Cafes
Local SEO for cafes.
Delivery platforms take an effective thirty to forty percent once the fees are counted. Your listing takes nothing, and most cafes treat it as an afterthought.
- 15 to 30%
- headline delivery commission per order
- 30 to 40%
- effective cost once fees, promotions and refunds are counted
- $1,850
- consumer spend a year on food delivery
- 15%
- growth in average delivery order size in 2025
What a platform order actually costs you
Published 2026 figures. The gap between the headline rate and the effective rate is where most operators are surprised.
| Headline commission | 15 to 30% | varies by service level and visibility |
|---|---|---|
| Effective cost with fees, promotions and refunds | 30 to 40% of order total | |
| An order taken directly | no commission | |
| A customer who walks in because of your listing | no commission, and they come back |
Four in ten dollars, on a business that runs on single digit margins.
That is not a criticism of the platforms, which deliver genuine volume that most cafes could not reach otherwise. It is an argument for the channel that costs nothing. A properly maintained listing, with current hours, real photographs and a direct ordering link, converts local searches into full-price customers, and it is the single most neglected asset in this industry.
Commission figures are published 2026 ranges and vary by platform and by negotiated service level.
The decision that takes eleven seconds
8:40am, walking
She is three minutes from the office and wants coffee. She searches, glances at four results, and picks the one that is open, close, has a photograph of the actual food and does not have a two-year-old review at the top complaining about the wait.
Four routes, and only one of them is free
- Passing trade and location
- Fixed when you signed the lease
- Map listing and local search
- Free, and usually neglected
- Social, for discovery
- Effective and time consuming
- Delivery platforms
- Real volume at 30 to 40%
Proximity, dietary need and occasion
| Search type | What they type | Where their head is at | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immediate | coffee near me, cafe open now, breakfast near me [suburb] | Within walking distance, deciding in seconds. Won inside the map result. | Highest |
| Dietary and specific | gluten free cafe [city], vegan breakfast near me, dairy free coffee, halal cafe [suburb] | A real constraint. Will travel further and become a regular immediately. | Highest |
| Occasion and space | cafe with wifi to work from, dog friendly cafe [suburb], cafe for a group booking, pram friendly cafe | Choosing on a feature rather than on food. Very little competition. | High |
| Product specific | best coffee in [suburb], specialty coffee roaster near me, matcha [city] | Enthusiast, travels for it, and spends more. | High |
Four things worth more than a website in this trade
Hours that are correct, on every public holiday
Cafes are searched with open now more than almost any other category. A customer who walks to a closed door because your listing said open does not return, and the review is worse than the lost sale.
Your own photographs of the actual food
Not a stock cup of coffee. The plates you actually serve, in your actual light, plus the room and the frontage so people can recognise it from the street. This is the whole shopfront in a search result.
Attributes filled in completely
Dietary options, outdoor seating, dog friendly, accessible, wifi, group capacity. People filter by these and an unfilled attribute means you do not appear in the filtered result at all.
A direct ordering link on the listing
If you take orders, the listing should point at your own ordering page rather than only at a platform. Every order that arrives this way keeps the thirty to forty percent that would otherwise go elsewhere.
What cafes ask us
Should we drop the delivery platforms?
Most cafes cannot and should not, because they bring volume that would otherwise not exist. The point is that the effective cost is 30 to 40% once all fees are counted, so any order you can shift to a direct channel is worth several platform orders.
Do we need a website?
A simple one, with the menu, hours and an ordering link. What matters far more is the listing, because the decision in this trade is made inside the map pack and almost nobody clicks through to a cafe website first.
What is the single most damaging mistake?
Wrong hours on a public holiday. Someone walks to a closed door, leaves a review about it, and neither the customer nor the review goes away. Special hours are a five minute job on the listing checklist and the highest-return five minutes in this trade.
Are dietary searches worth targeting?
They are among the best in this trade. Somebody with a genuine dietary constraint travels further, returns reliably, and tells other people with the same constraint. Filling in the attributes properly is most of the work, and which attributes you get at all depends on your primary category.
How do we handle reviews about wait times?
Respond briefly and without defensiveness, and if the same complaint recurs it is an operational signal rather than a reputation problem. Prospective customers read patterns rather than individual reviews. Responding to a bad review has the shape of a reply that works.
Local SEO for nearby trades
What a customer is worth, and which searches actually convert, change by trade. These are the closest neighbours to this one.
See how your cafe appears in the searches that matter.
The free audit checks your hours, attributes and photographs, shows which local searches you appear in, and compares your listing against the cafes taking the traffic near you.