Affordable All-in-One Ordering: What Your Own Delivery Shop Really Costs

"What does our own ordering shop cost?" is the question we hear most often from restaurants — and the hardest to answer, because offers on the market are calculated in completely different ways. One quotes a monthly price and says nothing about setup, another advertises "free" and takes commission. This guide makes the items transparent so you can really compare offers.

Why "cheap" ordering systems often turn out expensive

The decisive difference is not the base price but how the provider earns money. Three models are common:

• Revenue share (platform model): no or low fixed cost, but 13–30% per order. Cheap at the start, expensive with success — the bill grows exactly when business is good.
• Small commission with a cap: a low percentage, capped at a maximum amount per month. Fair for small businesses, predictable for large ones.
• Flat rate: a fixed monthly price, no commission. Above a certain order volume, by far the cheapest option.

A "free" solution with revenue share is therefore not cheap, it is merely expensive later. Conversely, a flat rate is oversized for a business with 30 orders a month. The right answer depends solely on your volume.

A worked example: when your own shop pays off

Take a typical delivery business with an average order of 26 euros:

• 400 orders a month = around 10,400 euros revenue. At 20% platform commission: 2,080 euros a month.
• 800 orders a month = around 20,800 euros revenue. At 20% commission: 4,160 euros a month.

Against that, your own shop costs a fixed three-digit monthly amount or a small, capped commission — plus payment provider fees, which depending on the provider usually run at around one to two percent plus a few cents per transaction. Those payment fees apply on the platform too, by the way; they are simply already priced in there.

The result is uncomfortably clear: even in the smaller example, the annual commission bill exceeds what a complete shop of your own costs in a year. For most businesses the break-even is not thousands of orders but a low three-digit number per month.

What a genuine all-in-one solution has to include

"Complete" is a marketing word. Check every offer for these items — otherwise they are charged on top:

• Your own domain (yourpizzeria.de instead of provider.de/yourname)
• Hosting and SSL certificate, including renewal
• Entering the menu — the biggest time sink of all, often several hundred items with sizes and extras
• Configuring delivery zones, opening hours and minimum order values
• Connecting payment methods including cash
• Legal texts and mandatory information: order button wording, imprint, privacy policy, terms, base prices, allergens
• Updates and security patches during operation
• Support in your language with a contact you can reach

That is exactly the point behind our setup offer: on bestelltheke.de you book the model and we set up the complete shop for a one-off 49 euros — entering the products, payment methods, delivery zones and opening hours included. Domain, hosting and SSL are part of the model, and you can cancel monthly.

The items quotes tend to leave out

Before you sign, ask specifically about:

• Setup fee: is setup charged — and who enters the menu?
• Cost per location: what does the second branch cost?
• Transaction fees: does the provider take something per order on top of the payment provider?
• Design adjustments: are logo and colours included, or is that a paid package?
• Contract term: cancellable monthly or 24 months?
• Data export: can you get your customer and order data out at the end?
• Changes: does every price change on the menu cost support time, or can you do it yourself?

The last point is especially underestimated. If you adjust prices twice a year and get an invoice each time, the low monthly price is quickly relativised.

Website builder, plugin or a purpose-built system?

Three technical routes are available — with very different follow-up costs:

The website builder

Cheap to start with, but rarely made for hospitality. Size-dependent surcharges, delivery zones as polygons, time slots and minimum order values per zone usually cannot be modelled at all, or only with workarounds. What you save on the monthly price you pay in rework.

The shop plugin on WordPress

Flexible, but you become the system administrator: plugin updates, compatibility problems and security holes are your problem. For a business without technical support that is an ongoing risk.

The purpose-built hospitality system

A system built from the start for delivery and collection comes with a configurator, delivery zones, time slots and order management. Our demo pizzeria is exactly that — on the open-source foundation TastyIgniter, so no licence cost per order and no vendor lock-in. You can inspect the complete system in the live demo without signing up.

Affordable does not mean stripped down

A common misconception: paying less means fewer features. With a shared system the opposite is true — development cost is spread across many businesses and everyone gets the same feature set. Concretely: pizza configurator, delivery zones, pre-ordering, guest and customer accounts, online and cash payment, vouchers, status management with emails and installation as an app on the home screen are standard, not surcharges.

Only the genuinely individual things cost extra: kitchen monitor, receipt printing, driver notification, your own campaigns or interfaces to your till system.

The fast route — and when your own installation is worth it

For most businesses the full service is the right route: book a model on bestelltheke.de, setup for a one-off 49 euros, live within days. Small commission or a flat rate without commission — you decide based on volume and can switch later.

Your own exclusive installation is worth it if you need a very distinct design, special functions or a connection to existing systems. Then we build it specifically for you — we are a development agency, not a website builder.

Checklist before you decide

• Do I know my monthly order volume and average order value?
• Have I projected commission, flat rate and payment fees over twelve months?
• Are domain, hosting, SSL and legal texts included in the price?
• Who enters the menu — and what does that cost?
• Can I maintain prices and the menu myself?
• Are size-dependent surcharges, delivery zones and time slots really supported?
• How long am I tied in, and can I get my data out?

Conclusion

An ordering system is not cheap because the monthly price is small, but because the total cost over a year stays low and you do not have to rebuild anything. Calculate your volume against the commission — in most cases the decision is clear afterwards. Look at the live demo, book the full service on bestelltheke.de or talk to us about your own installation.