The Best Online Ordering System for a Small Restaurant

Search for the best online ordering system for a small restaurant and you will find lists of twenty products, each with a feature grid. Almost none of the features matter. Three things do.

1. What it costs per order, said out loud

The first question to ask any ordering system is simple: on a €30 order, how much do I keep?

If the answer needs a spreadsheet, that is the answer. Ordering systems charge in some combination of four ways:

• A monthly subscription, paid whether you take ten orders or a thousand
• A commission on each order
• A per-order fee on top of the commission
• Card processing, sometimes marked up, sometimes passed through at cost

A small restaurant usually does best with no monthly fee and a low commission. A subscription is a fixed cost in the month you are quietest, and the months you are quietest are exactly when a fixed cost hurts.

On the large delivery marketplaces, commission is commonly reported at 20-30% of the order. On a €30 order that is €6 to €9 gone before food, wages or rent — more than the margin on most dishes. That is why so many small places have a love-hate relationship with them: busy, and not noticeably richer.

2. Who owns the customer

This is the question most owners never think to ask and the one that matters most over a year.

When somebody orders through a marketplace, you get an order. You do not usually get a way to reach that person again. So the next time you want them — a new menu, a quiet Tuesday, a reason to come back — you pay the platform again to reach them.

A system worth using leaves the customer relationship with you. You can see who orders, how often and what they like, and you can message them yourself.

3. What it does on a busy night

Every ordering system looks good at three in the afternoon. The test is Friday at seven, when the pass is full and the phone is ringing.

Look for:

• Collection slots with a cap per slot, so the system stops offering times you cannot meet
• A pause button, one tap, for when the kitchen is under
• Auto-reject after a timeout, so an order nobody accepted is refunded rather than left waiting at the counter
• Orders on a kitchen screen, not only on a tablet by the till

A system that cannot say "not right now" will happily take orders you cannot cook, and the customer who waits forty minutes for a cold order writes the review.

What a small restaurant actually needs

Strip away the feature grids and a small restaurant or café needs very little:

1. A menu customers can order from on their phone, without installing anything
2. Collection at a time they choose, from slots you control
3. The money in your own bank account
4. The customer's details, so you can reach them again
5. A way to stop taking orders when you are full

Delivery, group ordering, voice ordering and scheduled orders are all useful. None of them is the first thing.

Collection first, delivery later

Most small places should start with collection and add delivery once collection is working.

Collection is cheaper to run, the food arrives the way you made it, and the customer walks through your door — which is where a second sale, a coffee or a pastry, actually happens. Delivery adds drivers, packaging that survives a journey, and a whole category of complaint that is outside your control.

Getting your first online orders

A new ordering system does nothing until somebody knows it is there. The first month decides whether it becomes a habit or a forgotten link.

• Put the link where people already look for you. Your Instagram bio, your Google listing, the top of your website. Not a page three clicks deep.
• Tell the people standing at your counter. A small sign by the till — order ahead and skip the queue — reaches exactly the people most likely to use it.
• Make the first order easy to repeat. A customer who orders once and collects on time orders again. One who waits twenty minutes past their slot does not.
• Start with a narrow menu if you need to. Online ordering does not have to carry every dish on day one. The ones that travel and that the kitchen can turn quickly are enough.

Most small places find that online orders come first from existing regulars, not from strangers. That is fine. Those are the orders that used to be a phone call during service.

Where Mosey fits

We built Mosey's ordering for exactly the restaurant described above, so it is fair to say how it measures against the three questions.

• Cost: collection is 1.5% of the order, delivery is 6%, with no monthly fee on either. The customer pays a booking fee that scales with the order — €0.30 under €10, up to €1.29 on orders of €50 or more. Stripe's card fee is passed through at cost, with no markup.
• The customer: yours. You see who ordered and can message them, and a completed order counts as a loyalty visit on its own.
• A busy night: collection slots with capacity, a pause per channel, a kitchen display, and a timeout that refunds an order nobody accepted.

On a €30 collection order, Mosey's commission is 45 cent.

Questions to ask any provider

Whichever system you choose, ask these before signing anything:

• What do I keep on a €30 order, in euro?
• Is there a monthly fee, and is it charged in a month with no orders?
• Is card processing marked up?
• Can I export my customer list if I leave?
• Can I pause ordering in one tap?
• Does the customer need an account or an app?

A provider who answers all six in a sentence each is usually one worth talking to.

What it connects to

• Order Ahead: collection ordering at 1.5%
• Delivery for Irish restaurants
• The kitchen display
• Run a loyalty programme
• What Mosey costs — every rate on one page