Selling direct, and what each route to the sale actually costs. Restaurant online ordering on your own site →
The codes went on the tables on Monday. By Saturday every order carried a fee nobody quoted, the price on screen was wrong, and the guests' details sat in someone else's app.
The till says one figure, the card machine another and the drawer a third. Before you buy an EPOS, price the whole 12 months and test the joins that lose money.
Friday is our busiest night and a third of every marketplace ticket leaves as commission, while the guest belongs to someone else. How to take those orders on your own site, and what the whole set-up costs.
A dish built for the table can turn into a refund after twenty minutes in a delivery box. Sort the menu into dine-in, collection and delivery before launch.
Ready bakes that sell out by noon and celebration cakes that need a conversation fail in different ways online. Give each its own lane before the order page opens.
Two payment accounts mean two statements, two payouts and two places to look for a refund. The reader for the till can settle into the same balance as online orders.
On the order page, delivery is paid by card, while dine-in and collection can go either way. That choice decides which orders carry a card fee and which wait to be marked paid.
A guest asks for a paid order to be cancelled and the server presses Cancel. Whether the money went back is a separate question, and a wrong guess returns as a dispute.
A handwritten voucher has no record behind it, and a buyer who lives far away may be a lost sale. Here is how to put a real gift-card sale on the restaurant's own site.
Printing the order-online link on a table card adds friction at the worst moment. The guest must pick a channel and type a table number, and the kitchen has to find them.
Waive the charge and the margin goes; hold it and a guest disputes the bill in front of the room. Nobody wrote the boundary between included and extra where the till can read it.
The same code honoured twice three weeks apart, once at a table and once on the website, with the printed slip backing both — a cost the accounts find in January.
