Third-party delivery apps

What this is for

If you take orders from outside delivery platforms, they arrive on someone else's tablet with someone else's commission attached. This is how you get them into Restodesk so your kitchen, your reports and your margins all see them.

The setup

Give each platform its own order type, marked Is Delivery.

1. Go to Settings › Orders and turn on Allow Custom Order Type Options.
2. Add an order type per platform — name it what everyone calls it.
3. Mark it Is Delivery.
4. Set its Default Delivery Price if the platform's fee structure differs.
5. Leave Enable From Customer Site off — these come from the platform, not your own site.

See Custom order types.

Why bother separating them

Because otherwise platform orders and your own delivery blend into one number, and that number hides the thing you most need to know.

With separate order types you get, in every report:

• Revenue per platform, not lumped together.
• Which dishes sell where. Platform customers often order differently from your own.
• Kitchen load by channel at each hour.
• A margin you can actually compute — platform revenue minus commission, against your own.

That last one is the reason. A platform taking 25–30% can look like growth on a revenue chart while costing you money on every order. You can only see that if the channels are separate.

Pricing for platforms

An item can carry a different price per order type. That's how restaurants absorb commission — platform prices set higher so the money reaching you matches your dine-in margin.

Set it on the menu item, per order type. Two things to weigh:

• Customers do compare. A large gap between your own site and a platform is visible and sometimes resented.
• Some platforms have rules about price parity. Check your contract before you set them.

Taking the order

Orders from a platform still have to be entered — the platform's own tablet doesn't talk to Restodesk on its own.

The practical routine:

1. Order appears on the platform's tablet.
2. Staff enter it in Restodesk under that platform's order type.
3. Send the KOT so the kitchen sees it with everything else.
4. Mark it along as it's prepared and collected.

It's double entry, and it's a real cost in staff time. What you get for it is one kitchen queue instead of three, and reporting that includes every order rather than only the ones you took yourself.

Judge it by volume. A handful of platform orders a day is worth entering. A hundred is worth a conversation about an integration — see connecting other systems for where orders can arrive from, and talk to us about the API.

Pushing your own channel

Every platform order costs you 25–30%. Every order on your own site costs you a payment fee.

Things that actually move customers across:

• A card in every platform bag with your own ordering address on it.
• Your address on the packaging, not just on the receipt.
• A better deal on your own site — where your platform contract allows it.
• Loyalty points that only work on your channel. See Loyalty.

Platforms bring customers you'd never have reached. The goal isn't to leave them — it's to make the second order come to you directly.

Good to know

• Order types are per branch, so a location that uses one platform and not another configures independently.
• Platform orders still print kitchen tickets, still follow the order journey, and still count in your reports.
• Mark platform orders paid in the way that matches how you're settled — the platform pays you, not the customer.
• Turning off a platform's order type keeps every order already filed under it. Don't delete a type with history.

Next

Delivery is covered. Next is the people running it — your team.