Delivery App Ratings

What is Delivery App Ratings?

Delivery app ratings are the scores guests give your restaurant after ordering through a third-party delivery app such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Deliveroo, GrabFood or foodpanda. They usually appear as an average next to your store name, often with a count of ratings and a few written reviews.

For off-premise guests, the delivery app is often the only place they ever see your brand. Your rating there works like a star rating on Google or Yelp, with one difference: it's built from verified orders, so every score comes from someone who actually ate your food.

For multi-location brands, delivery app ratings are also operational data. Because they're tied to specific orders, they show which locations struggle with accuracy, packaging or timing, and they feed the badges and rankings that decide how visible each store is inside the app.

How delivery app ratings work

The basic loop is similar on every major app. After the order arrives, the app asks the guest to rate the experience, and that rating joins the store's average.

1. The guest orders and receives the food. Only customers who ordered through the app can rate the store, which makes delivery ratings harder to fake than open review sites.
2. The app prompts for a rating. Depending on the app, the guest gives stars, a thumbs up or down, or a short label, and may add tags or a comment.
3. The courier is rated separately. DoorDash and Uber Eats ask about the delivery itself in a separate rating, which feeds the courier's score.
4. The app updates the store's rating. Each app averages ratings in its own way, often favoring recent orders, and decides which comments to show publicly.
5. The restaurant sees the feedback and can reply. Merchant portals show ratings, comments and order details, and most let you respond within a set window.

Because ratings are tied to orders, they come in steadily with volume. A busy location may collect dozens of delivery ratings a week, far more than it receives as Google reviews.

Delivery app ratings by platform

Each app documents its system to a different degree, and the details change. The table summarizes what each platform's own help pages and merchant guides say, which is worth rechecking in your merchant portal for each market.

DoorDash delivery app ratings

DoorDash's merchant article on how customer reviews are collected and displayed describes a three-option rating of Loved, Liked or Didn't like, with review tags such as "Good flavor". Guests can leave a public review or private feedback, and public reviews carry a "Verified Order" label.

According to the same article, guests see a lifetime rating and can tap it to see your average for the past week. Stores with fewer than ten DoorDash ratings may show Yelp ratings instead, which links your delivery reputation to your Yelp page until enough orders are rated.

Uber Eats delivery app ratings

Uber's ratings policy (last updated in September 2025) says merchant ratings on Uber Eats are an average of consumer ratings, with priority given to the most recent ones. An older Uber legal page for Ireland, from 2022, described a 91-day window with a minimum of 10 ratings.

Individual reviews and your replies are private between you and the guest, according to Uber's 2023 merchant guide to reviews in Uber Eats Manager. The average still feeds your public store rating, which is why each private comment matters.

Grubhub delivery app ratings

Grubhub shows a star rating built from diner feedback collected after orders. When it introduced detailed ratings in 2016, it asked diners about food quality, order accuracy and delivery timing, and combined the answers into an overall rating.

Grubhub publishes less about its current calculation than DoorDash or Uber do. Your Grubhub for Restaurants account is the most reliable place to see how your rating is trending.

Deliveroo delivery app ratings

Deliveroo's help center says ratings and reviews are published directly in the app, where guests see them sorted by most recent. Partners reply from the ratings and reviews section of Partner Hub, and the reply reaches the customer by email.

Partner Hub also tracks the operational metrics behind many low ratings, including rejected orders, missing items and orders prepared more than five minutes past the target time over the last 28 days.

GrabFood and foodpanda delivery app ratings

In Southeast Asia, GrabFood shows each merchant's average rating and number of ratings on the listing thumbnail, with written reviews alongside. Grab's merchant guides say that cancellations and inaccurate store information affect ratings.

foodpanda's partner magazine describes vendor ratings as an average of customer reviews over time, and says vendors can respond to both positive and negative reviews. Rules vary by country on both apps, so the local merchant help center is the place to confirm details.

How delivery app ratings affect visibility

Ratings shape more than a guest's first impression. Most apps use them, together with operational metrics, to decide which stores earn badges and better placement.

DoorDash's Road to Most Loved FAQs explain that Merchant Status replaced the earlier Most Loved badge and Optiscore. Status is set at the store level and draws on operational signals such as missing or incorrect items, cancellations, photo coverage and menu pricing.

On Uber Eats, the success score assesses each store monthly on the previous 28 days. In the UK, stores that reach a Great score unlock Top Eats, using goals for operational excellence, menu markup, menu details and rating.

Grab's 5-Star Eats guide for the Philippines evaluates merchants at the brand level. Its criteria include a lifetime rating of 4.5 stars or higher, at least 100 ratings, very few avoidable cancellations and an above-average on-time preparation rate.

Deliveroo's partner ranking policy says it may rank partners using consumer reviews, popularity and commercial agreements, with the main parameter being how likely a customer is to order. For you, the shared lesson is that a rating dip can quietly reduce orders through lost placement.

Driver vs. restaurant in delivery app ratings

Delivery is a relay between your kitchen, the courier and the app, and a guest rating sees only the end result. When food arrives late, cold or damaged, the guest may not know where the problem started.

The major apps handle this partly by rating couriers separately. DoorDash's Dasher ratings come from customer ratings of the delivery experience, and Uber Eats couriers receive thumbs-up or thumbs-down ratings from customers and restaurant staff.

Even so, many guests mark down the restaurant for delivery problems, and comments such as "arrived cold" are hard to assign. The most practical approach is to tag each complaint by likely cause, using order timestamps for prep time, pickup and drop-off.

Where the data shows the courier was at fault, your merchant portal is the place to raise it. DoorDash, for example, lets you contest specific order issues there, and keeping evidence such as handoff times makes those disputes easier.

How to calculate a blended delivery app rating

When you sell on several apps, each one shows a different number. A blended delivery app rating combines them into one figure, weighting each app's rating by its share of your orders.

Blended rating = Σ (app rating × app orders) ÷ total orders

Suppose one location has 10,000 delivery orders a month: 6,000 on DoorDash rated 4.7, 3,000 on Uber Eats rated 4.3, 800 on Grubhub rated 4.1 and 200 on another app rated 4.9.

The weighted total is 4.7 × 6,000 + 4.3 × 3,000 + 4.1 × 800 + 4.9 × 200 = 28,200 + 12,900 + 3,280 + 980 = 45,360. Dividing by 10,000 orders gives a blended rating of 4.54.

A simple average of the four apps would give 4.50, because it treats the small app the same as DoorDash. The weighted figure better reflects how your typical delivery guest rates you, and it shows that the Uber Eats rating affects 30% of orders.

Because each app calculates its rating differently, a blended rating works best as an internal tracking figure. It's most useful for comparing your own locations and months, using the same apps each time.

Blended delivery app rating calculator

Enter each app's current rating and how many orders it brought in over the same period, such as last month. Leave an app's orders at 0 if you don't use it. The default values are only an example.

The apps listed below the blend are usually where improvement pays off fastest, especially when they carry a large share of orders. Running the calculator for each location, with the same period, shows which stores need attention on which app.

Delivery app ratings vs. Google and Yelp ratings

Delivery ratings and review-site ratings measure different moments, and most brands need both. The comparison below shows why the numbers often differ for the same location, a theme covered more broadly under third-party review sites.

What is a good delivery app rating?

No independent benchmark covers every delivery app, and each app counts ratings differently, so cross-app comparisons can mislead. The most concrete reference points are the apps' own programs.

Grab's 5-Star Eats guide for the Philippines, for example, asks for a lifetime rating of 4.5 stars or higher across at least 100 ratings. DoorDash and Uber Eats show the exact goals for their programs inside the Merchant Portal and Uber Eats Manager, and those goals vary by market.

For a multi-location brand, the most useful benchmark is internal. Comparing each location with the others on the same app, and with its own previous months, shows where a rating reflects a local problem.

How to respond to delivery app ratings

Replies work differently on delivery apps. On DoorDash and Uber Eats, you reply from the merchant tools within seven days, according to their merchant guides, and you can attach an offer for a future order. Uber's guide adds that a reply can be automated using filters such as rating or customer type.

Because most replies are private, they act as one-to-one service recovery. A reply that names the issue, apologizes and offers a reason to order again gives the guest a direct path back to your store.

• Reply to low ratings first. A guest who rated an order poorly is still deciding whether to order again, so a prompt reply within a day has the best chance of changing their mind.
• Be specific. Referring to the missing side or the late order shows the guest you read their feedback.
• Match the offer to the problem. A refund for a missing item and a credit for a disappointing meal both make sense, while a large discount for a small issue can train guests to complain.
• Thank positive reviewers too. A short thank-you encourages repeat orders and shows guests that replies are personal.

The principles of a good negative review response apply here as well, even when only one guest reads the reply.

How to improve delivery app ratings

Delivery app ratings respond to operations more directly than most review metrics, because the platforms tie them to individual orders. The improvements below follow the causes the apps themselves name in their merchant guides.

Order accuracy

Missing and incorrect items are among the most common reasons for low delivery ratings, and they're the issue most clearly under your control. A packing checklist, labeled bags and a final check against the ticket before handoff all reduce errors.

Packaging and food quality

Food that travels badly loses its appeal before it arrives. Vented containers for fried items, separate packaging for sauces and dressings, and tamper-evident seals help food arrive the way the kitchen made it, and testing a dish's travel time before adding it to the delivery menu avoids surprises.

Timing and prep accuracy

Late orders draw low ratings even when the food is good. Setting realistic prep times in each app, pausing orders when the kitchen is overwhelmed, and having orders ready when the courier arrives reduce cold food and long waits.

Menu and listing accuracy

Clear photos, accurate descriptions and current item availability set the right expectations. Several apps include menu details in their status programs, and a guest who receives what the photo showed is less likely to feel misled.

Listening across every app

Patterns are easier to see when ratings from every app arrive in one place. Pairing delivery ratings with a post-order survey adds detail where an app shares only a score.

Grouping comments by topic and review sentiment then shows which issues recur at which locations, so you can fix the causes that affect the most guests first.

Limitations of delivery app ratings

• Each app is a black box. Most apps don't publish their full calculation, so a change in your rating can be hard to explain.
• Ratings blend kitchen and courier. A single score can't always separate a slow kitchen from a slow delivery.
• Most comments stay private. Public detail is limited on several apps, which reduces what future guests learn from your replies.
• Numbers differ across apps. Different windows, weightings and display rules make direct comparisons unreliable.
• Rules change often. Badges and status programs are redesigned regularly, as DoorDash's move from Most Loved and Optiscore to Merchant Status shows.

Best delivery app rating tools

The most useful tools for delivery app ratings bring reviews from every app your locations use into one queue, alongside Google and other review sites. For multi-location brands, reporting by location and app, fast replies within each app's reply window and tagging by cause matter most.

Each tool covers a different mix of delivery apps, review sites and surveys, so it's worth checking which apps each one supports in your markets. Momos's roundup of restaurant reputation management software compares several options.

Common delivery app rating mistakes

• Watching only the average. The comments and order details behind low ratings show what to fix, while the average only shows that something is wrong.
• Missing the reply window. Seven days pass quickly, and an unanswered low rating is a lost chance to recover the guest.
• Blaming every problem on the courier. Timestamps often show that a late order left the kitchen late, so checking the data first keeps the focus on what you control.
• Over-promising prep times. Short prep times in the app may lift conversion but lead to cold food and late orders when the kitchen can't keep up.
• Treating every app the same. Each app has its own rules, programs and reply tools, so a single process needs app-specific steps.
• Ignoring positive ratings. Thanking guests who rated you highly encourages repeat orders and shows the team what's working.

History of delivery app ratings

Restaurant delivery moved online in the early 2000s. Grubhub was founded in Chicago in 2004, and as ordering platforms grew, they began asking diners to rate restaurants after each order, building on the review culture that sites like Yelp had created.

Ratings became more detailed as delivery expanded. In 2016, Grubhub introduced ratings for food quality, order accuracy and delivery timing, combined into an overall star rating, as reported by news outlets at the time.

Uber, which launched food delivery as UberFRESH in 2014 and renamed it UberEATS in 2015, told TechCrunch in 2017 that restaurant ratings were based on the last 90 days of data.

Public reviews followed. TechCrunch reported in June 2022 that DoorDash had been piloting written public reviews since November 2021 and had received more than 7 million of them, with a "Verified Order" label tied to real purchases.

The apps have since folded ratings into broader quality programs. DoorDash replaced its Most Loved badge and Optiscore with Merchant Status, Uber Eats tied Top Eats to its success score, and Grab has said it is standardizing its 5-Star Eats label across the region, which makes ratings one part of how each app decides which restaurants to promote.