Rappi Becomes Merchant Infrastructure

This is a margin and control battle, not just a delivery growth story. The biggest restaurant groups do enough order volume to justify owning their own app, loyalty, and customer data, then plugging in delivery only where needed. That strips marketplaces of their best merchants, because the same top restaurants that drive most orders also have the leverage to push customers toward direct ordering and lower fee channels.1 2 3

• Order volume is highly concentrated. The top 10% to 15% of restaurants generate most platform GMV, with leading merchants doing roughly 2,000 to 5,000 orders per month while most smaller restaurants do fewer than 50. That means losing a small number of chains can materially weaken a platform's traffic and economics.1
• A parallel software stack has emerged to help restaurants go direct. ChowNow and Lunchbox sell online ordering, loyalty, and customer marketing tools that let chains own the checkout and customer list, with blended economics around 10% versus the roughly 30% marketplace model described in restaurant software research.4 5 6
• Rappi's answer is to become harder to replace. Its marketplace already monetizes through commissions, delivery fees, ads, and subscriptions, and it has added 300 plus dark kitchens plus payments and other verticals so merchants can use it not only for demand, but also for fulfillment, expansion capacity, and financial services.1 2 3

The next phase favors platforms that become operating infrastructure for merchants, not just order marketplaces. As chains build direct channels, Rappi's path is to own more of the delivery network, merchant tooling, and payments stack, which makes the market more concentrated and raises the odds that only a few full stack players remain in each country.1 2 3