Cash on delivery, or COD, is a payment option where the customer pays when the food arrives, in cash or by UPI to the rider, instead of paying online while ordering. The restaurant takes the order on trust, prepares it, and collects at the door. In Indian food delivery it remains common, especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, for first-time customers who do not want to pay a new business in advance.
Why it matters
COD removes the biggest reason a new customer abandons an order, which is trusting an unknown kitchen with money, and it carries no payment gateway fee. The costs are on the other side: fake orders, customers who do not answer the door, riders carrying cash, and the time spent reconciling it. A refused COD order is a full loss of food cost and delivery, with no refund to fall back on. Most restaurants land on a middle path: COD allowed up to a limit, a WhatsApp confirmation before cooking, online payment required for large or custom orders, and COD switched off for a number that has refused once. The trade-offs are in cash on delivery vs online payment for food orders, and the advance-payment side in how to collect advance payment.
Example
A biryani kitchen in Kanpur does 400 orders a month at an average of ₹380, and 60 percent choose COD. If 3 percent of COD orders are refused or unreachable, that is about 7 orders a month, each costing roughly ₹140 in food and packaging plus ₹40 in delivery, around ₹1,260 lost. Against that, the 240 COD orders paid no gateway fee, which at 2 percent would have been about ₹1,800. The kitchen keeps COD, caps it at ₹600 per order, asks for a reply to confirm before cooking, and requires online payment for anything above the cap. For tiffin services, where the same customer pays every day, a different approach works; see COD for tiffin services.
On Tezzu, cash on delivery is a payment option you can switch on alongside UPI and cards, and COD orders carry the same flat ₹10 per-order fee with no commission.