How to set up online ordering for your restaurant, step by step

Decide three things first. Pickup, delivery or both? Which dishes? How far ahead can a guest order?

An online menu is not your dining room menu. Cut dishes that go soggy in a bag. Keep the ones that cook in time and travel well. A shorter menu is faster to cook, easier to photograph and harder to get wrong.

Each dish needs a name, a one- or two-line description, a price and a photo. Add the options guests choose, such as size and add-ons, and a note field for requests like “no onions”.

Put allergens where guests see them before they pay. Canada names eleven priority allergens: eggs, milk, mustard, peanuts, crustaceans and molluscs, fish, sesame seeds, soy, sulphites, tree nuts, and wheat and triticale. The United States names nine: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame.

In pickup.kitchen you can send a photo of your menu or paste the text, and it reads the dishes and prices into a list. You check every line and fix what it got wrong. It does not read a PDF.

This is the step that decides whether online ordering helps you or hurts you. A site that promises more than the kitchen can cook gives you late tickets and angry guests.

Count the most orders your kitchen can finish in 15 minutes on a good night. Set the limit a little below that. Example: if you can finish 12 orders in 15 minutes, that is 8 in a 10-minute slot. Set the limit at 6 or 7. Raise it after two busy weeks if no ticket is late. Lower it if red tickets pile up.

• Slot length: pickup.kitchen offers 10 minutes to an hour.
• Orders per slot: when it is full, the slot closes on the site.
• Cutoff: stop taking orders at a time you choose, such as 8 p.m. the night before.
• Closed dates and Sold out today: take a day off the menu with one change.

Open 5 to 9 p.m. in 10-minute slots and you have 24 slots. At 6 orders a slot, the site can accept up to 144 orders that evening.

If your kitchen has never cooked more than 70 in a night, that ceiling is too high. Shorten your hours, or lower the limit, until the ceiling matches a night you have really done. Look again after every busy weekend.

Card payment on the page is the standard. A guest who has paid is likely to collect, and you are less likely to be left with a cooked order nobody picks up. Cash on pickup suits a few regulars, not the whole menu.

Card payments go through a processor. Stripe charges 2.9% plus CA$0.30 on domestic cards in Canada, with no setup or monthly fee. International cards add 0.8%, and each dispute costs CA$15. In pickup.kitchen, payments go to your own Stripe account.

Example: a $30 order with a domestic card costs 2.9% plus CA$0.30, or $1.17. A hundred such orders a month cost $117 in card fees, whichever ordering tool you use.

An order that arrives as an email gets missed at 6 p.m. The order has to reach a screen the cook watches, with a sound. Ask yourself who watches that screen on a Friday night.

In pickup.kitchen, each paid order becomes a ticket with a chime. The cook taps Preparing, then Completed, and Completed tells the guest it is ready. Tap the sound button once on the tablet so the chime can play. See the kitchen display system page.

You have three choices. Skip delivery. Use your own drivers. Or use a courier service. Uber Eats also lists Uber Direct, a delivery service with no commission and pricing based on distance.

pickup.kitchen has routes, a driver app, a photo at the door and a live tracking link for your own drivers. It does not supply couriers. Decide the area you can reach quickly, and say so on your site.

Add your address, which door to use and what to say on arrival. A line such as “Say your name at the window” saves a question on every order.

Guests want three messages: the order was received, it is ready, and it was cancelled if you cannot make it. In pickup.kitchen, guests get an order page and an email after paying, then a message when it is Ready for pickup or On the way. If they agreed to texts at checkout, the same updates arrive by text.

Put your ordering link in your Instagram bio, on the door, on every bag and in your emails. Then add it to Google, because many guests search there first.

Google's help pages describe the steps. Open your Business Profile, choose Food ordering, then Add a link, and enter your ordering URL. Use Set as preferred and turn on Preferred for pickup or for delivery. Turning off Accept orders on your profile hides order options and links, so leave it on. In some regions the link shows under an Order online button. Check your profile after you save.

Test before you share the link. Do it on your phone, on mobile data, not on your kitchen wifi.

• Place an order with a real card, and pay.
• Watch the ticket arrive and hear the chime. Mark it Preparing and Completed.
• Read the email and order page your guest gets.
• Try to order after the cutoff, and for a full slot. Both should be blocked.
• Cancel the test order and check the refund.
• Ask a friend to order without your help. Fix the step where they get stuck.

Compare tools on five fees: setup, monthly, per-order commission, card processing and delivery. Here are numbers from the apps' own pages.

• Uber Eats Canada lists 20%, 25% or 30% on delivery orders, depending on the plan, and 2.9% for its webshop.
• DoorDash Canada lists 20%, 25% or 29% on delivery orders. It says its Online Ordering is commission-free, with payment processing fees only.
• Stripe charges 2.9% plus CA$0.30 on domestic cards in Canada.
• pickup.kitchen has free onboarding, no monthly fee and 10% per order. On card orders the guest pays the 10% at checkout, and Stripe's own fee comes out of your Stripe account.
• On a $40 delivery order, 30% is $12 and 29% is $11.60. A 10% fee is $4.

GloriaFood's home page says it will reach end of life on April 30, 2027, and that Oracle does not offer a direct replacement. If you use it, plan the move now. Export or keep a copy of your menu and customer list, and test a new tool for a month before the old one stops.

Decide in advance what you do when a dish runs out, a ticket is late or a guest does not show. Write the rule on a card by the screen.

For a dish that runs out, set its stock to zero so nobody can order it. For a whole day, mark it sold out. If you cancel a ticket in pickup.kitchen, the guest is told the order will not be made. If a card was charged, the message says it will be refunded. For a late order, call the guest before they arrive.

Most failed launches fail in the same few ways.

• Taking orders the kitchen cannot cook, because there is no slot limit.
• No cutoff, so late orders land on a loaded kitchen.
• Options without prices, so the total is wrong.
• Nobody watching the screen.
• Skipping the test order.
• A link on the site but not on Google.