Zero commission online ordering for restaurants

Almost every restaurant in India that does delivery pays a commission on it. The rate varies a great deal by restaurant, by city and by what was negotiated, so the only number worth talking about is the one on your own contract. Put that number into the calculator below and it will tell you what those orders cost you across a year.

Commission is not the whole bill

The percentage is the visible part. Restaurant owners consistently tell us the total cost of being on a platform includes at least three other things:

• The discounts you fund. Most visibility on a marketplace is tied to running an offer, and the offer usually comes out of your margin rather than theirs.
• The ad spend to stay visible. A listing that does not pay for placement drifts down the page, and the page is the only shelf you have there.
• The customer you never meet. The order arrives with a name and a drop address, and then it is gone. You cannot tell that person about Thursday's offer, because you have no way to reach them.

The third one is the expensive one, and it does not show up on any invoice. You paid to acquire a customer and then rented the relationship back on every repeat order.

Leaving the platforms is usually the wrong move

The obvious reaction is to pull the listing. Restaurants that do it in one move typically lose the month. Marketplaces are genuinely good at one thing, which is putting your food in front of somebody who has never heard of you. That is a real service and it is worth paying for.

What they are not worth paying for, over and over, is a customer you already have.

So the sensible framing is not "how do I get off the platform". It is "how many of my repeat orders can I move to a channel I own". That question has a much better answer, and it does not require you to risk your delivery volume to find out.

The shift that works

1. Keep the listing. Let it keep doing the job it is good at, which is meeting people for the first time.
2. Put your own ordering link in the bag. A QR on the bill, a card in the packaging, a line on the label. The customer already liked the food; they are the easiest person in the world to convert.
3. Make the second order easier than the first. Their address is saved, their usual order is one tap, and there is no marketplace to scroll past on the way in.
4. Give them a reason to keep coming. Points that are worth something, an offer aimed at people who have gone quiet, and a way to tell you when something went wrong.

None of that is fast, and anyone promising otherwise is selling something. A realistic first target is a modest share of repeat orders in the first few months, growing as the habit forms. Set the calculator above to a number you would actually believe.

What "zero commission" means here, exactly

Worth being precise, because the phrase gets used loosely. Retova charges a fixed fee. We do not take a percentage of your order value, and our price does not rise because your sales did. If you double your revenue through your own app, you pay us the same thing you paid last month.

What that does not mean is that an order costs you nothing to fulfil. If you take online payments, your payment gateway charges its own fee. If you use a third-party fleet for delivery, they charge for the drop. Those are your arrangements with those providers and they are separate from us. We are telling you what our pricing does, not making a claim about your whole cost of doing business.

What you actually need to run your own ordering

Less than people expect. To go live you need:

• a menu in any format, including photographs of a printed card
• a logo and two brand colours
• your hours and address for each outlet
• your Google Business listing

From there it is typically about a week, most of which is digitising the menu. You get a branded web app and an Android app, ordering for delivery, takeaway and dine-in, loyalty and offers, customer records, and the counter and kitchen screens to run it. Your customers see your restaurant, not us.

The number that matters

It is not the commission rate. It is how much of your revenue comes from people ordering a second, fifth and twentieth time, and how much of that you keep. A customer who orders from you every month for two years is worth many times what their first order was, and that is the relationship worth owning.

If you want to see what this looks like on your own menu, get in touchand we will walk you through a restaurant already running on it. Or readhow it works for restaurants, orwhat setup involves.