Online ordering that runs through your POS instead of around it
The tablet farm on the pass is a symptom. Ordering that lands in your own ticket flow removes the transcription step and the commission at once.
Online ordering built into the POS sends a web order to the same printer or kitchen display as a dine in ticket, with no extra tablet on the pass and no commission taken per order. Both platforms we carry publish it as included. You still pay card processing on those orders, and delivery is a separate decision from ordering. Owning the ordering channel is mostly about owning the customer data.
Our own site, or the delivery apps?
Both, in that order. Your own ordering page should be the cheapest and best path for a guest who already knows your name, because that order carries no marketplace commission and the customer record belongs to you. The marketplaces are a discovery channel you pay for, and they are worth paying for when they bring you somebody who had never heard of you.
The mistake is treating the marketplaces as your ordering system. When they are your only channel you do not own the customer list, you cannot email your regulars, and you make the same margin on the family that eats with you every Sunday as you make on a stranger. Shift4 makes the same argument in blunter terms, describing its online ordering as commission free and framing it as keeping orders in house instead of paying third party platform fees.
What comes included, and on which package?
Clover lists a Clover online menu page, no fee online ordering, pickup and delivery order types and remote order firing as included on every published restaurant package, full service and quick service, at Starter, Standard and Advanced alike. Third party menu integrations sit on that included list at every tier too.
Shift4 lists online ordering among the features included with Shift4 Dine, describes it as commission free, and states that it integrates directly into the POS so orders reach the kitchen without additional devices. Shift4 also publishes order throttling, so nobody drops twenty web tickets on the line at the same moment a full dining room sits down, and a Marketplace that pulls DoorDash, Uber Eats and Postmates back into the same order flow.
Both publish QR code ordering and payment. On Clover it appears as contactless dining, QR code order and pay, included at every published tier. On Shift4 Dine it appears on the pricing page as a free QR code solution. On a patio, in a taproom, along a row of high tops, a QR menu with pay at table removes the two longest waits of the meal.
So what does commission free mean?
Commission free means no percentage of the order goes to a marketplace. Commission free does not mean the order is free to process. Every card taken online is a card not present or a stored card transaction, and it carries a processing cost like any other sale. On Clover the published keyed rate is 3.5 percent plus 10 cents, and a phone order typed into a terminal is billed at that higher rate, not the 2.3 percent plus 10 cents card present rate.
Sit with that gap for a second, because it is the clearest argument for a real ordering page. A guest typing her own card into your page is not the same transaction type as a server keying a number off a phone call, and your statement will show you the difference every month. So do the arithmetic the reps skip: total card fees for the month, divided by total card volume for the month. Compare quotes on that one number. Your processor takes more out of the year than your POS software ever will.
Commission free also does not mean delivery free. If a driver has to move the food, somebody pays for that driver: you, the guest through a delivery fee, or a marketplace taking a cut. Pick one now and put it on the menu.
A real person calls you back within two hours, Monday to Saturday, 8am to 7pm Central.
How does a web order get to my kitchen?
It should print or display exactly like a dine in ticket. Same format, same device, routed to the same prep station. Shift4 states its online orders route directly into the POS and the kitchen with no additional devices required. Clover lists remote order firing as included at every published restaurant tier.
The wrong version of this is the tablet farm. Four screens on the pass, four ticket layouts, four chimes, and one person on payroll whose real job is retyping orders into the POS. Every retype is a chance to miss a modifier, and every missed modifier is a remake.
Make any vendor show you a web order printing on the kitchen printer during the demo. Not a slide about it. The ticket itself, with a modifier and a special instruction on it, so you can see how it reads to a cook at eight on a Saturday.
What goes wrong after you switch it on?
Menu drift. The dine in menu changes, the online menu does not, and guests order things you stopped making in March. We build the online menu from the same item records as the POS menu, and we show you how to change both in one pass.
Hours and holidays. A page that takes orders while the kitchen is dark produces refunds and one star reviews on the same night. Set the hours, set the holiday exceptions, then check them before every long weekend.
Prep times and throttling. Promise fifteen minutes at seven on a Friday and you have promised something your kitchen cannot do. Shift4 publishes order throttling for exactly this. Configure it on day one, not after the first ruined Saturday.
Items you have 86ed. If marking an item sold out on the POS does not pull it off the ordering page, you will keep selling it. Test that behavior yourself during the demo. Operators complain about it more than anything else in bundled ordering.
Ordering through your POS, or through the marketplaces
Not good against evil. A choice about which orders you pay a commission on, and which customer records you get to keep.
What works
- No per order commission on your own ordering page, on either platform we carry.
- The customer record, the email address and the order history stay yours.
- Orders land in the same ticket format as dine in, so the kitchen learns one workflow instead of four.
- Both platforms publish QR code order and pay, which covers patios and big parties with no extra hardware.
- Shift4 publishes order throttling, so the kitchen gets a valve during a rush.
- Marketplace orders can be pulled back into the same order flow instead of living on a separate tablet.
What does not
- Commission free is not fee free. Card processing still applies to every online sale, and card not present pricing is usually higher than card present.
- Your own ordering page has no audience on day one. Nobody is searching for it. The marketplaces are a discovery channel, and replacing them takes months of pointing guests at your link one receipt at a time.
- A POS bundled ordering page will not out design a dedicated ordering platform. Yours will look competent and a little generic. If your brand lives on the ordering experience, go buy a real ordering platform and do not pretend the bundled page is close.
- Delivery is still your problem. Bundled ordering does not put a driver in your parking lot.
- Every included tool needs configuring. Hours, prep times, throttling, tax by category and 86ing behavior are all setup work, and skipping them is how included ordering earns its bad name.
- Drop the marketplaces entirely and you lose the discovery traffic that came with them. For some owners the apps are simply the better channel, and most restaurants should run both and price them differently.
Questions restaurant owners ask
Does online ordering cost extra on these systems?
Clover lists no fee online ordering and an online menu page as included on every published restaurant package. Shift4 lists online ordering among the features included with Shift4 Dine and describes it as commission free. Neither one removes card processing costs on the resulting sale, and card processing is the cost to model before you move a single order between channels.
Can I stop using DoorDash entirely?
You can. Do it slowly. The apps are a discovery channel, and switching them off on day one deletes orders from people who have never heard of your ordering link. Launch your own page, push it hard on receipts, on packaging and on your Google listing, then look at the marketplace mix again in a few months. For plenty of restaurants the apps still win that comparison, and leaving them on is the right call.
Will online orders print in my kitchen automatically?
They should. Shift4 states online orders route directly into the POS and kitchen with no additional devices required, and Clover lists remote order firing as included at every published restaurant tier. Insist on watching a real web order print on a real kitchen printer during the demo, modifier and special instruction included.
What is QR code order and pay, and is it worth it?
A code on the table opens your menu, the guest orders and pays from her phone, and the ticket fires to the kitchen. Both platforms publish it as included. The payoff shows up on patios, in taprooms and with big parties, where the longest part of the visit is waiting to catch somebody's eye.
How do I keep the online menu matching the real menu?
Build both from the same item records instead of keeping a separate online list. A price change, a new item or an 86 then flows to both. Ask specifically how marking an item sold out behaves on the ordering page. Nothing else in online ordering causes more refunds than that one behavior.
Vendor pricing and tax rates change without notice. Confirm current figures with the vendor, the city or your accountant before you rely on them. Not tax, legal or accounting advice.
Every number on this page traces to a primary source
- Clover lists an online menu page, no fee online ordering, pickup and delivery order types, remote order firing and third party menu integrations as included at every published restaurant package tier.clover.com / restaurant
- Clover lists contactless dining, QR code order and pay, as included at every published restaurant package tier, and publishes a keyed rate of 3.5 percent plus 10 cents versus 2.3 percent plus 10 cents card present.clover.com / restaurant
- Shift4 Dine online ordering is commission free, integrates directly into the POS with no additional devices, includes order throttling, and connects to DoorDash, Uber Eats and Postmates through Marketplace.dine.shift4.com / online ordering
- Shift4 Dine pricing page lists a free QR code solution among included features.dine.shift4.com / pricing