Chapter 28 — Self-Check Quiz

Twenty-four questions. Answers are in the collapsed block at the bottom — work the arithmetic before you open it.

Multiple choice

1. Off-premise refers to:

  • a. delivery only
  • b. any food prepared in your kitchen and consumed elsewhere
  • c. anything sold through a third-party platform
  • d. catering and events

2. The largest single difference in contribution between a $92 dine-in visit and the same food sold for delivery at Bellwether is:

  • a. the commission
  • b. packaging
  • c. the beverage that was never ordered
  • d. packing labor

3. A platform's effective take rate differs from its commission rate primarily because of:

  • a. sales tax
  • b. promotions, ad spend, and refunds charged back
  • c. payment processing
  • d. the delivery fee the guest pays

4. Marketplace commissions in the United States commonly run in the range of:

  • a. 5–10%
  • b. 15–30%, varying by service tier and contract
  • c. exactly 30%
  • d. 40–50%

5. The break-even cannibalization rate is computed as:

  • a. dine-in contribution ÷ off-premise contribution
  • b. off-premise contribution per order ÷ contribution of the dine-in visit it replaces
  • c. commission ÷ food cost
  • d. off-premise sales ÷ total sales

6. At Bellwether, first-party pickup has a break-even cannibalization rate of about 55% while a 25% marketplace is about 34%. The practical meaning is:

  • a. first-party is only better if you cannibalize a lot
  • b. the marketplace is more forgiving of measurement error
  • c. the cheaper channel tolerates more of the thing you cannot measure
  • d. cannibalization does not matter on first-party orders

7. During Bellwether's Saturday binding hour, the hearth is running at:

  • a. 78% of its sustainable rate
  • b. exactly at rate
  • c. 104% of its sustainable rate
  • d. 140% of its sustainable rate

8. Contribution per hearth item at the Saturday binding hour is:

  • a. $25.89
  • b. $33.23
  • c. $46.00
  • d. $52.71

9. A crisp or fried surface in a closed container is materially degraded after roughly:

  • a. 4 minutes
  • b. 15 minutes
  • c. 25 minutes
  • d. 45 minutes

10. Which of these travels best on a 20-minute delivery?

  • a. a dressed little gem salad
  • b. hand-cut pasta with a butter emulsion
  • c. a beef and root-vegetable braise
  • d. a fried chicken sandwich

11. To hold contribution constant on a $29.00 Hearth Chicken at a 25% commission with $1.20 of allocated packaging and labor, the listed price would need to be about:

  • a. $32.00
  • b. $36.25
  • c. $40.27
  • d. $45.00

12. A dedicated $19.50/hour packer working five hours a night, five nights a week, costs:

  • a. $195.00 a week
  • b. $390.00 a week
  • c. $487.50 a week
  • d. $585.00 a week

13. The chapter's illustrative rule of thumb is that off-premise does not justify a dedicated position until it reaches roughly:

  • a. 1% of sales
  • b. 5% of sales
  • c. 15% of sales
  • d. 25% of sales

14. Commission caps were adopted by several U.S. cities:

  • a. in 2015, as platforms launched
  • b. during the 2020 COVID-19 shutdowns
  • c. only outside the United States
  • d. by federal statute

15. Which best describes the platforms' observed response in some capped markets?

  • a. they withdrew from those cities entirely
  • b. they lowered guest-side fees to compensate
  • c. they added or raised fees on the guest side
  • d. nothing changed

16. The most effective single fix for reducing off-premise refund costs is:

  • a. buying better containers
  • b. a second person reading the ticket aloud against the sealed bag
  • c. raising prices
  • d. disputing every refund

17. Firing an off-premise order to the driver's ETA rather than to the order time primarily:

  • a. lowers packaging cost
  • b. reduces the food's age at the guest's door
  • c. improves your commission rate
  • d. eliminates the need for staging

18. The single largest self-inflicted line on the payout statement in Figure 28.4 is:

  • a. commission
  • b. food cost
  • c. promotions and sponsored listings, together 6.9 points of take rate
  • d. the adjustment credit

Short answer

19. In one sentence, why does the fixed-cost-absorption argument for delivery ("the rent is already paid") fail during a binding hour?

20. Bellwether's modeled $65.00 order carries $19.32 of plate cost, $2.24 of packaging, and $1.30 of packing labor. Compute its contribution at a 20% commission and state it as a percentage of the order.

21. Name four ways to test incrementality without running an experiment, and one way that requires one.

22. Explain why a compostable container can be the more expensive and the less sustainable choice in a given market.

23. A guest's allergy note arrives on an off-premise ticket. What replaces the conversation a server would have had at the table, and what does that mean operationally?

24. Bellwether keeps its $31,200 takeout line. Name three specifications the chapter changed underneath that number, and state the annual contribution difference between first-party pickup and a 25% marketplace on the same sales.

Answer key **1. b.** Off-premise is any food prepared in your kitchen and consumed elsewhere — takeout, curbside, drive-through, delivery, and catering. **2. c.** The beverage. Dine-in contribution was $61.76 against $25.89 for a 25% marketplace order; the $25.76 of beverage on the dine-in check is a larger single factor than the $16.25 of commission. **3. b.** Promotional funding, sponsored-listing spend, and error refunds charged back — plus any per-order or hardware fees. **4. b.** 15–30%, varying by service tier, market, platform, and contract. Treat any specific figure as one restaurant's deal. **5. b.** **6. c.** The cheaper channel tolerates more cannibalization before it stops adding contribution, which is a tolerance for being wrong about the one variable you cannot measure. **7. c.** 29 items produced against a 28-item sustainable rate = 104%. **8. d.** 46 covers × $33.23 = $1,528.58 of contribution in the hour, ÷ 29 hearth items = $52.71. **9. a.** About four minutes. Steam condenses in a closed container and there is no packaging solution. **10. c.** A braise was cooked in liquid and is essentially unharmed to 45 minutes. **11. c.** ($29.00 + $1.20) ÷ 0.75 = $40.27, a 38.9% uplift — which is the practical answer to whether this dish belongs on a marketplace. **12. c.** $19.50 × 5 × 5 = $487.50, which exceeds the $357.60 a week the whole 12-order channel produces before packing labor. **13. b.** Around 5% of sales — roughly 30 orders a week at a $50 ticket — and even there the return is thin. **14. b.** During the 2020 shutdowns; New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle were among them, with caps commonly around 15% for delivery. Some were later made permanent, and at least one drew litigation. **15. c.** Adding or raising guest-side fees — the predictable result of regulating one side of a two-sided market. **16. b.** A verification step by a second person. It takes twenty seconds and removes most of the defect rate; the refund line in Figure 28.4 was 3.6% of menu sales, larger than packaging and packing labor combined. **17. b.** It cuts the food's age at the door — the twenty-minute clock starts when the item leaves the pass, not when the driver arrives. **18. c.** $185 of promotions plus $142 of ads = $327 on $4,732 of menu sales = 6.9 points of take rate, neither of which required an authorization step. **19.** Because the resource the order consumes was not idle — it was already producing higher-margin work, so the order reallocates scarce capacity rather than absorbing spare capacity, and both transactions still record as sales. **20.** Commission $13.00 → remittance $52.00; own costs $19.32 + $2.24 + $1.30 = $22.86; **contribution $29.14**, or **44.8%** of the $65.00 order. **21.** Without an experiment: the baseline test (dine-in covers before and after), the constraint test (is a resource binding during the channel's hours), the geography test (delivery addresses inside or outside the walk-in trade area), the guest-overlap test (matching phones and emails against the reservation and loyalty lists), and the daypart-shape test (when orders arrive relative to dine-in peak). Requiring an experiment: the blackout — turning the channel off on Friday and Saturday for two weeks and measuring dine-in covers. **22.** Compostable containers cost more per unit and are only compostable where commercial composting exists and accepts them. In a market with no organics collection, the container is landfilled — you paid a premium for an identical environmental outcome. Verify what your municipality actually does before you buy the more expensive box. **23.** The label replaces the conversation. Operationally that means allergens must be named on the container where present, an allergen note on the ticket becomes a stop-and-check step rather than a preference, and the packer is the last line of defense because there is no server standing at the table. **24.** Any three of: first-party pickup only (no marketplace, no delivery); the channel closed 6:00– 8:45 p.m. Friday and Saturday to protect the hearth; a nine-item off-premise menu with the pasta off it and the Hearth Chicken carrying a documented compromise; price parity; labor absorbed rather than added, with a 30-orders-a-week trigger to revisit. The contribution difference on the same $31,200 of sales is **$17,984 first-party versus $11,276 marketplace = $6,708 a year**, or 21.5% of the whole line.