Websites & ordering
Restaurant websites & commission-free online ordering
Restaurant online ordering through the big apps quietly takes 25–35% of every ticket and keeps your customer's details. We build a fast website and a direct ordering channel you own, so the margin stays in your till and the customer stays yours. No commission per order, no lock-in.
The apps own your customers and your margin.
For years the deal with the delivery apps looked acceptable, because they brought orders you would not have got otherwise. The trouble is the price. UberEats and DoorDash typically take 25–35% of every order, plus card fees. On a $50 order that can be $15 gone before you have paid for the food, the gas and the wage of the person who cooked it. For most kitchens that is more than the entire net margin on the dish.
The market has also tightened. Menulog ceased operating in Australia on 26 November 2025, which leaves UberEats and DoorDash as a near-duopoly. Two platforms with that much share have real pricing power, and history says fees rarely fall when competition disappears.
The deeper cost is the relationship. When a diner orders through an app, the app keeps the name, email and phone number. You cooked the meal, but the platform owns the customer. Want to reach that person again? You pay the app to do it. You are renting access to your own diners.
A direct ordering channel turns a 30% leak into a few percent in card fees, and turns an anonymous app order into a customer you can bring back for free.
A site that takes the order, and keeps the customer.
A fast, clean website
A mobile-first site that loads quickly, shows the menu, and makes booking or ordering obvious. Built so Google can read it and so a hungry person decides in seconds.
Commission-free online ordering
Pickup and delivery ordering on your own domain, on a flat-fee platform that does not take a cut of every sale. You keep the margin the apps were skimming.
Direct table bookings
Reservations that land straight in your system without per-cover fees, wired into the site so the "Book a table" button is never more than a tap away.
Customer capture built in
Every direct order and booking collects the name, email and mobile with consent, feeding the list you own so you can bring that diner back without paying a platform.
A plan to shift orders direct
Order confirmations, packaging inserts and a small first-order incentive that nudge app customers to order direct next time, so the channel you own keeps growing.
Reporting in dollars kept
We track direct orders, commission saved and the share moving off the apps, so you can see the margin coming back month after month.
Where a $50 order actually goes.
Commission and fee figures are illustrative ranges. Rates change, so check current merchant terms.
| UberEats / DoorDash | Direct ordering (your site) | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform commission | ~25–35% per order* | None |
| Card & processing fees | On top of commission | ~1.5–2.5% |
| Roughly lost on a $50 order | ~$13–$18 | ~$1–$2 |
| Who owns the customer | The platform | You |
| Reach them again for free | No | Yes, via your list |
| Ongoing cost | A cut of every order | A small flat monthly fee |
*Delivery commission rates change. Read the full breakdown in our UberEats & DoorDash commission guide and check current merchant terms before relying on any figure.
The five jobs a venue website has to do.
Most restaurant sites are a digital brochure. A site that earns its keep does five specific jobs, and most do one or two badly.
Get found
When someone searches your name or "dinner near me", your site and your Google Business Profile have to show up and load. If a diner cannot find you, nothing else on this list matters.
Convince fast
A hungry person decides in seconds. Clear photos, the menu, the address, the hours and an obvious next step, all visible without a scroll on a phone.
Take the order or booking
The whole point. A direct order or a table booked on your own domain, not a button that bounces them to UberEats so the app can take the cut and the customer.
Capture the customer
Every order and booking should leave you with a name, an email and a mobile, with consent. That is the list you own and the only asset the apps cannot take back.
Bring them back
The first sale is the expensive one. The site feeds your email and SMS so a one-time diner becomes a regular for the cost of a text, not another app commission.
Get those five right and the website stops being a cost and starts being the cheapest sales channel you have. Get the order and booking ones wrong and you are paying rent on a brochure.
The homepage that actually converts.
There is a running order that works for venues. We do not reinvent it, we just stop owners burying the things that make people act.
The top of the page, the part on screen before anyone scrolls, has to do the heavy lifting. One strong photo of the food or room, your name, a one-line description of what you are and where, and two buttons: Order now and Book a table. No carousel, no autoplay video that slows the page, no "Welcome to our website". A diner should know in two seconds what you serve and how to act on it.
Under that, in this order: the menu or a clear link to it, because the menu is the single most viewed page on any restaurant site. Then your hours and address with a tap-to-call number and a map link, because half your traffic is someone standing outside trying to work out if you are open. Then the proof, a row of real Google reviews. Then a short bit about the place for the people who want to know your story before they book.
Every section repeats the order and book buttons. People decide at different points, so the next step is never more than a thumb away. The menu page itself links straight into ordering, so reading the menu and ordering it are the same motion, not two separate trips.
The rule is simple. If a section does not help someone find you, decide, order, book or join your list, it does not go above the things that do.
Deposits, reminders, and the no-show problem.
Direct bookings, no per-cover fee
Reservations that land in your system on your own domain. The big booking platforms charge per cover and own the diner. We set up direct so a Friday two-top does not cost you a cut just to sit down.
Automated reminders
An SMS and email the day before and a few hours out. This one change cuts no-shows on its own, because most people who do not turn up simply forgot, not snubbed you.
Deposits and card holds
For peak times, big tables and ticketed nights, a small deposit or card hold at booking. It comes off the final bill, so a real diner never feels it, and the empty table that never called to cancel all but disappears.
A no-show on a prime Friday two-top is not a small thing. It is the highest-margin slot of your week sitting empty. Reminders plus a deposit on the riskiest bookings is the cheapest insurance in hospitality, and the booking still feeds a name and number into the list you own.
Set up your own ordering, then win the app customers over.
Owning the channel is step one. Moving the orders onto it is the work that pays.
Setting up your own online ordering is more straightforward than most owners expect. A flat-fee ordering platform plugs into your site, takes pickup and delivery orders, prints to your kitchen or lands on a tablet, and runs the payment through standard card processing of a couple of percent. No platform commission on top. You set the menu, the prices, the radius and the hours, and you keep the diner's details.
The harder part is winning the people who already order from you through the apps. They do not know you have a direct option, and they will keep tapping UberEats out of habit until you give them a reason not to. The trick is to reach them at the moment they have your food in their hands.
Use the packaging. Every delivery bag gets an insert: a card with a QR code that lands straight on your menu, and a first-order incentive worth claiming, like a free side or 15% off the first direct order. A sticker on the box. A flyer with the meal. It costs cents and it reaches a warm customer who already likes your food.
Make the offer worth it, then bank the repeat. A first-order incentive looks like you are giving margin away, but you are buying a customer onto a channel that never charges you commission again. Most venues recover the cost of the incentive by the second or third repeat order. After that, every order on the direct channel is margin the app would have taken.
Capture the detail everywhere. The order confirmation, the booking, the wifi login, the review request, the table QR code, all of it should quietly collect an email or a mobile with consent. The more places you capture, the faster the list grows, and the list is what lets you bring people back without paying anyone.
A slow site is a closed door on a phone.
Mobile speed is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between an order and a bounce back to an app.
Nearly all your traffic is on a phone, often on patchy mobile data, from someone who is hungry and impatient. If your page takes too long to become usable, they are gone, back to the app that loads instantly. You do not get a second chance.
Google measures this with Core Web Vitals, its scores for how fast the page becomes useful, how quickly it responds to a tap, and whether things jump around as it loads. Those scores feed your ranking, so a slow site is found less and converts less at the same time. It is a double penalty.
We build light. Properly compressed food photos instead of huge unoptimised images, a clean lightweight setup instead of a bloated template stuffed with plugins, and the menu and order button placed so they are usable while the rest of the page is still loading. The goal is a page that feels instant on a mid-range phone on 4G, because that is what your customer is actually holding.
A Bondi burger joint moving orders off the apps.
Fictional venue, realistic numbers. Figures are illustrative.
The venue. Salt & Patty, a small burger joint two streets back from Bondi Beach, doing solid delivery volume but almost all of it through UberEats and DoorDash. The owner, run off her feet on a Saturday, had no idea the apps were quietly taking close to a third of every ticket, and had never had a single delivery customer's phone number.
The leak. Around 320 delivery orders a month at roughly a $42 average, with the apps taking about 30% all in. That is close to $4,000 a month walking out the door in commission, on top of owning none of the customers.
What we did. Built a fast mobile-first site with commission-free ordering on her own domain, wired up direct bookings for the few inside tables, and put a QR insert with a "free loaded fries on your first direct order" offer into every single delivery bag. The order confirmation and the insert both captured email and mobile.
Before to after. She went from 0% of delivery owned to 38% in three months, kept the apps running for the discovery they still bring, and now texts 410 customers about a slow Tuesday for the price of an SMS. The free fries cost her a few hundred dollars. The commission she stopped paying covers that many times over, every month, for good.
Deliverables and the first 30, 60 and 90 days.
What's included
- A fast, mobile-first website on your own domain, built for Core Web Vitals.
- Commission-free online ordering for pickup and delivery, flat-fee not per-order.
- Direct table bookings with automated SMS and email reminders.
- Deposit and card-hold setup for peak times and large tables.
- Customer capture wired into orders, bookings, wifi and review requests.
- Packaging insert and QR design with a first-order incentive to win app customers across.
- Menu, photo optimisation and the order and book buttons placed to convert.
- Monthly reporting in dollars: direct orders, commission saved, share moved off the apps.
First 30 / 60 / 90 days
- Days 1–30: Audit the app leak, build and launch the fast site, switch on commission-free ordering and direct bookings, and start capturing every customer detail.
- Days 31–60: Roll out the packaging inserts and first-order offer, point your Google Business Profile and local search at the direct menu, and turn on booking reminders and deposits.
- Days 61–90: Push the share direct with email and SMS to the growing list, review the numbers, and double down on whatever is moving the most orders off the apps.
Want it built and run end to end? See Done-for-you, or pair this with email & SMS marketing to bring the captured customers back.
From app-dependent to ordering direct.
Audit the leak
We total what you are paying the apps in commission and fees, and work out how much you would keep by moving even a third of orders direct.
Build the channel
Fast website, commission-free ordering and direct bookings, all live on your own domain with customer capture wired in from day one.
Drive orders to it
Local search, your Google Business Profile, the list and packaging inserts all point people to order direct, with a small first-order nudge.
Shift the share
Each month we report commission saved and the share moving off the apps, then push harder on what is working.
This is module 4 of the Packed Out system. Read the website & bookings deep dive and the guide to commission-free online ordering in Australia.
What changes in the till.
Margin back, customers owned, less reliance on two platforms.
- The cut the apps were taking on direct orders stays in your business, order after order.
- Every direct order builds the list you own, so you can bring that diner back for the cost of a text.
- A real ordering and booking channel that does not depend on the UberEats and DoorDash duopoly.
- A website that loads fast and turns a "what's nearby" search into an order or a table.
- Clear monthly numbers on commission saved and the share shifting direct.
- Handing 25–35% of every ticket to a platform that keeps your customer.
- Being fully dependent on two apps that set the fees with little to undercut them.
- Paying again every time you want to reach a past delivery customer.
- A slow, dated site that makes people give up and open an app instead.
Ordering is one piece. Here's the rest.
Owners ask us this about going direct.
How much commission does restaurant online ordering cost?
On the big apps, a lot. UberEats and DoorDash typically take 25–35% of every order, plus card fees. Commission-free direct ordering through your own website costs you a flat tool fee and the standard card processing of a few percent, and nothing per order to a platform. On a $50 order that is the difference between losing about $15 and losing a dollar or two.
Now that Menulog has closed, what are my options?
Menulog stopped operating in Australia on 26 November 2025, which leaves UberEats and DoorDash as a near-duopoly with strong pricing power. That is exactly why owning a direct ordering channel matters now. We set up commission-free ordering on your own site so you are not fully dependent on two platforms that set the terms.
Will I still need UberEats and DoorDash?
For now, probably some. The apps bring discovery and a certain kind of customer. The goal is not to switch off overnight, it is to shift the share. We use the order confirmation, packaging inserts and your list to nudge repeat customers to order direct next time, so over months the high-commission channel shrinks and the channel you own grows.
Do I really own the customer with direct ordering?
Yes. When someone orders through your own site you get their name, email and mobile with consent, and you can reach them again for free. On the apps, the platform owns that relationship and you pay every time you want it back. Owning the customer is the whole point of going direct.
What does a website and online ordering cost with Packed Out?
You can build it yourself with the Playbook for a one-off $499, which covers the website and direct ordering setup. Or we build and run it inside the Managed service from around $1,950 a month as part of the whole system. The ordering platform itself is usually a small flat monthly fee rather than a cut of every sale.
How do I get my UberEats and DoorDash customers to order direct?
You put your direct ordering in front of them at the exact moment they already have your food in hand. A printed insert in every delivery bag with a QR code and a first-order offer, a sticker on the box, and a card with the meal. Keep the offer simple, like a free side or 15% off the first direct order, and make the link land straight on the menu, not a homepage. Most venues recover the cost of the incentive on the second or third repeat order, because after that the customer keeps coming back through the channel you own.
Will a slow website really cost me orders?
Yes, and more than most owners think. A hungry person on a phone gives your site a few seconds before they bounce back to an app. Google also uses Core Web Vitals, its speed and stability scores, as a ranking factor, so a slow site is found less and converts less at the same time. We build on a fast, lightweight setup, compress the food photos properly and keep the menu and order button above the fold so the page is usable while the rest loads.
Can a booking system actually reduce no-shows?
It can, and it is one of the fastest wins we set up. Automated SMS and email reminders the day before and a few hours out cut no-shows on their own. For peak times, large tables and ticketed nights we add a small deposit or card hold at booking, which all but eliminates the empty table that never calls to cancel. The deposit comes off the final bill, so a genuine diner never feels it, and a no-show no longer costs you a prime Friday two-top.
The guides behind this service.
Want to understand the how before you hand it over? These free guides break it down, with real Australian numbers.
Stop paying a third of every order.
A 15-minute call, no pitch. We'll work out what the apps are costing you and what a direct channel would keep.