27 October 2026/14 min read

Add Direct Online Ordering — Stop Losing 30% Per Order

hospitalitysmall-businessweb-designcosts-pricing

The Commission Maths Your Delivery App Doesn't Want You to Run

A restaurant turning over $8,000 per week in delivery orders through a platform charging 28% commission is paying $2,240 every week — $116,480 a year — for the privilege of accessing their own customers. If that number makes your stomach drop, you're not alone: the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's Digital Platform Services Inquiry documented that food delivery platforms hold significant bargaining power over independent restaurants, and their commission structures routinely make third-party platforms the most expensive distribution channel most restaurants will ever use.

The alternative isn't complicated. An online ordering system built directly into your restaurant's website charges zero commission. Payment processing fees still apply — typically 1.6–1.9% for Australian domestic card transactions — but on $5,000 per week in direct orders, that's roughly $87 in fees versus $1,350 through a 27% commission platform. The gap is $65,650 per year. That's a kitchen upgrade, an extra staff member, or a meaningful marketing budget.

This guide covers exactly how to set it up: which platform to choose, what your ordering page must include, how to get customers to actually use it, and the one thing most restaurant owners get wrong that kills their direct ordering channel before it gains traction.

What an Online Ordering System for a Restaurant Website Actually Is

An online ordering system for a restaurant website is a digital tool — embedded in or connected to your website — that lets customers browse your menu, customise their order, pay, and receive confirmation without the transaction passing through a third-party delivery marketplace.

Orders can be for pickup (the most common starting point), local delivery managed by the restaurant or a contracted driver, or scheduled catering orders. The critical distinction from Uber Eats or Menulog: the customer is transacting directly with you. You capture their contact details, their order history, and the full revenue from the sale. Every customer who orders direct is a customer you can reach again — without paying a platform for the access.

The Four Types of Restaurant Online Ordering Systems

1. Third-Party Marketplace Ordering

Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Menulog. These give access to a large active customer pool but extract 15–30% per order, and the customer data stays with the platform. Useful for initial customer discovery; expensive as a permanent primary channel. The right model treats them as a top-of-funnel acquisition tool, not a revenue source.

2. White-Label Ordering Platforms

Software built specifically for restaurant ordering that lives on your website or connects to it via an embedded widget or button. You pay a flat monthly fee — or nothing on free tiers — with zero commission per transaction. Examples include GloriaFood, Bopple, and Square Online. This is the most common setup for independent Australian restaurants building a direct ordering channel.

3. POS-Integrated Ordering

Your in-store point-of-sale system — Lightspeed, Square for Restaurants, or similar — includes an online ordering component that syncs with your kitchen display in real time. Higher setup cost, but eliminates double-entry and reduces order errors by routing online orders directly to the kitchen. Best suited to restaurants handling 30 or more online orders per day.

4. Website Builder with Built-In Ordering

Platforms like Wix include restaurant ordering as part of their website plans. Faster to set up than a standalone ordering tool, but with less flexibility for complex menus, delivery zone management, or deep POS integration. A practical starting point for cafés or small takeaways with straightforward menus.

Step-by-Step: How to Set Up Online Ordering on Your Restaurant Website

Most restaurants can have a direct ordering system live within three to five business days. Here is the sequence that works.

Decide: pickup only, delivery, or both. Start with pickup. It requires no delivery zone configuration, no driver coordination, and no decisions about who absorbs fuel costs. You can add delivery later without rebuilding anything. Roughly 60% of direct online orders in Australia are for pickup — customers are comfortable collecting if you make the process fast and clear.
Choose your ordering platform. Use the comparison table in the next section. For most independent restaurants with a monthly budget under $100, GloriaFood's free tier or Square Online covers everything needed. For restaurants wanting Australian support, more customisation, and loyalty features, Bopple is worth the investment.
Build your digital menu. This is the most time-consuming step and the most commercially important. Every item needs a name, a description (30–50 words covers it), GST-inclusive pricing, and — ideally — a photograph. Menus with food photography convert at roughly double the rate of text-only menus. You don't need a professional photographer; a well-lit phone photo on a plain white surface is enough to start.
Configure payment processing. All major ordering platforms integrate with Stripe or Square. You'll need an ABN and a business bank account. Domestic Visa and Mastercard processing in Australia typically runs 1.4–1.9%. Enable Apple Pay and Google Pay — these single-tap checkout options reduce mobile cart abandonment significantly and are expected by most Australian customers under 40.
Set your preparation time and trading hours. Build in buffer. If your realistic kitchen turnaround on a Friday night is 35 minutes, set the displayed estimate to 35–45 minutes. Underestimating and making customers wait is more damaging to repeat orders than setting an honest expectation upfront. Configure your ordering window to match your kitchen capacity, not just your trading hours.
Connect the ordering system to your website. Most platforms provide an embeddable widget, an inline menu, or a hosted ordering URL you can link to. A clearly labelled "Order Online" button in your website's main navigation is non-negotiable. If a customer has to search for how to order, some of them won't bother.
Set up order notifications. You need an alert the moment an order comes in. Configure push notifications on a dedicated tablet or phone, email alerts to a kitchen-facing address, or — if you have a POS — direct routing to your kitchen display. A missed order is a refund request and a permanently lost customer.
Test end-to-end before launch. Place three test orders from different devices: one on mobile, one on desktop, one through a different browser. Verify that confirmation emails send, your notification arrives instantly, and the order total and items appear correctly in your dashboard. Fix anything before telling customers the system is live.

Platform Comparison: Online Ordering Systems for Australian Restaurants

Pricing reflects late 2025 rates and is subject to change; verify current plans directly with each provider before committing. Monthly costs are in AUD where a local rate is published.

Platform	Monthly Cost	Per-Order Commission	Payment Processing	Best For	AU Support
GloriaFood (free tier)	$0	0%	~2.9% via Stripe	Pickup-focused, tight budgets	Email only
Square Online	$0 (free plan)	0%	1.6–1.9% domestic	Cafés, fast casual, existing Square users	Yes
Bopple	From ~$99/mo	0%	Via integrated Stripe	Mid-size restaurants, loyalty programs	Yes (Australian company)
Wix Restaurants	From ~$17/mo	0%	~2.4% via Wix Payments	New websites with simple menus	Limited
Shopify + ordering app	$39/mo + app fees	0%	~1.75% Shopify Payments	Multi-location, growth-stage	Limited
Lightspeed Restaurant	From ~$109/mo (POS + online)	0%	Via integrated processor	Full-service, high volume	Yes
Uber Eats (for comparison)	$0	15–30% per order	Included in commission	New customer acquisition	Yes

GloriaFood was acquired by Freshworks and is now marketed under the Zuppler brand in some regions. The free ordering tier remains available; verify current plan features at their website. Square's processing rate varies by card type and monthly transaction volume.

What Your Restaurant's Online Ordering Page Must Include

The ordering page is not just a transaction interface — it is a sales tool. Customers who arrive at it are already primed to spend; the page either converts them or loses them to the nearest open app.

Photographs for every item, or every category at minimum. Pages with food photography convert at roughly 2–3 times the rate of text-only menus. Use natural light, a 45-degree angle, and realistic portion sizes. Overstyled food photography that doesn't match what arrives in the bag destroys repeat orders faster than almost anything else.
GST-inclusive pricing, displayed upfront. Under Australian Consumer Law, consumer-facing prices must be displayed GST-inclusive. Show inclusive prices throughout the menu. If you want to itemise the GST component, do it at the checkout summary — never use the exclusive price as the headline on the menu page.
Allergen and dietary flags on every item. Mark GF (gluten free), V (vegetarian), VG (vegan), N (contains nuts), D (contains dairy) clearly against each item. If cross-contamination is a risk in your kitchen, say so explicitly. Incorrect allergen information carries serious legal and reputational consequences in Australia.
Estimated preparation time, visible before checkout begins. Show a realistic time range — "Ready in 20–30 minutes" — on the ordering page before a customer selects their first item. Hiding this until after checkout sets the order up for a complaint.
Delivery fee and minimum order details before the customer starts building their order. Surprise charges at the final payment screen are the leading cause of cart abandonment in food ordering. State delivery fee tiers and minimum order amounts at the top of the page.
A visible phone number. For allergy queries, order modifications, and payment issues, a click-to-call number on the ordering page builds trust. Even if nobody calls it, its presence increases first-time customer conversion.
Operating hours and next-available slot. If you're closed when a customer visits, the page should state when you next open and — ideally — allow a scheduled order rather than simply refusing the visit with no explanation.

For restaurants thinking about how packaging can reinforce direct ordering, ZenPacks Australia supplies eco-friendly food packaging to hospitality businesses across Australia — printing your direct ordering URL on branded packaging is one of the lowest-cost ways to accelerate repeat direct orders from existing delivery customers.

The Hidden Reason Most Direct Ordering Systems Fail

The technology is not what fails. Across the Australian restaurants that invest in direct ordering and quietly abandon it twelve months later, the pattern is consistent: the system worked fine. Nobody used it.

Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Menulog spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year conditioning Australian consumers to open their apps first. Your ordering page, even if it is better designed, faster, and cheaper for the customer — no service fee, no platform markup — is invisible by default. Changing that behaviour requires active, sustained effort on your part.

The restaurants that successfully shift volume to direct ordering do five things deliberately:

The 10% direct discount, promoted on every delivery bag. A printed card in every order: "Order direct next time — save 10%. No app fees, no markups." The timing is ideal: the customer is holding evidence they just used a platform, and a concrete 10% incentive on their next order is memorable and actionable.
QR codes on all packaging, linked directly to the ordering page — not the homepage. The fewer steps between the QR scan and the "Place Order" button, the higher the conversion rate. A QR code that opens a homepage with no visible order link loses the customer at the first hurdle.
Google Business Profile configured to route ordering traffic direct. In your Google Business Profile, the "Order Online" action can point to your own website ordering page rather than a delivery platform. This is free to configure and captures customers searching for your restaurant specifically — the highest-intent traffic you will ever receive.
Email collection from the first direct order. Require an email address at checkout. A list of 300 regular customers you can email once a month with a special offer generates more reliable repeat revenue than any algorithm-driven platform ranking. You own the list; no platform policy change can take it away.
Staff who mention it. At pickup. At the counter. On phone orders. "Did you know you can order direct on our website and skip the platform fees?" Three seconds. Most restaurants never say it out loud. It works.

Expect six to twelve months before you see a meaningful shift in customer behaviour from platform to direct. Every customer who makes that shift saves you their commission on every order they place with you for the rest of your relationship with them. The maths compounds in your favour the longer you stay consistent.

How to Get Google to Send Customers to Your Ordering Page

A direct ordering system that nobody finds is a system that doesn't work. Local SEO is the most reliable sustained source of new direct ordering customers — and unlike paid advertising, the traffic doesn't stop when the spend stops.

Page title format: "Order Online — [Your Restaurant Name], [Suburb]" performs strongly in local search results and signals to both Google and the searcher exactly what the page does. Vague titles like "Menu" or "Order Here" underperform in local pack rankings.

Opening copy: Include your suburb, cuisine type, and ordering options in the first 100 words of the page. "Order Vietnamese takeaway online in Footscray — pickup in 20 minutes or local delivery from [Restaurant Name]" gives Google concrete signals to index and serves customers arriving from a local search query.

Schema markup: Add Restaurant schema and MenuSection schema to your ordering page. This structured data helps Google understand the purpose of the page and can generate rich results — star ratings, menu items, and a direct order link — in search. Google's Rich Results Test tool is free to use and shows whether your markup is correctly implemented.

Mobile page speed: Google's Core Web Vitals measure your ordering page on mobile. A page taking more than 3 seconds to fully load on a mobile connection loses a significant percentage of visitors before they see the first menu item. Compress food photos to under 150KB each, use fast hosting, and avoid third-party scripts that delay the ordering interface from rendering. Google's PageSpeed Insights delivers a free audit with specific recommendations.

Google Business Profile: Keep your hours, address, and phone number current. Add new food photos at least monthly — an active profile with recent photos consistently ranks higher in the local pack than a stagnant one. For restaurants wanting systematic local search management without handling it in-house, a monthly SEO retainer covers citation management, profile updates, and local ranking tracking at a predictable cost.

What It Actually Costs to Build a Restaurant Website With Ordering

Many Australian restaurants operate with a website that functions as a digital brochure — a PDF menu, a phone number, and an address. This misses the commercial purpose of a website entirely.

A customer who finds your restaurant on Google at 7pm on a Friday has already decided to order. If your website doesn't let them do it directly, they open Uber Eats and you've handed 25% of that sale to a platform for nothing. Or they open Uber Eats, see a competitor with better placement that week, and order elsewhere. Either outcome costs you real money.

Here is what each build route typically costs in Australia:

Build Route	Typical Upfront Cost (AUD)	Ongoing Monthly (AUD)	Ordering Integration	Control Level
Agency (full-service design firm)	$5,000–$15,000	$200–$600+	Custom or plugin-based	High (if you own the code)
Freelancer	$1,500–$5,000	$50–$200 (ad hoc)	Varies by skill set	Medium
DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace)	$0 setup	$17–$50	Built-in (limited)	Medium (within platform limits)
Specialist small business web service	Fixed fee (e.g. $99 + GST)	Optional care plan from ~$24.95	Integrated on delivery	High

For cafés, the same logic applies: a website for a café or coffee shop that includes a professional menu and ordering capability needs to load fast on mobile, reflect the brand accurately, and convert visitors — none of which requires a $10,000 agency engagement. For restaurants, a website for a restaurant or takeaway built with direct ordering integrated from the start is a commercial asset that pays for itself in recovered commission inside the first year for any business doing meaningful delivery volume.

Frequently Asked Questions About Restaurant Online Ordering

Do I need a full website to have online ordering?

No, but you'll get better results with one. GloriaFood and similar platforms give you a hosted ordering URL that works independently — you can share it directly or set it as your Google Business Profile ordering link. However, a proper website with your own domain and branding generates significantly more customer trust and tends to rank better in local search than a hosted third-party ordering subdomain. Start with a standalone ordering link if you need something immediately; build out the full website once your ordering volume justifies it.

Can I use an online ordering system for pickup only?

Yes, and for most independent restaurants starting out, pickup-only is the right choice. Delivery requires driver coordination, insurance considerations, delivery zone decisions, and a policy for late or missing orders. Pickup eliminates all of that: the customer orders, the customer collects, you cook. Every major ordering platform supports pickup-only mode. Add delivery later once you understand how your direct ordering volume behaves and whether the margin justifies the operational complexity.

What payment methods should I offer?

At minimum: Visa and Mastercard. Additionally: Apple Pay and Google Pay, which reduce mobile checkout friction substantially and are now standard expectations for Australian customers under 40. PayPal is worth enabling if your platform supports it at no added cost — it builds purchase confidence for some demographics. Cash on collection is an option some restaurants offer, but it adds reconciliation complexity and removes the certainty of a pre-paid order. Most restaurants that add cash-on-collection quietly disable it within a few months.

Is it legal to charge more for delivery than for pickup?

Yes. Delivery fees are standard practice and legally permissible under Australian Consumer Law, provided the total cost including the fee is clearly disclosed before the customer completes the transaction. What the ACL prohibits is displaying a price and then adding undisclosed charges at the final payment screen. Display delivery fees upfront — ideally before the customer begins building their order, not as a last-second addition at checkout.

How do I handle GST on online food orders?

Prepared food sold by restaurants and takeaways is taxable at 10% GST. Fresh unprocessed food is GST-free, but anything sold hot — or food sold in a form clearly intended for immediate consumption — typically attracts GST. If your annual turnover exceeds $75,000, GST registration is mandatory and every transaction requires a compliant tax invoice. Your ordering platform should be configured to apply GST automatically and generate tax records. If your menu spans both GST-free and taxable items, consult your accountant to ensure each item is classified correctly before launch.

Do I still need to be on Uber Eats if I have direct ordering?

For most restaurants, yes — at least in the short term. Third-party platforms provide customer discovery that a new direct ordering system cannot match immediately. The practical strategy used by Australian restaurants successfully managing this transition: stay on platforms for acquisition, and systematically convert those customers to direct ordering using the tactics above. Over 12–24 months, consistent conversion effort can shift 30–60% of regular delivery customers to direct orders, substantially reducing average commission spend while keeping your market reach.

How long does it take to set up online ordering?

A basic pickup-only system using Square Online or GloriaFood's free tier can be configured and tested in two to four hours by someone comfortable with web-based tools. Building a complete menu with photos, setting up payment processing with an ABN and business bank account, and testing end-to-end typically takes one to two days. A properly integrated ordering system on a purpose-built restaurant website — with schema markup, Google Business Profile linking, delivery zone configuration, and mobile speed optimisation — takes three to five business days with professional help.

What is the single biggest mistake restaurants make with direct ordering?

Setting it up and telling nobody. The most common wasted investment in restaurant online ordering is a technically functional system with zero promotion behind it. Your ordering page needs to be actively marketed: on your Google Business Profile, on every piece of packaging, at every in-store touchpoint, in your social media bios, and to your existing customers by any contact method you have. Launch it like a product launch — a first-order discount, staff mentioning it at the counter, a post on your socials. A system that customers don't know about performs identically to one that doesn't exist at all.

If you need a professional restaurant website with an integrated ordering system live within five business days, weauto builds websites for Australian restaurants and takeaways from $99 + GST.