Commission-free ordering platforms have stopped selling one feature and started selling a stack: ordering, catering, QR codes at the table, email, SMS and loyalty. I think independent restaurants should judge that stack on its total cost for each order it adds. The 15 to 30 percent marketplace commission that vendors put in their pitch is only one input to that sum.
The latest example arrived on November 10. ChowNow announced updates across its Ordering, Marketing and Operations suites: SMS alongside email, loyalty and customer data tools, a branded catering ordering flow, and QR code ordering for dine-in guests. The company sells it in three packages, Launch, Grow and Elevate. Its CEO, Kanika Soni, put the pitch plainly: “Our goal is to make sure restaurants can capture more of that value directly and build a real relationship with their customers along the way.”
The commission is the number everyone quotes
ChowNow’s release says third-party delivery platforms charge “as much as 25 to 30% per order.” Olo, pitching its own commission-free Olo App to chains, says marketplace exposure “usually costs your brand 15-30% in commission,” plus promotional spend. ChowNow says it has saved independents $1.36 billion in commission fees since 2011, an average of $16,000 per restaurant per year compared with third-party marketplaces.
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Those figures may well be right. They answer a narrower question than the one an operator faces, which is what the whole direct channel costs and what it brings in that would not have arrived anyway.
The vendor’s own example shows a rate
ChowNow’s catering example is worth working through. It says a restaurant running 10 catering orders a month at a $360 average order value “could save more than $4,300 a year” with ChowNow’s catering rate compared with a 15 percent marketplace commission. Ten orders a month at $360 is $43,200 a year. Fifteen percent of that is $6,480. A saving of more than $4,300 leaves at most about $2,180 a year going to ChowNow on that business, or about 5 percent of order value.
Five percent against fifteen is a good trade for a restaurant that already has the catering customers. It is still a rate, and it sits next to a package fee, card processing and the staff hours that SMS and email campaigns take. The release says campaigns “run themselves once they’re set up.” Someone on a restaurant team still writes them, builds the lists and decides what to discount.
The strongest case against me
The best argument for leading with the commission comparison is that it is simple and mostly true. For orders a restaurant would get either way, moving them from a marketplace to a direct channel saves the difference, and ChowNow’s customer examples show real volume: DJ’s Pizza, it says, generated 542 orders and more than $32,700 in direct sales from email and SMS campaigns since May 2026. An operator running on thin margins does not need a spreadsheet to see that keeping more of each order helps.
I agree with that for orders that would have come anyway. The harder question is the orders that would not. Marketplaces sell reach to diners who have never heard of the restaurant, and that reach is the part of the commission a direct channel does not replace. The $16,000 average saving assumes the orders move over intact. Some will, and some regulars will simply keep ordering the way they always have, by phone or at the counter, at no commission at all.
What I would ask before signing
An independent operator comparing direct-ordering platforms should get four numbers in writing: the monthly package price at the tier that includes the features it wants, the rate on catering and any other per-order fees, the card processing rate, and the terms for exporting customer data if it leaves. Then it should run the channel for 90 days and count how many direct orders came from customers who were not already ordering by phone or in person.
The National Restaurant Association’s own research found that 82 percent of operators say their technology paid off, which tells me most operators will find a direct channel that earns its keep. They will find it faster if they price it the way their accountant will: subscription plus rates plus hours, divided by the orders it added. DoorDash’s DashOS, which ties ordering to loyalty and reservations, shows the marketplaces are building direct tools of their own, so the same test will apply to every vendor in the category.
Source: ChowNow
