Delivery Radius Mapping
Restaurants, grocery operators, e-commerce fulfillment teams, and healthcare delivery services all face the same problem: a radius circle defines a delivery zone in terms of geography — not the road network a driver actually uses. The result is accepted orders that arrive late, service commitments that can't be kept, and capacity models built on incorrect assumptions. DriveZone draws delivery zones from real drive times, not crow-flies distance.
The problem
Geography
how far as the crow flies — irrelevant to a driver
Real roads
actual routing through the road network your driver uses
40–60%
area error when using a radius for delivery zone planning
A radius circle extends equally in all directions regardless of what roads exist. A restaurant near a river may have a generous circle on paper, but the far bank is accessible only by one bridge three miles away — making delivery there a 45-minute round trip, not a 20-minute one. A dark store next to an interstate on-ramp can cover 4x the effective area in the direction of highway access. The radius circle sees neither of these realities. The outcome is the same in both cases: delivery zone decisions made on incorrect data.
Three failure modes
Setting a radius-based service area that includes addresses you cannot actually reach within your promised delivery time leads to late deliveries, cancellations, and bad ratings. Every address outside your real drive-time zone is a delivery you shouldn't have accepted. The radius circle will always include addresses across barriers — rivers, rail yards, highway medians — that make on-time delivery structurally impossible.
The opposite error: conservative radius settings that exclude fast-highway routes where you could deliver in 15 minutes. Radius circles miss the directional asymmetry of highway access — one direction off your fulfillment location is fast arterial all the way, the opposite direction is slow surface streets through three traffic lights. The circle treats both directions as equal, leaving real delivery capacity on the table.
Running two dark stores with overlapping radius circles doesn't tell you which origin is faster for each address in the overlap zone. You're either double-staffing shared demand or creating customer confusion about which location handles their order. Drive-time polygons from each location let you assign delivery addresses to the optimal fulfillment point — minimizing drive time and balancing load across locations.
Feature breakdown
Draw your real delivery zone from any kitchen, warehouse, or dark store. Set your target delivery time — 15, 20, 30, or 45 minutes — and get a polygon that follows the actual road network. See exactly which addresses are reachable within your commitment, and stop accepting orders from outside it.
Run polygons from two or more fulfillment locations simultaneously. Visualize coverage gaps where no location can reach in time, overlap zones where both can, and optimal assignment boundaries where one origin is faster than another. Essential for multi-location dark store or ghost kitchen networks.
Model 15-, 20-, 30-, and 45-minute delivery windows from the same origin in a single view. Use tiered zones to separate your express delivery product (15 minutes, premium pricing) from your standard delivery zone (30 minutes) and your extended coverage area (45 minutes, minimum order). Visualize the trade-off between speed and reach.
Given a customer address, determine which of your fulfillment locations can reach it within your target delivery time — and exactly how long each route takes. Use this to build order routing logic, validate new customer signups against your service area, or triage delivery exceptions before they become complaints.
Delivery verticals
15–25-minute kitchen-to-door zones for QSR, casual, and ghost kitchen operators. Map the real polygon before configuring your zone on DoorDash or Uber Eats — the platform radius setting and the real 20-minute drive are almost never identical.
30-minute zones for on-demand grocery and convenience delivery from dark stores. Identify the directional asymmetry of your location's highway and arterial access — where your 30-minute zone extends far in one direction and barely moves in another.
Prescription and medical supply delivery within regulatory and clinical time windows. Map zones that conform to same-day or next-window delivery commitments from dispensing locations — and verify coverage before accepting patient enrollment.
Last-mile fulfillment reach from urban micro-warehouses and carrier hubs. Model which zip codes you can credibly commit to for same-day delivery — and use multi-origin comparison to assign each zip code to its optimal fulfillment point.
FAQ · Delivery zone mapping
Major delivery markets
Related reading
See exactly which addresses you can serve — no radius circle required.