We Analyzed 680,678 Food Delivery Deals Across 12 Months
DealMeal analyzed 680,678 food delivery deals recorded between July 13, 2025, and July 2, 2026, to understand how promotions differ by platform, restaurant chain, sales channel, deal type, and time period.
The analysis covers 355 calendar days, including 288 distinct observation days, 18 promotional sources, 59,607 restaurant names, 314 cities, and 425 ZIP codes or postcodes. The results show that the depth of the typical discount changed surprisingly little. What changed was how the discount was packaged.
Quick answer
The typical observed food delivery promotion was $5 off, 20% off, or a buy-one-get-one offer, usually with a $25 minimum threshold. The median percentage discount remained exactly 20% in every one of the 13 calendar-month buckets covered by the archive.
Marketplaces were the stronger BOGO channel, while restaurant-owned apps tended to use deeper percentage discounts. Chains selling easily duplicated meals, such as burgers, pizza, and fried chicken, relied heavily on BOGO offers. Free-delivery promotions represented less than 1% of the full corpus.
Key findings from 680,678 food delivery deals
The median percentage discount was 20% in every observed month. Promotion formats changed more than discount depth.
The typical parsed offer was $5 off or 20% off, with a $25 minimum threshold.
Marketplaces were BOGO-oriented. BOGO appeared in 26.4% of marketplace offers, compared with 10.3% of brand-direct offers.
Restaurant-owned apps offered deeper percentage discounts. The median was 25% for brand-direct sources versus 20% for marketplaces.
Restaurant format strongly predicted promotion format. Burger, pizza, and fried-chicken chains frequently used BOGO, while coffee, bowl, and dessert chains rarely did.
Free delivery was uncommon. Broad title and category matching identified 6,592 free-delivery offers, equal to 0.97% of the corpus.
DealMeal data insight
The most consistent finding was not that discounts became steadily better or worse. It was that the median percentage discount stayed at 20% while the mix of BOGO, percentage-off, dollar-off, and free-item promotions shifted around it.
In practical terms, food-delivery promotions appear to change shape more often than they change depth.
What was included in the analysis?
The headline dataset contains 680,678 offer records from 18 sources: seven food-delivery marketplaces, 10 restaurant-owned promotional sources, and one promotions blog feed.
That distinction matters. The 680,678 records are not one homogeneous collection of marketplace deals. The Freebie Guy, a promotions blog rather than a restaurant or delivery platform, contributed 81,317 records, or 11.9% of the headline corpus.
Excluding that feed leaves 599,361 offers from marketplace and brand-direct sources.
Composition of the DealMeal offer archive Source type Offers Share Distinct restaurant names BOGO share Delivery marketplaces 530,001 77.9% 59,599 26.4% Promotions blog feed 81,317 11.9% 1 6.7% Restaurant brand-direct sources 69,360 10.2% 39 10.3%
The marketplace group included Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Just Eat, Deliveroo, Skip the Dishes, and Menulog. Brand-direct sources included KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A, and Domino’s.
Geographic records came from search activity across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. However, this was a search-driven archive rather than a population-balanced survey. Falls Church, Virginia, accounted for 407 of 1,199 recorded searches, so the number of covered cities represents reach rather than equal geographic depth.
What does a typical food delivery deal look like?
Offer titles were parsed for explicit dollar discounts, percentage discounts, and minimum-spend conditions. The resulting medians provide a practical baseline for evaluating a promotion.
Typical discount values parsed from food-delivery offer titles Promotion component Parsed sample Corpus coverage Median 75th percentile 90th percentile Dollar-off amount 67,255 9.9% $5 $8 $10 Percentage discount 119,760 17.6% 20% 25% 30% Minimum threshold 143,120 21.0% $25 $35 $40
The median is more useful than the maximum when deciding whether a promotion is unusually valuable. Although parsed dollar discounts reached as high as $75 and thresholds reached $250, those extremes do not describe the normal offer.
A practical benchmark is therefore:
$5 for a standard dollar-off promotion
20% for a standard percentage discount
$25 for a standard minimum-order requirement
A 30% promotion is relatively strong compared with the overall archive because it sits at the 90th percentile of parsed percentage discounts. A $10 discount also reaches the 90th percentile of parsed dollar-off offers.
These figures describe advertised promotion language. They do not establish the final amount saved after menu prices, service fees, delivery charges, taxes, tips, item eligibility, or account-specific restrictions.
Percentage discounts dominated the classified offers
Deal categories were available for 360,940 offers, equal to 53.0% of the archive. Another 201,893 records had no deal-category field, while 117,845 were marked Uncategorized.
Offer counts among records with a defined deal category Deal category Offers Percentage Discount 199,284 Buy One Get One Free 106,219 Free Item with Purchase 48,872 Free Delivery 5,437 New User Offer 1,128
Because nearly half of the archive lacked a usable category, DealMeal also searched offer titles for common promotional language. This broader method identified 152,283 BOGO offers, representing 22.4% of the full corpus, and 75,937 free-item offers, representing 11.2%.
Broad matching found only 6,592 free-delivery offers. At 0.97% of all records, free delivery was a minor promotional format compared with percentage discounts, dollar discounts, BOGO, and free-item offers.
Marketplaces and restaurant apps use different promotion strategies
The clearest channel-level difference was between delivery marketplaces and restaurant-owned apps.
Across marketplace sources, BOGO represented 26.4% of offers. Across brand-direct sources, it represented 10.3%. The pattern reversed for percentage depth: brand-direct offers had a 25% median percentage discount, compared with 20% on marketplaces.
Observed promotion strategy by source type Source type Median dollar discount Median percentage discount BOGO share Delivery marketplaces $5 20% 26.4% Restaurant brand-direct sources $5 25% 10.3% Promotions blog feed $5 31% 6.7%
This does not prove that ordering directly is always cheaper. The archive did not contain menu prices, checkout totals, fees, taxes, tips, or complete eligibility rules. It does show that consumers may encounter different promotional structures depending on where they view the same restaurant.
For a single-person order, a direct percentage discount may be more usable than a BOGO offer. For two diners or someone willing to save a second item, marketplace BOGO offers may provide more practical value.
Uber Eats was the most BOGO-oriented major marketplace
Among the three large US marketplace datasets, Uber Eats had the highest observed BOGO share. Broad matching found BOGO language in 35.1% of Uber Eats offers, compared with 13.8% on DoorDash and 13.1% on Grubhub.
Selected marketplace promotion patterns Marketplace Offers Restaurant names BOGO share Median dollar discount Median percentage discount Uber Eats 324,494 30,411 35.1% $5 20% DoorDash 67,118 14,722 13.8% $5 20% Grubhub 62,819 9,891 13.1% $6 25%
The three datasets were not equal in size, and parsed discount coverage differed by source. These figures describe the promotions observed by DealMeal’s observers, not every promotion available to every account.
For a closer comparison of these services, see DealMeal’s analysis of Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub deals and the focused Uber Eats versus DoorDash deal comparison.
What a restaurant sells helps determine how it discounts
The strongest restaurant-level pattern involved whether a chain sells a product that can easily be duplicated in a second unit.
Burger, pizza, and fried-chicken chains frequently used BOGO promotions. Coffee, bowls, cakes, and other single-serve products rarely did.
Selected restaurant-chain BOGO patterns Restaurant chain Offers Observed months BOGO share Dominant category Burger King 6,711 13 88.1% BOGO Wendy’s marketplace offers 1,414 13 70.4% BOGO Popeyes 2,369 12 64.4% BOGO KFC marketplace offers 3,897 13 56.7% BOGO Pizza Hut 3,670 13 55.6% BOGO Papa Johns 1,522 13 53.6% BOGO Chipotle 3,156 13 1.1% Free Item Nothing Bundt Cakes 1,728 13 0.2% Percentage Discount Dunkin’ 2,136 13 0.1% Percentage Discount Starbucks 3,793 11 0.0% Percentage Discount
The pattern is commercially intuitive without proving causation. A restaurant can duplicate a burger, pizza, or chicken meal in a way that fits naturally into a buy-one-get-one promotion. A coffee or customized bowl may be more likely to receive a percentage discount, loyalty reward, or free-item incentive instead.
The same restaurant can run different promotions in different channels
KFC provides the clearest example. Its US brand-direct source contained 25,417 offers and used BOGO in only 0.9% of them. Its median parsed percentage discount was 25%.
KFC offers found through marketplaces followed a different strategy. Among 3,897 marketplace offers, 56.7% used BOGO, while the median percentage discount was 20%.
Wendy’s showed a similar split. Its own promotional feed recorded 0.0% BOGO, while 70.4% of its marketplace offers were BOGO.
This means checking only one channel can create an incomplete picture. A restaurant may use its own app to promote percentage discounts while using delivery marketplaces to promote additional units, bundles, or BOGO offers.
Discount depth remained stable while the deal mix changed
The median parsed percentage discount was exactly 20% in each of the 13 calendar-month buckets covered by the archive. That includes the partial opening month of July 2025 and the two observed days in July 2026.
The stable median suggests that percentage discounts were administered around a standard promotional level rather than moving dramatically from month to month.
BOGO activity was less stable. Its monthly share ranged from 18.8% in January 2026 to 31.7% in June 2026. That is a 69% relative increase from the lowest observed monthly share to the highest.
The practical conclusion is that waiting for a different month may not produce a deeper percentage discount. It may instead produce a different kind of promotion.
Raw monthly offer counts should not be interpreted as changes in consumer demand or total market activity. Observation coverage, search locations, active anchor points, and collection schedules changed during the archive period.
Friday and Sunday had the highest observed deal density
After normalizing offer volume by the number of observation days, Sunday produced 3,277 offers per observation day and Friday produced 3,112. Tuesday produced 1,784.
Sunday’s observed density was therefore about 1.8 times Tuesday’s, even after accounting for how frequently each weekday was observed.
Observed offers per observation day by weekday Day Offers Observation days Offers per observation day Sunday 140,893 43 3,277 Friday 130,723 42 3,112 Saturday 88,549 38 2,330 Monday 88,304 43 2,054 Thursday 66,666 33 2,020 Wednesday 88,824 46 1,931 Tuesday 76,719 43 1,784
This pattern should be treated as observed investigate-time density, not proof that platforms deliberately publish more offers on Friday and Sunday. DealMeal searches may also be triggered more frequently when users are actively looking for weekend meals.
How to use these findings to save money
1. Use $5, 20%, and $25 as reference points
A $5 discount or 20% discount is typical in this archive. Before placing an order, check whether the promotion is meaningfully stronger than those benchmarks and whether the minimum threshold forces you to spend more than planned.
2. Match the deal format to the order
BOGO is most useful when two eligible items will actually be consumed. A percentage discount may be better for a single-person order, a customized meal, or a basket containing multiple different items.
3. Check both the restaurant app and delivery marketplaces
The same chain can use percentage discounts in its own app and BOGO promotions through a marketplace. Looking at both channels can reveal materially different options.
4. Compare the final cart rather than the headline
A large advertised percentage is not automatically the lowest-cost choice. Confirm eligible items, minimum spend, pickup or delivery availability, menu prices, fees, taxes, and the final checkout total before deciding.
5. Look again near Friday or Sunday
The archive contained greater observed deal density on Friday and Sunday than on Tuesday. This does not guarantee a better promotion, but it may justify checking again before a weekend order.
6. Do not rely on free delivery as the main savings strategy
Free-delivery language appeared in less than 1% of the archive. BOGO, dollar-off, percentage-off, and free-item promotions were substantially more common ways to reduce the effective value of an order.
Compare food deals without checking every app manually
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Browse available DealMeal regions, download DealMeal for iPhone, or get DealMeal on Android.
Methodology and limitations
DealMeal scanned all 680,678 documents in the DealMeal v3 offer archive rather than drawing a sample. The observation window ran from July 13, 2025, through July 2, 2026, covering 355 calendar days and 288 distinct observation days.
The archive included 530,001 marketplace offers, 69,360 brand-direct offers, and 81,317 records from The Freebie Guy promotions feed. The feed must not be interpreted as a food-delivery platform.
Offer titles were parsed for dollar-off amounts, percentage discounts, and minimum thresholds. BOGO, free-item, and free-delivery records were identified using the supplied deal category or broad title matching. Parsed values outside the specified validation ranges were discarded, and percentiles used the nearest-rank method.
No menu items or menu prices were stored in the v3 archive. This report therefore does not compare menu prices, checkout totals, fees, taxes, tips, realized savings, or deal duration.
Only 53.0% of offers had a defined deal category. Another 17.3% were marked Uncategorized, and 29.7% had no category field.
Parsed-title coverage was 9.9% for dollar-off values, 17.6% for percentage discounts, and 21.0% for minimum thresholds.
Monthly and weekday results describe observation-time observations. They should not be treated as publication schedules or consumer-demand measurements.
Monthly offer volume changed as observer coverage, search locations, and anchor locations changed. Month-over-month volume comparisons are not defensible.
Restaurant-chain names were not fully normalized and required manual grouping. Parsing artefacts named “Offers” and “The Freebie Guy” were excluded from restaurant tables.
Skip the Dishes ended collection on October 27, 2025, and Menulog ended on November 22, 2025. Just Eat and Deliveroo each had only 43 observer days, so these platforms should be treated as spot samples.
DoorDash coordinates were missing for 51.1% of its offers.
The archive stored no promotion expiry dates, so it cannot establish how long an offer remained available.
Geographic collection was driven by searches and was concentrated in specific locations. Coverage of 314 cities does not mean equal depth in each city.
The v3 archive begins on July 13, 2025, because the preceding database was lost following a ransomware incident on February 28, 2025. No earlier v3 records are available.
Individual restaurant trends are defensible only for repeatedly observed stores. Approximately 683 store-platform pairs appeared on at least 21 observation days, while 267 appeared on at least 101 days. The chain-level comparisons in this report use groups with substantially broader observation histories.
Frequently asked questions
What is the typical food delivery discount?
Among offers whose values could be parsed, the median promotion was $5 off or 20% off. The median minimum threshold was $25. These are advertised offer terms rather than guaranteed checkout savings.
Were all 680,678 records food-delivery platform offers?
No. The total includes 81,317 records from a promotions blog feed. Marketplace and restaurant brand-direct sources accounted for 599,361 offers.
Which food-delivery marketplace had the most BOGO deals?
Within the three large US marketplace datasets, Uber Eats had the highest observed BOGO share at 35.1%. DoorDash was at 13.8%, and Grubhub was at 13.1%.
Are restaurant apps cheaper than delivery marketplaces?
The archive cannot establish which channel produced the lowest final checkout price. Brand-direct offers had a deeper median percentage discount, 25% versus 20% for marketplaces, but the dataset contained no menu-price or fee comparisons.
Are food-delivery discounts better on weekends?
DealMeal observed more offers per observation day on Sunday and Friday than on Tuesday. This indicates higher observed deal density, but it does not prove that every user will receive better discounts on those days.
How common are free-delivery deals?
Broad category and title matching found 6,592 free-delivery offers, equal to 0.97% of the full archive. Other promotional formats were substantially more common.
Why do burger and pizza chains use more BOGO offers?
The data shows a strong association between easily duplicated meal units and BOGO use. However, the archive cannot prove that product format directly caused each restaurant’s promotional strategy.
Does this analysis compare food prices across apps?
No. The historical v3 archive stored offer records but no menu items or menu prices. This report analyzes promotional language and structure, not total order prices.
Conclusion
The year-long archive shows a food-delivery promotion market built around stable discount benchmarks and changing promotional formats. The standard percentage discount remained consistent, while BOGO, dollar-off, free-item, and threshold-based offers shifted by platform, restaurant type, channel, and day.
Marketplaces were more strongly associated with BOGO promotions, while restaurant-owned apps offered deeper percentage discounts. BOGO was especially common among burger, pizza, and fried-chicken chains and rare among coffee, bowl, and dessert-focused chains.
No single promotion type is best for every order. The useful question is whether the offer fits the number of diners, the eligible items, the minimum spend, and the final cart total. Comparing multiple channels remains more reliable than choosing an app based only on the headline discount.
