Free Delivery Threshold: The Delivery Math

"Free delivery over $35." It's on your menu. Nobody priced it.

Every free delivery is a real run — a driver's minutes, a car's miles, a bag — given away in the hope that three things happen: small orders grow to reach the line, customers who would leave over a fee stay, and new ones order because delivery is free. Whether that trade pays depends on where the line sits. Set it too low and you hand free runs to the orders that were already paying the fee.

What a run actually costs. Driver pay with burden, minutes door to door, miles, vehicle cost, packaging. $9.46 in the sample — against a $4.99 fee the owner thought covered it.

Six thresholds against today. $25 to $75, each with your estimate of how many orders already clear it and how many would add up to reach it. The sample: $25 loses $319 a week, $35 loses $137, $65 gains $163 — $8,500 a year — because the low line gives away 112 runs a week.

The dashboard grades it — gain over today, net per delivery, thresholds that beat today, run cost against your fee, margin against a run, minutes per delivery, orders lost and runs going out free — HEALTHY, WATCH or ALERT, with a chart of every threshold's net beside today's. One portrait page. Decide before the menu prints.

Built for

Pizzerias and restaurants that deliver · bakeries · florists · garden centers · grocers and butchers · meal-prep kitchens · bottle shops · any local shop with its own driver.

What you get

One .xlsx file, four tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ins, no subscription. A realistic sample is loaded so you see every color of the grading before you type over it.