in the dish puts it in writing during prep, on a phone, in about two hours across their first week.

Kitchen manager smiling as she verifies a recipe on the MarginLeaks tablet screen at a bright prep counter stacked with fresh produce.
Verifying between tickets
You· about 3 minutes

Sign up, set your target food cost, invite your kitchen manager. In about 10 more, with your menu and a couple of recent invoices in hand, the setup flow shows you the real margin on your best seller, every channel, math expandable.

Your manager· prep shifts, week one

Smart Import reads a menu PDF and photos of your last few invoices into draft recipes and priced ingredients; your POS product-mix export pastes straight in. The manager verifies during prep; nothing counts until a human says it's right.

MarginLeaks· every Monday

Once most of your menu is verified (80% of your recipes, 25 at most, however big the menu), the Margin Health Report starts landing: every dish that drifted below target, why, and the exact price that fixes it, per channel.

Built for the person who actually lives in the recipes.

  • Built for a phone in an apron pocket. Verify a recipe between tickets; numeric keypads, big targets, and saves that retry themselves when the walk-in kills the wifi.
  • Speak a line, get a line. Say “4 oz oaxaca cheese” and it lands as structured quantity, unit, and cost.
  • A starter library of common dishes. Templates pre-fill the boring parts; the manager adjusts portions instead of typing from zero.
  • No owner sign-off on every ingredient. They build, you read the digest. The tool makes them look good in front of you, on purpose.

No kitchen manager? Owner-operators do the same work themselves. Budget about three hours across your first week, spread over prep shifts.

Manager WorkspaceTuesday · prep
Verify queue · sample
Signature Quesabirriaverify 2 lines
Consommé (sub-recipe)yield check
Pollo Asado Plateverified 3:41p
Street Cornverified 2:58p
“an ounce and a half of oaxaca cheese”1.5 oz · $0.60
18 of 25 recipes verifiedreport unlocks at 25
Honest proof

This is the report that lands Monday.

We’re new. Zero testimonials, zero logo walls, and we won’t invent them. So here’s the product instead: the report an owner gets every Monday morning, on sample numbers you can check by hand. Your version runs on your recipes, your invoices, your settlements.

  • Ranked by dollars when your sales mix is imported. Never a guess dressed as a fact
  • Every number expands to show its math: price − cut − cost, line by line
  • Dishes it can't fully cost are excluded and flagged, so there are no silent zeros in your totals
Start setup — $79/mo
Restaurant owner and kitchen manager laughing together over a printed MarginLeaks margin report at a marble bar counter.
Monday, over coffee
Inbox · Monday 6:02 AMSample
MarginLeaks <reports@marginleaks.com>
Margin Health · Sample Cantina · week of Jun 22

Three dishes are leaking on delivery. Two price moves and one vendor call get all three back to their dine-in profit.

Dish · channelKeepsThe move
Signature Quesabirria · DoorDash33%Relist at $19.91 → $8.74/order
Pollo Asado Plate · Uber Eats44%Raise to $19.31 → $9.80/order
Street Corn · DoorDash32%Raise to $8.89 → $3.82/order

Dominant driver: cost drift: oaxaca cheese +11% on the Jun 18 invoice, flowing through 6 dishes.

Your plan this week
  1. 1.Relist the quesabirria on DoorDash at $19.91. It's a steep markup, so watch volume for two weeks (or move to the 15% Basic tier and protect the same profit at $16.40).
  2. 2.Raise the pollo asado to $19.31 on Uber Eats — a +25% markup, past the ~20% visibility-risk line, so test it on this dish for two weeks before going wider.
  3. 3.Check the cheese: the Jun 18 invoice shows oaxaca +11%, its second jump this year, and it flows through 6 dishes. Confirm the price or call a second vendor.

Sample data. Your report is computed from your own recipes, invoices, and settlements; every figure expands to its math, and it all exports to CSV.

Pricing

One plan. The price is on the page. That’s the point.

The category sells through demo calls and quotes. We'd rather you keep the hour.

The Operator Plan
$79per month
per location

About $2.60 a day. Less than one comped appetizer.

Month-to-month · cancel anytime
Start setup — $79/mo

No demo. No sales call. 30-day money-back guarantee.

Everything included
Snap, don't typePhotograph invoices & menus into priced recipes. You approve every line.
True plate costSub-recipes, real yields, explicit unit conversions. No guesses.
The delivery mathWhat every dish nets on Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub & direct.
Your real commissionBack-calculated from your own payout statements.
The Monday reportEvery drifted dish, why, and the exact price that fixes it.
Menu engineeringOn your real sales mix, with volume-risk warnings.
The whole teamOwner, manager, staff & viewer roles. No per-seat pricing.
Your data, yoursEverything exports to CSV or JSON, anytime.

Coming in v2: POS integrations (Toast, Square) and hands-off invoice reading with no review step, listed so you know what’s real today and what isn’t.

The back-office suites$350/mo per location, when the price is published at all
  • A demo call before you see a price
  • Onboarding fees, quotes & POS lock-in
  • Still no answer on what DoorDash nets you

Published and reported pricing for the leading food-cost suites, checked mid-2026.

30-day money-back guaranteeIf it isn't earning its keep, ask within 30 days of your first payment for a full refund.
Cancel anytimeNo contract. Cancel in one click, no retention call.
Your data leaves with youExport everything to CSV first, and we delete on request.
Why we built this

Most restaurant software wants to own your kitchen. We just want to own the math.

Your sales can be climbing while individual orders quietly lose money after the platform fees. That’s the lesson no POS dashboard ever showed me plainly.

I’m Roly. I co-founded Culiacan Restaurant Brands and helped grow it from one location to eleven. One of them, Birria Culiacan, was named El Paso’s #1 New Restaurant of 2021 and did $130K a month from a single store. I’ve also made the hard call to close a place I loved.

MarginLeaks is the tool I wish I’d had through the delivery-app years. It puts the real number in front of you, on every order, on every platform. No fluff. Just the math.

RolyFounder · former restaurant operator
Straight answers

What owners ask before they put a card down.

Something else on your mind? Email hello@marginleaks.com and a human answers within one business day.

No. MarginLeaks is built around your kitchen manager (or sous chef, whoever lives in the recipes) doing entry during prep, about two hours across their first week. Smart Import pre-fills draft recipes and priced ingredients from a menu PDF and invoice photos; a starter library of common dishes covers the usual suspects; your manager verifies rather than types. No manager? Budget about three hours yourself, spread over prep shifts.

The drift is running on your menu tonight, whichever way it leans. There’s one way to know.

Find the leak.
Keep the margin.

Start setup — $79/mo

$79/mo per location — or $790/yr, two months free · 30-day money-back guarantee · cancel anytime.

MarginLeaks

Find the leak. Keep the margin.

Plate cost you can defend, and the exact price every dish needs on every delivery channel. Built by a former operator, for independent restaurants.

© 2026 MarginLeaks. All figures in sample artifacts on this page are illustrative.

Built for independent restaurant operators.

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