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Growth
The menu is the easy part. The work is in what you arrange centrally and in what order you roll it out across your locations.
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Team SOUS
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Key takeaways
This article in a few bites
With your own ordering page you keep the guest data and no platform commission comes off an order.
From two locations onwards, central menu management is the criterion that saves you the most work.
Your own ordering channel runs alongside the platforms, and a rollout that starts at one location stays manageable.
On your own ordering page, your cost per order is a service fee from 1%, the subscription and the transaction costs of the payment.
Taking online orders yourself means guests order through your own ordering page instead of through a delivery platform. You keep the customer data, no platform commission comes off an order and you set the menu, the prices and the opening hours yourself. With multiple locations one thing gets added: you want to arrange all of that centrally, without doing it again for every location.
On the twentieth order from that same guest you still pay the same commission, and with every location you open that runs across more orders.
SOUS Commerce was built for this: your own ordering channel alongside the platforms, with the guest data and the menu management on your side.
What changes when you go from one venue to ten?
With one venue a delivery platform is simply a channel next to your other channels. With five or ten venues your delivery revenue depends on it, and the cost and the admin then weigh heavier than they do at a single address.
You pay commission on guests you already know, and that amount scales with every location you open. Who those guests are stays hidden from you, so you cannot invite them to order directly next time. Menus, prices and opening hours are managed per location, in a system that is not yours.
Pushing one price change through eight locations, in a portal that was never built for it, costs you an afternoon.
What does a repeat order cost you per location?
What a repeat order costs you differs sharply between a delivery platform and your own ordering page.
Via a delivery platform | Via your own ordering page | |
|---|---|---|
Cost per order | commission, up to 30% when the platform delivers | a service fee, from 1% on pickup and from 3% on delivery (SOUS Commerce Launch and SOUS Commerce Grow) |
Payment costs | included in the commission | the transaction costs of the payment |
Customer data | stays with the platform | stays with you |
Managing menu and prices | per location, in their system | centrally, in your own system |
Delivery | through the platform | through delivery partners in the Netherlands and Belgium |
Uber Eats publishes its rates itself. In the Netherlands, for example, that is 30% commission on orders they deliver and 14% when you deliver yourself or the guest comes to collect, plus €400 in one-off activation costs.
That 30% applies only when the platform supplies the courier as well. If the guest comes to collect the order, you pay 14% on an order that involves no delivery at all.
A platform charges on the first order and on the twentieth alike, while the guest on that first order is one you might never have found yourself, and the guest on the twentieth is one you would have.
What do you need to take orders yourself?
You don’t need a new website for this. It starts with the ordering page itself, and that page has to handle a few things once you have more than one location.
You need an ordering page that can live on your own domain or sit alongside your existing site, with a checkout that supports the payment methods your guests actually use. If you deliver as well, a connection to delivery partners comes on top of that. Beyond that you want to adjust menu, prices, opening hours and availability per location yourself.
You do not have to set up your own delivery team for this. In the Netherlands and Belgium, SOUS connects you with delivery partners, so you do not take couriers onto your payroll.
How do you handle menus and prices per location without double work?
The difference between a system for one venue and a system for a group is how much you arrange centrally while keeping your freedom per location.
What you want is a base you set up once, with room to deviate per location: one shared menu as the starting point, where prices, opening hours and availability can differ from location to location. A venue that closes at 10 pm no longer receives orders at 10.30 pm, and a location with higher rent can hold its own prices without you maintaining the entire menu twice.
In SOUS Commerce you keep control over products, prices, opening hours, availability and visibility, and you change them whenever your kitchen calls for it.
How do you make sure guests find your own channel again?
Your own ordering page only works if people find it, and that does not happen by itself.
Your opening hours and your menu have to be right per location in your listings, everywhere a guest might look; SOUS Spotlight distributes them to 30-plus platforms and search engines. Someone deciding where to get dinner tonight looks at Google and Maps and by now at ChatGPT too, so you need to be in there. And a guest who has ordered directly once comes back only if you give them a reason to.
What does it cost, and when does it pay for itself?
Our pricing:
Package | Price | Service fee on direct orders |
|---|---|---|
SOUS Commerce Launch | €159 per month | from 1% on pickup, from 3% on delivery |
SOUS Commerce Grow | from €799 per month | from 1% on pickup, from 3% on delivery |
SOUS Spotlight (visibility) | €159 per month, one location | none |
Each extra location on Launch or Grow | €99 per month | same as your package |
SOUS Commerce Launch includes SOUS Spotlight. Each extra location costs €99 per month, and because that amount is fixed per location, you know up front what a new location adds.
The Launch and Spotlight prices above are for a 12-month contract, billed monthly. Both cost €199 per month on a flexible monthly contract. All subscription prices exclude VAT. Payment-processing fees and any delivery-partner charges are separate from the subscription and service fees. See our pricing page for current rates and plan details.
The tipping point depends on how many orders you currently run through platforms and what share of those comes from returning guests. On those returning guests you pay commission for someone who is already yours, and that share carries the most weight in the sum.
In what order do you roll this out across your locations?
You don’t roll this out across all your locations in one go, because that rebuilds the way you work in ten places at once while you are still learning what works. One location running ahead of the others keeps it manageable and lets you make your mistakes in one place.
Start with one location. Pick a location with plenty of repeat orders and a team that wants to help work it out, because that location teaches you what you want to standardise across the rest.
Check your listings per location. Name, address, opening hours and menu have to be right per location in your listings on Google, Maps and elsewhere, or you send guests to an ordering page they never find.
Leave the platform running. Switch nothing off; your own channel runs alongside it first, as a second way in.
Give existing guests one reason to order directly. An offer on the receipt or a QR code on the packaging works, and anyone whose details you already have you can simply message.
Measure it per location. Look at the share of direct orders per location, because a group average hides the location that is growing fastest.
Only roll out once the first location is solid. From that point you copy what works at the first location.
Frequently asked questions
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.
Can I run different prices and opening hours per location?
That is what you judge an ordering system on: a shared base in which prices, opening hours and availability can differ per location. Ask a vendor to walk you through it in the system while you watch.
Do I have to arrange my own delivery riders?
No. In the Netherlands and Belgium, SOUS connects you with delivery partners, so you do not take your own couriers onto the payroll.
Do I have to stop using the delivery platforms?
No, and that is not the advice either. Let the platforms bring in new guests and catch the guests who come back on your own channel.
I already use another ordering system. Why switch to SOUS?
If you expect more from your system than pushing orders through. With SOUS you know who ordered and you can reach that guest again, in an ordering experience that fits your brand.
How many locations do you need before this pays off?
From two onwards it starts to pay off, because from that point both the double work and the double commission scale with you. The 1,000-plus restaurants working with SOUS include single venues as well as groups.
