Who funds the summer deal

Every July the delivery apps run a summer campaign. The city has emptied, orders are down, and the app needs the people who stayed to keep ordering. So there is a banner, a code, a percentage off across a few hundred restaurants, and a message to every operator asking them to opt in.

Read the message carefully. In most of the structures I have seen, the discount is funded by the restaurant. The app supplies the banner and the placement. The operator supplies the twenty or thirty percent, and the commission does not move, in the month its volume is already the lowest it will be all year.

From the operator's side the logic feels sound. Summer is dead, the app is offering visibility, and the restaurants that do not opt in disappear from the campaign page while the ones that do sit on the front screen. So they sign, and they pay to be seen by a city that has largely left.

The free placement has a price. In an emptied city there are few new people to acquire, so the customer who orders on the code was very likely a regular. The operator has just sold its most loyal remaining customer the same meal at a discount, and taught them the July price. The app has kept an order, kept its share, and can report a summer campaign that held volume.

The campaign is the app's marketing. It is the restaurant's cost. Both are true at once, and the operators who understand that ask a different question before they sign: what does this order make me, on this ticket, at this discount, after the commission. That is a number, and it is usually available.

The opt-in is a price decision, never a visibility one. The operators who treat it as visibility answered before they looked, and the answer is always yes.