Square Online’s on-demand delivery

On Wednesday 1/12/2021, Square announced a new partnership that will enable Square Online orders in Canada to be delivered by DoorDash Drive. The new service in Canada is an extension of what Square launched in the U.S before. This is how it works: after a Square Online merchant receives an order, a DoorDash/Uber Eats courier (depending on whether you live in the U.S or Canada) will come to the merchant’s location, pick up the order and bring it to the customer. The customer can track the order through a link sent in a text message by Square. All orders with on-demand delivery will be commission-free. For every order, merchants will only pay a dispatch fee of $1.5 and a processing fee of $3.6 to Square.

At a closer look, the service is interesting to me. The sales pitch merchants will hear is very simple: work with us, become our merchant and you won’t have to waste valuable dollars on delivery staff or those expensive marketplaces with high commissions. A saving of $11 on every $50 order is highly attractive, but it’s not the whole story for merchants. Even though Square Online is free, anyone serious about operating a business will certainly need to upgrade to a higher tier. Who wants to build a brand with a “square.site” in their domain? Even a nobody like myself tries to secure a custom domain. To use a custom URL, merchants need at least a Professional plan at $12/month. Additionally, merchants can only enable PayPal checkout, product reviews or gift options with a Performance plan, which costs $26/month. Want advanced eCommerce stats regarding product performance or sales trend? Pay $72/month for the highest tier then. For Square, this means high-margin & recurring subscription revenue. For merchants, they need to think about what they may get themselves into.

Merchants must also be aware that using this on-demand delivery service with Square is different from being on Uber or DoorDash app. These marketplace apps are household names and likely bring more sales. That’s their primary value proposition. That’s how they can charge a commission of 30% per order. Since orders must be from merchants’ online stores, the task of generating sales and marketing now falls onto merchants who will have to choose between a bigger piece of a smaller pie and a smaller piece of a bigger pie. One thing that I have to say, though, is that by having customers place orders directly online, sellers can establish a precious relationship with customers, instead of ceding it to the likes of Uber or DoorDash.

What also interest me is the low dispatch fee. For every DoorDash Drive order, merchants normally pay a flat fee of $8. In this case, the dispatch fee is only $1.5. As the market leader in food delivery, DoorDash certainly has the bargaining power that they would not bend over backwards to work with Square at all costs. A drop of 81% in dispatch fees is massive, affecting DoorDash’s top and bottom line. Hence, I believe Square must compensate their partner in this agreement and make up for some of that loss. The question is: do the numbers add up for Square? It’s worth pointing out that a DoorDash Drive flat fee of $8 includes DoorDash’s standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.3 per order. In other words, a normal $50 DoorDash Drive order will result in a processing fee of $1.75 and a dispatch fee of $6.25. A cut of $1.5 per order from Square on-demand delivery means DoorDash will lose about $4.75 per order in revenue. Let’s assume Square compensates DoorDash $3 on every order with on-demand delivery. 1,000 such orders per month (around 3 per day) for 1,000 merchants would put a dent of $3 million on Square’s financials. Square claimed to have millions of sellers. A wide adoption of this on-demand delivery service wouldn’t be financially tenable. How does Square make this work?

My hunch is that Square’s target audience for this service is small, to begin with. Any merchant wishing to use this on-demand delivery service must have a Square Online store. We can exclude medium and large-sized merchants from this population as they must already handle their online activity. Those that are in need for Square Online should be mom-and-pop or local restaurants that do not have a website or really need an upgrade and a delivery service. This market segment should be small enough for Square to offer this service and make the numbers work. I suspect that the company wants to use this offering as an opening to get these merchants to install Square POS in stores. Once Square successfully has its POS installed, the more orders merchants have, the more revenue Square generates. What intrigues me is what Square would do if merchants had too many on-demand delivery orders? Would Square terminate the service or start charging more?

This service from Square offers great benefits to small merchants and really differentiates the company from its rivals like PayPal. I don’t have access to their financials and breakdown on this specific service, but my guess is that because the target audience is very small to begin with, it won’t move the needle much. Is this a threat to Olo? I don’t think it is. Olo’s bread and butter at the moment is franchises with multiple locations. Their business doesn’t hinge on who powers merchant’s websites. What matters is that Olo offers a centralized system helping merchants deal with the likes of Uber, GrubHub and DoorDash efficiently. Square’s on-demand delivery requires that merchants have to build online presence with Square. It’s a different game.