Your menu, your prices, your product descriptions and your photos can all move to your own ordering page. Your guests and your reviews stay behind, and the place you have built up inside the app does not travel with you either. So the menu is the easy part, and for the people who already order from you, you have to find a way back yourself, because you do not have their name, email address or phone number.

Something changes in your pricing too. Without commission on a direct order you can sit below your platform price and still keep more, so what your guests pay on your own page is something you set again from scratch.

What does come with you?

The content of your menu is yours, from product names and descriptions to prices, categories, options and surcharges: you supplied all of it, and you can use it again on your own channel.

Photos are a bit more involved. If you had them made yourself, they are yours and you can use them anywhere. If they were made by or through the platform, check what your agreement says before you put them somewhere else. That is rarely a problem, but you want to have checked it once before those photos end up on your own page.

What stays behind?

Part of what you have built up on the platform stays there, and it helps to know what that means in practice before you start.

Your guest data stays with the platform: names, email addresses, phone numbers and order history cannot come along, because you never had them. Your reviews also stay where they are, since they are attached to your profile on that platform. And the place you have built up inside the app disappears the moment you stop, so if you switch everything off at once, new guests will not find you there any more.

So switch nothing off. Your own channel comes alongside it, and the platform keeps bringing in new guests in the meantime.

Why your prices can come down

Your margin on your own channel works out differently than it does on a platform. If you charge more on a delivery platform than you do in the venue, that is how you cover the commission. It makes sense: if 30% of your revenue comes off an order that the platform delivers, it has to come from somewhere. On your own channel you do not pay that 30%, and that changes the sum. On direct orders through SOUS Commerce Launch or SOUS Commerce Grow the commission is 0%, and you only pay the transaction cost of the payment itself.

Take an €18 pizza on a platform. At 30%, around €5.40 goes to the platform, so you keep €12.60. Put that same pizza on your own channel at €16 and your guest pays less while you keep more. That way you hand your guest an advantage you do not have to pay for yourself.

So do not carry your menu over one for one, because this is the moment to take a hard look at your prices.

In what order do you tackle this?

1. Build your menu with the prices for your own channel. The platform prices do not belong on your own page. This is the moment you make that choice.

2. Check your opening hours and availability. An ordering page that still takes orders at 22.30 while the kitchen closes at 22.00 costs you an angry guest in the first week.

3. Sort out delivery. If you deliver yourself or only do pickup, this part is quick. If you want to deliver nationwide without couriers of your own, we connect you with delivery partners in the Netherlands and Belgium.

4. Make sure people find your channel. Your listings have to be right on Google, Maps and ChatGPT. SOUS Spotlight distributes them to 45-plus platforms and search engines, per location.

5. Give the people who already order from you a reason to switch. You do not have their details, so this runs through the venue itself: a QR code on the packaging, a card in the bag, a sign at the counter, an offer on the receipt.

6. Leave the platform running and measure the difference. Look at the share of direct orders, and with more than one venue you do that per location.

Brut172 went live nationwide in a single day and reached 600-plus guests in two countries.

What changes for your kitchen?

Little changes for your kitchen, and that is deliberate: an ordering page of your own sends orders through to you the same way they come in now. What does change is that you decide when you are open for orders, which dishes are available and how long your prep time is. On a platform that is often fixed inside a system that has no idea your stove is half broken.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to enter my whole menu again?

No, not by hand. The content of your menu is yours, so you can carry it over: paste the link to your Uber Eats or Thuisbezorgd page into the SOUS storefront generator and in about 30 seconds you see an ordering page of your own with your own menu in it.

Can I take my reviews with me?

No, reviews are attached to your profile on that platform. What you can do is start collecting reviews on your own Google profile from day one, because those are yours and they help people find you when they are looking for food nearby.

Do I lose guests when I switch?

Only if you switch the platform off. Leave it running and you lose nothing, while you build a second channel alongside the one you already have.

Do I have to keep the same prices?

No, and that is the whole point. Without commission on direct orders you can sit below your platform price and still keep more.

Do I need a new website?

No. SOUS Commerce works with your existing website, or sits next to it as a separate ordering page that you link to from your own channels.