Taking orders on your own website

A regular customer wants to pick up dinner on their way home. They open a delivery app, find your menu, and place an order. You pay a high commission on a sale you would have received anyway.

That is the core problem with restaurant online ordering today. You need marketplaces to find new customers. But you lose margin when your regulars use those same apps out of habit.

The marketplace trade

Marketplaces do a specific job. They aggregate demand. People open them when they are hungry but do not know what they want to eat. They scroll until a photo catches their eye.

When a marketplace sends you a new customer, the commission is a marketing expense. You are paying them for discovery. If the customer enjoys the meal, the trade makes sense.

The trade breaks down when the customer already knows your business. If they search for your specific restaurant and order through a third party, you are paying a marketing fee for a customer you already acquired. That eats directly into your profit.

The arithmetic of your own site

You fix this by setting up own website ordering. When a customer knows they want your food, they usually search your name on their phone. If your website is the first result and has a clear order button, they will use it.

A restaurant website order online changes the math. You stop paying a percentage of the total ticket to a third party. The larger the order, the more margin you keep.

The goal is not to leave the marketplaces entirely. You keep them active to catch people browsing for a category like pizza or sushi. You just want your regulars to buy directly from you.

How the money moves

Commission free online ordering means the transaction happens between the customer and your payment processor. There is no intermediary taking a cut of the food sales.

If you use lokal for your website, the setup is straightforward. The site connects directly to your own Square account. When a customer pays, Square processes the card at their normal rate. The money goes to your account.

lokal takes zero percent commission on these orders. You do not wait for a weekly payout from a third party. You just pay the standard card processing fee to Square.

Shifting the habit

Getting customers to switch requires a little effort. Start with your digital presence. Make sure your Google Business profile points to your website, not a delivery app. Do the same for your social media profiles.

Use your physical space. Put a small card in every takeout bag thanking them and asking them to order directly next time. Tell them it helps the business. Most regular customers want to support you and will gladly use your site if the menu is easy to read.

If you do not run your own delivery drivers, you can still put your marketplace delivery links on your own website. Customers who need delivery can click through. Pickup customers stay on your site to order directly.

lokal gives you a single system to manage this. For 99.99 a month plus tax, you get a website builder that publishes to a lokal.business subdomain or your own domain. It includes the website, a register, and tools for reservations and team scheduling. The first month is 1 dollar, and there are no contracts or setup fees.