Delivery is the fulfilment method most café owners avoid setting up, usually for one of two reasons: they assume it means hiring drivers, or they assume the only way to do it is to hand 15–30% of every order to a marketplace. Neither is true on Square. You can add delivery to the same Square Online ordering site you already use for pickup, keep it commission-free, and either dispatch an outside courier automatically or use your own staff — whichever fits your volume and margins.
This guide walks through every delivery option Square gives an independent café or restaurant, what each one actually costs, how to turn it on, and when delivery is simply not worth the effort. It is written for owners in Canada and the US on Square.
What are your delivery options on Square?
Square Online supports three distinct ways to get an order from your counter to a customer’s door. They are not competing products — most cafés end up using one, and some blend two.
1. On-demand delivery (Square dispatches a courier). You enable delivery, and for each order Square hands the drop to a third-party courier network. You can let Square pick the “Best available” provider — which routes through DoorDash or Nash, Square’s affiliated delivery aggregator, based on cost and availability in your area — or pin it to DoorDash or Uber specifically. You never touch a driver app. This is the option that makes delivery realistic for a small team.
2. Self-delivery (your own staff deliver). You define a delivery radius or set of postal/ZIP zones, set a flat fee (or free over a threshold), and your staff run the orders. There is no courier bill, but you are spending labour and a vehicle. This works for tight radii, catering runs, and slow periods where a team member is free.
3. Marketplace delivery (DoorDash / Uber Eats listing). This is the one everyone already knows: you list on the marketplace, they bring their own couriers and their own audience, and they charge 15–30% commission per order. It is a discovery channel, not a delivery channel — you pay for the new customer, not just the drive.
The key distinction: options 1 and 2 live on your Square Online site and are commission-free. Option 3 lives on someone else’s app and is not. For the full breakdown of when a marketplace still earns its cut, see how to take online orders without paying commission.
What does on-demand delivery actually cost?
On-demand is the option most owners want, so here are real numbers. With commission-free on-demand delivery you pay a flat courier fee per drop plus your usual payment processing — not a percentage of the order.
| Provider (US) | Base per-delivery fee | Extra distance | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| DoorDash (most states) | $6.99 up to a 5-mile radius | +$1 / mile up to 10 miles | Square’s default on-demand courier in many regions |
| DoorDash (California) | $8.99 up to 5 miles | +$1 / mile up to 10 miles | Higher statutory driver-pay floor |
| DoorDash (New York City) | $9.98 up to 5 miles | +$1 / mile up to 10 miles | Highest of the standard tiers |
| Uber | ~$4.20 + $0.75 / km | scales with distance | Kilometre-based rather than flat |
| Nash (“Best available”) | Variable | scales with distance | Square’s aggregator; shops for the cheapest reliable courier |
Rates are representative US figures from Square’s On-Demand Delivery pricing policy, 2026. A small per-order dispatch fee may also apply on top of the courier fee, so confirm your current Square fee schedule. Canadian availability and pricing differ by region — check your own dashboard before you promise delivery to customers.
The honest takeaway: on-demand delivery costs a flat few dollars per order, not a commission that grows with ticket size. On a $40 order, ~$7 of courier fee is roughly 17%; on an $80 catering order it is under 9%. Delivery economics improve as the ticket rises, which is exactly why a delivery minimum matters (more below).
Self-delivery, by contrast, has no courier line item at all — its cost is the labour hour and the vehicle. Whether that beats $6.99 depends entirely on what else that staff member would be doing.
How do you set up delivery on Square? (step by step)
None of this requires a developer or an agency. The whole thing is a settings screen.
- Open your Square Online fulfilment settings. In your Square Dashboard, go to Online → Fulfilment (or Settings → Fulfilment methods) and toggle Delivery on.
- Choose on-demand or self-delivery. Pick On-Demand Delivery to have Square dispatch a courier per order, or Self-Delivery to use your own staff. Note that self-delivery is not compatible with the Square–DoorDash on-demand integration — you pick one model per site.
- Set your delivery area and minimum. Define a radius or postal/ZIP zones and a delivery-order minimum. Many cafés set $15–$25 so a single coffee never triggers a delivery that loses money.
- Decide who pays the courier fee. Absorb it, pass it to the customer as a delivery charge, or split it. Passing it through protects your food margin; absorbing it on large orders can lift conversion.
- Set delivery hours. Limit delivery to windows when you are actually staffed to prep and hand off — not the solo 6 a.m. open.
- Run a live test order. Place a real delivery order, confirm it prints to the kitchen, and check that tax and tips route correctly. On self-delivery, tips go to your staff; on on-demand, tips go to the courier.
- Put the Delivery link everywhere. Add your Square Online ordering link to your Google Business Profile, Instagram bio, and site header so customers order direct instead of defaulting to a marketplace.
If you have not stood up pickup yet, do that first — the Square Online ordering setup and pickup guide covers the base you are adding delivery on top of. And once delivery volume climbs, make sure your kitchen can see those tickets clearly, which is where a kitchen display system for cafés starts to pay off.
A worked example: does delivery make you money?
Numbers make the decision concrete. Illustrative figures, clearly labelled — plug in your own.
Say a café adds on-demand delivery and averages 80 delivery orders a month at a $34 average ticket (delivery tickets run higher than counter tickets because people order for a household). That is $2,720 in monthly delivery sales.
- Courier fees at
$6.99 × 80 = **$559** - If you pass the fee to customers as a delivery charge, your café’s net cost is closer to $0 on the courier line and you keep the food margin.
- If you absorb it, ~$559 comes out of margin — worth it only if those are largely orders you would not otherwise have captured.
Compare the same $2,720 on a commission marketplace at 25%: that is $680/month in commission, every month, and it grows as you grow. The flat courier fee does not. This is the whole argument for owning the channel — a fixed per-drop cost you can pass through, versus a percentage that compounds against you.
The fair caveat: a marketplace also found some of those customers. Attribute that honestly, keep the marketplace for genuine new-customer discovery, and run your repeat delivery orders through your own commission-free Square site.
When is delivery not worth setting up?
Delivery is not free lunch. Skip or delay it if:
- Your average ticket is low and your minimum can’t fix it. A $6.99 courier fee against a $12 order is brutal margin math. If most orders are one drink, push pickup and order-ahead instead.
- Your food doesn’t travel. Latte art, crispy items, and anything temperature-sensitive degrades in a courier bag. A refund and a bad review can cost more than the order.
- You’re already slammed at peak. Delivery adds tickets to a kitchen that may already be underwater during the rush. Fix throughput first.
Delivery shines for catering, family-sized orders, cold and packaged items, and quieter dayparts where a delivery fee turns idle capacity into revenue.
Where a branded app fits
On-demand and self-delivery both solve fulfilment. Neither solves demand — getting the order in the first place. That is the marketplace’s real leverage, and the durable way to replace it is to own a channel customers keep coming back to.
That is the gap Tany fills for Square cafés: a branded iOS and Android ordering app plus web ordering, with order-ahead pickup, self-running loyalty, eGift cards, and push notifications, built directly on your existing Square POS and menu — live in about a day for $99 CAD/month per location with 0% commission and unlimited orders. Delivery still runs through your Square fulfilment settings exactly as above; the app is simply the channel that brings the repeat customer back to place the order. It is one way to own demand, not the only way — the delivery setup in this guide stands on its own.
Turn on the delivery model that fits your margins, set a sane minimum, test one live order, and put the link where customers already are.
Sources
- Set up delivery options for your online store (Square Support)
- On-Demand Delivery Pricing Policy (Square)
- Square adds DoorDash to its On-Demand Delivery platform (Square press)
- Online ordering with on-demand delivery for restaurants (Square)
- Manage your Square integration with DoorDash (DoorDash Merchant)