What a liquor store keeps from a $100 order.

A lot of the party stores I talk to around Macomb County sell online exactly one way: DoorDash. It works. Somebody orders, a driver shows up, the money lands in your account. What most owners haven’t done is sit down and work out what each of those orders actually pays them. So here it is, with the published numbers.

What DoorDash charges

DoorDash’s standard Marketplace plans take a commission on the order subtotal, before tax and tip:

Those are the plans on DoorDash’s published pricing page as of September 2026. Your contract may differ, so check your merchant portal for the number on your account. The plans differ in what you get inside the app, but the commission is the part that comes out of every single order.

What your own online store costs

Run your own store on Shopify and there is no commission. You pay a monthly plan, plus a card processing fee on each order:

• The Basic plan is $29 a month billed yearly, or $39 month to month.
• Card processing through Shopify Payments on Basic is 2.9% plus 30 cents per online order, a little more for premium cards.
• If your store uses an outside payment company instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own fee on top of that company’s rate: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, and 0.6% on Advanced.

That last one matters for liquor stores. Alcohol comes with extra rules, and whether Shopify Payments will take your store on is Shopify’s call. Plan for either outcome and the math below still works.

The same $100 order, every way you can take it

The outside payment company row assumes 2.9% plus 30 cents, a common starting rate, plus Shopify’s 2%. Those companies set their own rates. Shopify’s monthly plan isn’t in the table because it doesn’t change per order.

About that monthly plan: even against DoorDash’s cheapest delivery plan, you save $11.80 on every $100 order that comes through your own store instead. Three or four orders a month covers the $39.

What DoorDash does that your own store doesn’t

None of this makes DoorDash a bad deal. It’s a different deal. DoorDash puts you in front of people who were never going to find you on their own, and it handles the drivers. Your own store does neither. People have to know it exists, and you handle the pickup or delivery yourself.

So the real question isn’t DoorDash or your own store. It’s which orders should go where.

Use both: DoorDash for new customers, your store for regulars

• Keep DoorDash for discovery. New customers in your delivery area will keep finding you there.
• Point regulars to your own store. Put the address on your receipts, your bags, your front window and your Google Business Profile.
• Start with in-store pickup. It’s the simplest way to take orders online, and on the numbers above it keeps nearly the whole sale.
• Keep the two in sync. If your shelf, prices and hours match everywhere, nobody gets a surprise at the counter.

A word on Michigan’s rules

Selling alcohol online in Michigan comes with licensing and age verification requirements, and delivery has rules of its own. Talk to the Michigan Liquor Control Commission before you turn on delivery from your own store. Shopify also requires stores that sell alcohol to follow every law where they sell and to keep anyone under 21 from buying or receiving it.

What this looks like in practice

Maria’s Market in Canton is set up this way: a Shopify store with their catalog and their Whiskey Club, running alongside DoorDash, with online ordering coming soon. Their regulars get a store of their own to order from, and DoorDash keeps doing what it’s good at.

If you run a party store or bottle shop in Macomb County and want to see what your own store would look like, that’s what my liquor store system sets up. The first call is free and takes about 20 minutes.