The invoice from your booking platform looks clean: a monthly subscription, maybe a per-booking charge. What does not appear on that invoice is the $27 food margin you handed over on Tuesday’s early seatings, or the 600 customer email addresses now sitting in someone else’s database. Those are fees. They are just not itemised.
The fees that actually show up on a statement
Subscription tiers. Per-cover commissions. Transaction processing. Setup costs. Premium placement upgrades. These are the visible layer — the ones that appear on your bank statement and get discussed at end-of-month reviews.
For mid-tier booking platforms operating in New Zealand, the typical visible cost structure looks like:
- Monthly subscription: $49–$149 NZD
- Per-cover commission: 1.5%–5% of booking value
- Payment processing: 1.5%–3.5% per transaction
- Setup and onboarding: anywhere from free to $500
At 60 covers per week from platform bookings and a $100 average table spend, a 3% commission rate costs $180 per month in visible fees. Add a $99 subscription and you are at $279 before anything else enters the calculation.
STAT: $3,348/year · What a venue pays in subscription and commission at $99/month plus 3% on 60 weekly covers at $100 average spend. This is the version the platform is willing to put in writing.
The discount cost that never appears on a statement
Some platforms do not charge per-cover commission. Instead, they charge something harder to see: a mandatory 50% discount on food revenue.
On a table of two spending $85 on food at 67% gross margin: normal food gross is $56.95. After the platform’s required 50% discount, revenue drops to $42.50 and gross falls to $13.00. The platform charged the diner a $12 booking fee and kept it. You contributed $43.95 in margin reduction and received nothing in return.
That cost does not appear on any invoice. It shows up as thin margins on a Tuesday when you had full seatings and somehow still broke even.
The discount does not appear on your P&L as a platform cost. It appears as low revenue on nights where you had full covers and nothing to show for it at the end of service.
At 60 covers per month under forced-discount terms, that invisible cost reaches $1,647 per month. $19,764 per year. No line item. No receipt.
NOTE: Take your last month of forced-discount covers. Calculate what your food gross should have been at full price versus what you received. The gap is what you paid the platform. Run that number before renewing.
The customer data cost no one calculates
When a diner books through a third-party platform, their name, email, visit history, and dining preferences sit in that platform’s database. Not yours.
If the platform raises rates, you have no leverage — your customer base is on their servers. If you cancel your account, that booking history is gone. You cannot email your Wednesday regulars, cannot build a loyalty programme, cannot send a birthday offer to someone who has dined with you fourteen times.
A cafe in Hamilton doing 70 platform covers per month accumulates 840 customer interactions in a year. At even a modest email marketing conversion rate, an owned list of 840 active local diners is worth several thousand dollars in direct annual revenue. On a platform, those are 840 interactions you cannot follow up.
The platform knows your best customers better than you do. That is the arrangement you agreed to when you signed the terms of service.
What the full calculation actually looks like
A venue listing on LocalFeed at their own pricing, with full access to their customer data, pays $10 per week after the first 20 bookings. No commission. No forced discount. 75% of any no-show fee goes back to the venue.
On equivalent cover counts, the comparison is not subtle:
| Cost category | Commission platform | LocalFeed |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription/fee | $99–$149 | $40 |
| Commission (3% × $100 × 60 covers) | $180 | $0 |
| Forced discount cost | $0–$1,647 | $0 |
| Customer data ownership | Platform’s | Yours |
| Monthly total | $279–$1,796+ | $40 |
For a deeper look at how what booking platforms actually cost NZ venues adds up across different venue types, the maths are consistent regardless of platform.
FACT: Zero commission on food revenue. $10/week after 20 bookings. 75% of any no-show fee goes to the venue.
The booking platform fee on your statement is a fraction of what you are paying. The rest is in your P&L as margin that left without an invoice attached to it. Run the full calculation before signing anything — or before renewing what you already have.