@baltimorel01@JohnStossel@judgeglock@ManhattanInst Exactly the trap: owners either eat the 15-30% or pass it to customers, and lose either way. What's working for a lot of spots: keep the delivery apps for discovery, but push repeat customers to a commission-free direct ordering page. Keep the marketing, win back the margin.
@16vchq https://t.co/VRobGq92wN - AI-powered all-in-one for restaurants & small businesses. One platform for website, online ordering, POS, marketing & reviews, run by an AI agent named Happy. The zero-commission ordering is the part owners love most.
Watched a restaurant owner build a full website, menu, photos, and online ordering just by chatting with our AI. Live in under 10 minutes. The "I'll get to my website someday" era is officially over. https://t.co/VRobGq92wN
Restaurant owners: take your last statement, divide total card-processing fees by total card sales. That's your real effective rate. Most are shocked it's 3%+. On $40k/mo that's ~$1,200 you could be keeping every month. Know your number before you renew anything.
Most restaurants quietly lose 15-30% of every online order to delivery-app commissions. On $30k/mo in delivery sales, that can be ~$9k gone. Zero-commission ordering isn't a perk anymore, it's survival.
The math that quietly breaks small restaurants: delivery apps take 15-30% per order. On a $20 ticket that's up to $6 gone before food cost. Owning even an imperfect online-ordering flow pays for itself fast.
Restaurant owners: what's the one piece of software you pay for but secretly hate? Mine's a tie between clunky POS systems and delivery apps taking 25%+ a ticket.
Highest-ROI 10 minutes for a restaurant this week: claim and fully fill out your Google Business Profile. Photos, hours, menu, an order button. More "near me" traffic finds you that way than any ad at your budget.
@Ghostgoddess00 Pro tip: most local spots will save you (and themselves) a chunk if you call or order from their own website instead of the app. Same food, no marketplace tax.
@drok149@kobratrading@ClownWorld Exactly the math no one talks about. The 25% markup means the customer is now paying ~$1.25 for every $1 they would've paid in-store — just so the restaurant can break even on the marketplace order. Nobody wins except the platform.
@Trevor_Majors@ClownWorld Good breakdown. The other piece restaurants don't always realize: even when you set the SAME price on DoorDash and your own site, the third-party still nets the customer toward the marketplace. The fix is making direct ordering as easy as the app to use.
@PhilmoreRobert@ClownWorld This. The 25% has to come from somewhere. Either menu prices go up, portions go down, or staff pay does. None of those are great outcomes for the customer either.
@lemniscate69d@ClownWorld Yep — the markup gets passed straight to the customer, and the restaurant still nets less. Direct ordering on the restaurant's own site is way cheaper for everyone, but most operators don't have an easy way to set it up.
Building in public update from https://t.co/VRobGq92wN:
0% churn across our beta restaurants
150+ in our Dallas/Austin pipeline
4 multi-location operators live
Turns out "one tool that actually works" is a real value prop.
If your restaurant pays for:
— a website builder
— a POS
— an online ordering plugin
— a delivery integration
— a social media tool
— an email marketing tool
— an ad manager
— a reviews tool
you have ~6 vendors too many.
Restaurant marketing in 2026 looks like:
AI writes the post
AI generates the image
AI runs the ads
AI replies to the reviews
Owner gets the time back to actually run the restaurant.
That's the trade we're shipping.
Real-talk POS math:
Toast: 2.49–2.99% per swipe
Square: 2.6%
Interchange + 0.08% + $0.08: ~1.7%
On $50K/month in card sales, that's ~$4,500/year staying in your pocket.
Tiny percentages. Real money.