Margins August 31, 2026 · 11 min read

JB

Online ordering for restaurants is sold as a monthly price. That is almost never what it costs you.

The real number has four lines, not one: the monthly fee, the card processing rate, the add-ons that were not in the plan you were quoted, and any percentage a platform takes off the top of each order. Owners compare the first line and get caught by the other three.

This guide puts the published 2026 numbers next to each other so you can add up your own four lines.

One disclosure before we start: OrderEatRepeat is our product. We are one of the options below. Read this the way you would read anything written by a company with a horse in the race. Every price here links to that company's own page and was checked on 31 August 2026.

What is an online ordering system for restaurants?

An online ordering system for restaurants is software that shows your menu, takes pickup and delivery orders, collects payment, and sends the order to your kitchen. It replaces the phone call, and on a direct system it replaces the delivery app's cut as well.

There are three kinds. A marketplace (DoorDash, Uber Eats) brings you customers and charges a percentage of every order. A direct ordering platform puts the order on your own page and charges you a fee instead of a percentage. A POS with ordering attached (Toast, Square, TouchBistro) bundles ordering into the till system you already run.

The three are priced in completely different ways. That is why comparing them by monthly fee alone goes wrong.

What does online ordering actually cost per month?

Published 2026 prices run from $0 a month with a percentage taken off every order, to about $409 a month with no percentage. The number that matters is the total of the monthly fee plus the processing rate plus any commission, on the order volume you actually do.

Here is what each company publishes on its own page.

Prices are as published by each company on 31 August 2026. DoorDash and Uber Eats figures are from their Canadian merchant pages. ChowNow figures are from its US pricing page. Confirm a current quote before you sign anything.

Do the arithmetic on your own numbers. At $10,000 a month in online orders, a 25% commission is $2,500. A flat $99 is $99. That gap is the whole argument, and it is why we built this.

Why did we build this?

We built OrderEatRepeat because we were GloriaFood customers ourselves, and it was discontinued. We had seven restaurant locations in Ottawa that needed somewhere to go, and every replacement we looked at either took a percentage of every order or cost more per month than online ordering was worth to us.

So the brief was short. Zero commission. A monthly price one location can carry on its own. Every feature inside that price, instead of sold back later as modules.

That is why there is one plan and not three, and why loyalty, follow-up emails, receipt printing and delivery zones are not add-ons. We were pricing it for ourselves before we were pricing it for anyone else. Our locations still run on it every night, so when something breaks during service, it breaks for us too.

How much do the delivery apps really take?

DoorDash publishes 20%, 25% or 29% of each delivery order depending on the plan, and 8% to 10% on pickup orders. Uber Eats publishes 20%, 25% or 30% on delivery, 15% if you deliver the order yourself, and 10% on pickup — but only with validated in-store pricing, otherwise 15%.

We've broken every published rate down by plan and country in what DoorDash charges restaurants. Those percentages are not a rip-off on their own. They buy you customers who have never heard of you. The problem is that the same rate keeps applying to the regular who orders every Thursday and already knows your name.

A direct ordering page is not a replacement for the apps. It is where you send the people who already found you.

Is there a free online ordering system, and what is the catch?

Free online ordering exists and it is real. The catch is always somewhere else in the bill: in the card processing rate, in the features held behind an add-on, or in the platform's own future.

Square Online publishes a free plan with paid tiers from $36+ a month, and takes 2.8% + 30¢ on each online transaction in Canada. GloriaFood ran a free base system for years — and as of now, its own homepage says: "GloriaFood has been discontinued and is no longer accepting new signups."

Free is a fine place to start. It is a bad place to build ten years of customer data.

What is commission-free online ordering?

Commission-free online ordering means the platform takes no percentage of your order. You pay a fee, and the platform makes no more money when your sales go up. It does not mean free — you still pay your card processor.

You pay a fee — monthly, or nothing at all — and someone still has to move the money. On our plan that is $99 CAD / $89 USD per location per month and 0% of every order, and the processing fee goes to your processor, not to us.

See how commission-free online ordering is priced against the apps. Ask any commission-free provider one question: what changes on my bill if I double my online sales? If the answer is "nothing", the claim holds.

Do I have to change my payment processor?

No, not with every platform. Six processors take online card payments on OrderEatRepeat today: Stripe, Square, Braintree, Moneris, Authorize.Net and TD. Your rates and deposit schedule stay as they are, because the money never stops with us.

Switching ordering software should not mean re-underwriting your merchant account, waiting on approval, or accepting a new rate. You can keep the processor you already use. For reference, Stripe's published Canadian online card rate is 2.9% + CA$0.30.

If a platform makes you move processors, that is a cost. Price it before you switch.

Do I need a POS system to take online orders?

No. A direct ordering platform runs on any browser and a tablet, with no till system involved. A POS-led product is the better answer only if you already run that POS and need online and dine-in tickets in one system.

The trade-off is real, so here it is plainly: a POS-led product like Toast puts online orders straight into the same system as your dine-in tickets, which is genuinely better if you already run that POS. We do not replace a POS and we do not pretend to. If your ordering and your counter must be one system, buy the POS.

If your problem is only pickup and delivery orders, you do not need to buy a till system to fix it.

How long does it take to get online ordering live?

An afternoon, if the menu is ready. The four steps are: sign up, send us your menu, connect your processor, take orders. The menu build is the part that takes the time, and we do it for you.

Most owners have their menu as a PDF, a printed sheet, or trapped inside the platform they are leaving, and turning that into categories, sizes, options and prices is the actual work.

That is why we do it for you.

Who builds my menu?

We do, by hand, free, at signup. You send us the menu you already have and we build it out, set your hours and draw your delivery area.

Being honest about the limit: this is a person doing it, not a magic importer. It is included in the monthly price, and it takes as long as it takes for a large menu.

You approve it before it goes live.

Can I take pickup and delivery on the same system?

Yes. One storefront handles both, with separate hours, separate delivery zones, minimum order thresholds and delivery fees per zone.

Customers can also order ahead for a later time. That matters more than it sounds if you run a lunch rush that is really a 90-second window.

Does per-location pricing work if I have more than one restaurant?

Yes, and it is worth understanding before it reads as expensive. Each location is billed at the same flat rate, with no volume limits and no higher tier at any location count.

Two locations is two times the flat fee, and both are managed from one dashboard with one login. There is no chain plan to negotiate and no per-order charge that grows with a busy site.

What does the kitchen actually see when an order comes in?

A kitchen board on a tablet, signed in with a four-digit code, separate from your admin login. The order arrives, an alarm rings until someone acknowledges it, and the ticket prints.

Staff can accept with a prep time, mark an item sold out, pause ordering from the kitchen when the pass is buried, or reject with a reason. Nobody has to learn a back office to work a Friday.

This is the part owners underestimate. Software your staff refuse to use is not cheaper than commission, it is just a different way to lose the order.

What happens now that GloriaFood is discontinued?

GloriaFood's own homepage states it has been discontinued and is no longer accepting new signups, while it continues to support existing customers through the transition. Export your menu and your customer emails first, then choose where to go.

If you are on it, you are on a platform with an end date, and your menu, your hours and your customer list live inside it. Everything else — QR codes, the link on your Google listing, the button on your site — points at a domain you will need to change.

We migrate GloriaFood menus as part of the free menu build. There is a step-by-step migration page if that is where you are, and a wider look at the alternatives if you are still deciding.

So what should you actually compare?

Compare the total of monthly fee, processing rate and commission, on the order volume you did last month. That single number decides it, and it is the only number that survives contact with a real Friday night.

Then check three things the price page will not tell you: whether you can keep your processor, whether your staff will use the kitchen screen, and whether you can export your customers and leave. The best online ordering system for restaurants is the one that is still the cheapest at three times your current volume, and that you can walk away from.

If you want to see ours before you decide anything, there is a live demo storefront you can order from.

Get started →

Joseph Besharah — Founder, OrderEatRepeat. Joey runs a seven-location restaurant group in Ottawa, which is where this software was built and where it still runs every night.

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