How to accept orders at your restaurant in Canada

For dine-in and counter service, the order has to get from the guest to the kitchen quickly and correctly. There are three common ways to do it:

• Paper tickets. Staff write the order on a notepad and hand it to the kitchen. It costs almost nothing, but busy nights and hard-to-read handwriting cause mistakes, and you get no sales records.
• A POS system. A point-of-sale system, such as Square, Toast, Clover or Lightspeed, is a till on a tablet or terminal. Staff enter the order, it prints in the kitchen or shows on a kitchen screen, and the guest pays by card. You pay for the equipment or a monthly plan, plus card fees.
• QR codes on the tables. Guests scan a code, see your menu on their phone and order. It helps when you are short on staff, but some guests will still want to order from a person.

Phone orders cost nothing to set up, and some regulars prefer to call. The problems show up on busy nights: someone has to answer, write the order down and read it back, and a misheard item or address is hard to fix later. Phone orders are usually paid at pickup, so a customer who doesn’t show up costs you the food.

To make phone orders easier:

• Read every order back, including the customer’s name and phone number.
• Give a realistic pickup time, and add a few minutes when the kitchen is busy.
• Tell regulars about your online ordering link, so next time they can order and pay without waiting on hold.

Your own online ordering page is a web page with your menu. Customers choose their food, pay by card and pick a time for pickup or delivery. The order comes straight to your restaurant, and the customer’s name and contact details stay with you, not with an app.

Three ways to get one

• An add-on to your POS. POS companies such as Square and Toast sell online ordering that connects to your till. A good fit if you already use their system.
• Ordering software with a monthly fee. You pay the same amount every month, plus card processing, however many orders you get. It suits busy restaurants with steady online orders.
• A per-order fee with no monthly fee. You pay a small percentage only when you get an order, so a slow month costs little. Platesready works this way: a 5% platform fee on completed orders plus Stripe card processing (2.9% + 30¢), with no monthly fee and no setup fee.

What you need before you start

• Your menu, with prices, sizes and add-ons, and a few good photos.
• A way to take card payments online. The ordering platform usually handles this.
• Your opening hours, how long orders take, and pickup instructions.
• A way to see new orders in the kitchen: a tablet, a phone alert or a printer.
• If you deliver: your delivery area, and who brings the food.

Delivery without a delivery app

You don’t need a delivery app to deliver. You can use your own drivers, or book an on-demand courier for each order. Platesready supports delivery through Uber Direct and Trexity in supported cities: the customer orders from your page, and a courier brings the food, without a marketplace commission on the order.

Setting one up for the first time? Our step-by-step guide to starting online ordering covers the menu, payments, tax, kitchen and launch in detail.

Delivery apps list your restaurant next to many others. When someone orders, the order shows up on a tablet or in your POS, you make the food, and the app’s courier picks it up.

The main reason to join is reach: people who have never heard of you can find you in the app. The cost is a commission on every order, and the customer stays with the app. Next time, they open the app, where other restaurants are one scroll away.

What the apps charge in Canada

• Uber Eats: 20%, 25% or 30% of each delivery order, depending on the plan, and 10% of pickup orders.
• DoorDash: 20%, 25% or 29% of each delivery order, depending on the plan, and 8% to 10% of pickup orders.
• SkipTheDishes: doesn’t publish a rate card. Ask for its current rates before you sign.

From each company’s Canadian pricing page, checked September 2026. Rates change, and extra fees, ads and promotions can add to them.

You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can keep one app so new customers can find you, and invite your regulars to order from your own page next time.

When people search for your restaurant on Google or open it in Google Maps, they often see an Order online button. It can send them to a delivery app or to your own ordering page. You decide which, for free, in your Google Business Profile:

1. Open your Business Profile and select Food ordering.
2. Select Add a link and paste the address of your own ordering page.
3. Select your link, choose Set as preferred, and turn on pickup, delivery or both.
4. To take off a delivery app you don’t use, select it and choose Remove link. Google says the app must remove it within 5 business days.

Our guide How to add your own order link to Google Business Profile walks through every screen and the settings that are easy to mix up.

Here is what a restaurant pays the company that takes the order, for one $30 order. It doesn’t include your food, staff or packaging costs.

Monthly fee or per-order fee? A monthly fee costs the same whether you get 20 orders or 2,000, so it works out cheaper per order when you are busy. A per-order fee costs little in a slow month, so it suits restaurants that are starting out or whose orders go up and down.

If you have decided to take orders online yourself, these six steps get you from nothing to your first order.