Scared Consumers Are Cutting Delivery Orders. Here's What to Do.

Consumer sentiment just dropped to its second-lowest reading since 1952, according to the University of Michigan. Restaurant operators are already feeling it — and if you rely on DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub for a meaningful chunk of your revenue, this is the moment to pay attention.

Tariffs are the headline, but the real threat to your restaurant isn't the cost of imported packaging or a spike in coffee prices. It's a customer who's scared to spend — and who's going to think twice before tapping "place order" on a delivery app.

What the Numbers Actually Say

On April 11, 2025, the University of Michigan released its preliminary consumer sentiment reading for April: 50.8. That's an 11% drop in a single month and the second-lowest reading in records going back to 1952 — lower than anything recorded during the Great Recession. Sentiment has now fallen more than 30% since December 2024.

The driver is tariff anxiety. Consumers expect prices to rise. Inflation expectations for the year ahead surged to 6.7% in April, up from 5% in March — the highest level since 1981. Expectations for the next five to ten years climbed to 4.4%. People aren't just nervous about today's prices. They're bracing for a prolonged squeeze.

At the Restaurant Leadership Conference this week, operators and executives confirmed what the data shows. "The consumer is shaken," said James O'Reilly, CEO of Ascent Hospitality Management, which owns Huddle House and Perkins. James Walker, CEO of restaurant tech provider Lunchbox, put it plainly: "You may pump gas once a week, but you probably eat three times a day. We tend to feel the pain a little sooner than other industries."

Meanwhile, Technomic data shows that restaurant traffic was already declining before tariffs entered the picture. Traffic fell 0.8% in 2024 — the first negative year since 2019 — and dropped 4.9% in February 2025 alone. By March, 63% of operators told Technomic they were concerned about tariffs, up from 49% in February. The ability to raise prices ranked as a top concern alongside food costs.

Why Delivery Revenue Is Especially Exposed

Delivery is a discretionary purchase. When a customer is nervous about money, a $35 DoorDash order with a $6 delivery fee and a $4 service charge is one of the first things to cut. Dine-in has a social obligation attached to it — a birthday dinner, a work lunch. Delivery doesn't. It's pure convenience, and convenience is the first thing to go when wallets tighten.

This matters because delivery already operates on thin margins for restaurants. After platform commissions of 15–30%, you're often keeping less than 70 cents of every dollar a customer spends. If order volume drops even 10–15%, the math gets brutal fast. You still have the same fixed costs — rent, labor, utilities — but fewer orders to spread them across.

There's also a compounding problem. When consumers pull back, platforms respond with promotions and discounts to keep order volume up. Those promotions often come at the restaurant's expense — reduced visibility unless you participate, or pressure to fund discounts that eat further into your already-thin margins. You end up doing more work for less money.

And here's the part that doesn't get talked about enough: when order volume drops, the refund and dispute problem doesn't shrink proportionally. Platforms still process cancellations. Customers still claim orders weren't delivered. The percentage of revenue lost to unauthorized refunds and unpaid canceled orders can actually increase as a share of your total delivery income when volume falls. You're losing the same dollars on a smaller base.

What You Can Do This Week

First, audit what you're actually keeping from delivery. Pull your last 30 days of payouts from each platform and compare them to what you expected based on order totals. Most operators are surprised by the gap. Platforms deduct refunds, adjustments, and canceled order credits directly from your payout — often without a clear line-item explanation. If you haven't done this recently, do it now. You need to know your real delivery margin before you can make any smart decisions about volume, pricing, or promotions.

Second, look at your menu pricing on delivery platforms. If you haven't adjusted delivery-specific prices to account for commission costs, you're subsidizing the platform's business model. Most operators are allowed to charge more on delivery than in-store. A 10–15% markup on delivery menu prices is standard practice and keeps your margins intact even as commissions eat into revenue. Check your platform agreements and adjust accordingly.

Third, protect the revenue you're already generating. In a tighter market, every dollar counts more. That means disputing every unauthorized refund and every unpaid canceled order — not just the big ones. Platforms process thousands of these adjustments automatically, and most restaurants never push back. That's money sitting on the table.

This is exactly what Jelly does. Restaurants using Jelly recover thousands of dollars per year in revenue that platforms deducted without authorization — refunds that were never legitimate, canceled orders that were never paid out. The recovery rate is 91%, there are no contracts, and there's a free trial. When your delivery volume is under pressure, recovering what you've already earned is the highest-return move available to you.

Fourth, think about your repeat customer strategy. Scared consumers don't stop ordering entirely — they get more selective. They order from places they trust, from restaurants that feel familiar. If you're responding to reviews on delivery platforms and using those interactions to bring customers back, you're building exactly the kind of loyalty that holds up when discretionary spending tightens. If you're not, you're invisible.

The Operators Who Will Come Out Ahead

Technomic's data shows that operators who navigated COVID-19 did so through speed and adaptability — swapping ingredients, adjusting prices in stages, tightening operations. The same playbook applies here. The operators who come out ahead in a consumer pullback aren't the ones who wait for conditions to improve. They're the ones who cut waste, protect existing revenue, and stay visible to the customers who are still ordering.

There's also a potential upside buried in the tariff situation. If grocery prices rise faster than restaurant prices — which economists widely expect — some consumers will shift spending back toward restaurants. That's not a guarantee, but it's a real possibility. The operators positioned to capture that shift are the ones who haven't already burned their margins trying to survive the dip.

The bottom line: consumer sentiment is at a generational low, delivery is a discretionary spend, and platforms will not protect your revenue for you. Audit your payouts, price your delivery menu correctly, dispute what you're owed, and stay close to your repeat customers. That's the job right now.