Hey Larry, hope all is well. I have been putting a lot of thought into what we talked about and I think I have something really good here.
Basically I build the restaurant a brand new website with online ordering built right into it, and it costs them nothing up front. When a customer orders, it pops right up on an iPad in the kitchen and rings until somebody grabs it. The restaurant keeps all of their customers info, and instead of paying a monthly fee they just pay us a small percentage on each online order, which you and I split. You know the payments side of this better than I do, so I kept that part short. The first thing on the page is how we run the cards, which is something we can talk through when we get on the phone.
This is the part that shapes the build the most, and it is the first thing worth talking through on the phone.
The reason is simple. Our percentage comes off as an application fee before the restaurant's payout, so neither of us is ever invoicing a restaurant or waiting on anybody. The same rail runs the online orders and a counter reader on the same iPad, so in-store and online land in one set of reports. You would get your own login across every restaurant. If you are fine working on Stripe for this, we can do the website, the ordering and the counter in one shot.
I get it if you want these merchants on your own book. The website and the online ordering are exactly the same either way. The two things that would change on my end are whether your gateway can pay a partner fee at settlement, because if it cannot, our cut gets billed to the restaurant monthly instead of coming off the top, and whether you want one of your own terminals at the counter instead of our register screen. Easy to go through on the phone.
This is what DoorDash takes out of a $40 order compared to what we would take. On top of that they keep the customers info for themselves, which is really what hurts these places.
Here is how we pull their customers off DoorDash a little at a time. We print each restaurant a stack of cards that say something like "Order direct at tonyspizza.com, skip the fees, earn points," with a QR code straight to their site. They drop one in every DoorDash and Uber Eats bag and hand one out at the counter. Every person who scans it becomes a customer the restaurant pays us 8% on instead of paying DoorDash 25%, and every one of those orders shows up in our numbers too. The first batch of cards is on us with every plan.
From the customers phone to the kitchen in about a minute and a half.
They pick their food, choose pickup or delivery, pay by card and add a tip.
It shows up on the iPad, a phone or a laptop and keeps ringing until somebody taps Accept.
When they tap Ready, the customer gets a text saying it's ready.
Their own driver takes it out, or the customer comes in to get it. That's up to the restaurant.
Two-day funding straight to their account, with our percentage already out.
If nobody taps Accept within 2 minutes the owner gets a text and an email. The card does not get charged until the kitchen accepts the order, so if one ever slips through it just cancels itself and nobody ends up with an angry customer.
The kitchen runs it on an iPad turned sideways, but the same exact app works on a phone or the laptop by the register.
Nobody has to type a menu in. You snap a picture of their paper menu and send it to me, and the AI on my back end reads it and builds the whole menu online, sizes, toppings and prices. When they raise prices later it is the same thing, a photo of the new menu and it updates. The owner can still change anything by hand on the screen above.
These numbers are just made up to show you the layout. Every restaurant gets the same kind of login for their own menu and hours, and from your screen you can tap into any of them and see their orders board exactly the way the kitchen sees it.
Same iPad, same menu, same login. The cashier rings it up, the customer taps their card on the reader, and it shows up in the same reports as the online orders.
Here's where that same $40 order goes on the Business Hub plan at 10%.
Nobody invoices anybody. It comes off at settlement.
Three plans. The restaurant pays one flat percentage on each online order, 8%, 10% or 12%, and that is the whole bill. About 3% of that is the card fee they already pay today on every swipe, so the 8% plan is really about 5% for everything we do. The customer never pays an extra fee. Once a place gets big, they earn the Autopilot rate at the bottom. Counter sales are separate and run at a regular card rate.
There is no cap on any of this. The more they make, the more we make, and if they have a slow month they pay less. When a place grows big enough to hit Autopilot, they still pay us more than a small place does, they just pay a better rate for it. That is how volume pricing works everywhere, and owners get it right away.
Book a table right on the website, a text reminder the day of, and the host marks the party seated with one tap. The restaurant pays 50 cents for each reservation that actually shows up, nothing for no-shows, no monthly fee. Works with any plan. For comparison, OpenTable is $149 a month plus about $1.50 a head for the bookings it brings and 25 cents a head for the ones through the restaurant's own site.
Drag these around. This is what a restaurant pays us each month and what actually comes back to us after the card fee, before you and I split it.
Figured on a $40 average order. Counter sales are not in here since they run at a card rate, not the percentage. Restaurants do close, so I would not count on every one staying a full year.
This is roughly what a restaurant doing $5,000 a month online is paying right now depending on who they are with.
15 to 30% of every order, plus fees on the customer. And DoorDash keeps the customer.
Same deal, 15 to 30%, plus fees on the customer, and Uber keeps the customer.
$39 a month plus $3 an order. Pizza only, and Slice owns the app and the customer.
ChowNow, Owner.com and the like. $249 to $499 a month whether they sell or not, plus card fees or a percentage on top.
Card fees inside. Slow month, they pay less. The customer is theirs, and so is the website.
You will run into this name. Owner.com is the national version of what we are doing, and it is worth knowing cold, because an owner who has sat through their demo will compare us to it. They are the reason I am confident in the model, and the reason our pricing is built the way it is.
| Who | The restaurant pays a month | Their customers pay on top |
|---|---|---|
| Us, Ordering plan 8% | $800 | $0 |
| Us, Business Hub 10% | $1,000 | $0 |
| Owner.com Flexible, $249 a month + 5% + card fees | about $1,115 | $500 |
| Owner.com Flat, $499 a month + card fees | about $865 | $500 |
| DoorDash or Uber Eats, 15% plan | $1,500 | $1,000 to $2,000 |
| DoorDash or Uber Eats, 25% plan | $2,500 | $1,000 to $2,000 |
| DoorDash or Uber Eats, 30% plan | $3,000 | $1,000 to $2,000 |
Our numbers have card processing inside. Theirs have it added at about 2.9% plus 30 cents. Being straight with you, on the restaurant's own bill Owner's flat plan comes in under our Hub plan at this size. Where we win every time is the customer never pays a fee, and once a place passes $25,000 a month Autopilot puts us back under them.
A branded app in the App Store and Google Play. Drivers on demand through DoorDash when the restaurant has none. Plug-ins for Toast, Clover and Square. A 24/7 support line. All of that is on my list, and the app is the first one, since it is a wrapper around the site we already build.
A real custom website instead of a template. Hands-on monthly work on the Google listing, the blog and the ads. A counter register on the same system. QR ordering at the table. Reservations. No monthly fee, no customer fee. And you, sitting across from the owner, already running their cards.
If an owner brings them up, the whole answer is one line. Owner.com charges the restaurant and the customer, we only charge the restaurant, and less. Then show them the $40 order on this page.
You sit down with the owner, help them pick a plan, and grab a photo of their menu along with their hours, delivery area, logo and bank account. That menu photo is all I need, the AI on my end reads it and loads the menu. After that you are the only person the restaurant deals with. If they have a menu question or something is not working right, they call you.
I build the website and the ordering, get the kitchen app onto their iPad, and handle the emails, the texts and the Google work on the Growth plan. If something needs fixing you text me, I take care of it, and you let the owner know. They never have to hear from me.
Their website and their customer list are theirs. After 12 months the site is theirs outright, and if they leave before that the build gets billed at the normal price.
The ordering system, the kitchen app, the logins and the emails and texts are ours. It all runs on my servers and works as long as they are on a plan, the same exact way Toast or ChowNow work.
Every restaurant signs a simple agreement before I build anything. One page, plain English: the plan and the percentage, the 12 months, what is theirs and what is ours. You have them sign it when they pick a plan, and nothing gets built without it.
One restaurant you already know and trust. We build it around them first so the kinks get worked out on one place, not ten.
The website, the ordering, the kitchen app and your login, with the pilot's menu loaded as we go. I build it once and every restaurant after that runs on the same system.
Their site goes live with the app on their iPad. You walk them through it and I am right behind you the whole first week. Roughly two months from the day we say go.
Once we see it working, you start bringing in the rest and I add the register screen and the reader at the pilot. From there a new restaurant takes about two weeks from a menu photo to their first order.
You know these owners. Here are the things this system does that make them lean forward. Each one is a sentence you can say across a table. The first group is in the build from day one, spread across the three plans, and the second group is what I am adding after the first restaurants are live.
Nothing in the second group is promised to a restaurant until it exists. Use it to show where this is going, not to close a sale.
Our percentage comes off before the restaurant gets paid, so we both see every dollar on the same screen and nobody is waiting on anybody. As far as how we split it, I would rather sit down and work that out with you and put it in writing than guess at it here.
On the rail question, if you would rather run these on your own processor, that works too. The two things that would change are whether your gateway can pay a partner fee at settlement, and whether you want one of your own terminals at the counter instead of our register screen. It changes how our cut gets collected, but the website and the online ordering work the same either way.
Nothing here is set in stone. When we get on the phone we can go through all of it, roughly how many restaurant owners you are in front of, which one would make a good pilot, and how we want to run the cards. Take a look when you get a chance and we will talk it through.
Thanks,
Rich