Which paths count as direct, and which do not?
A channel is a route an order can travel, not a piece of software. Sorting your routes into two columns takes ten minutes and changes how the rest of the year reads.
Direct
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Your ordering website
Your domain, your checkout, your receipts. The workhorse channel and the only one that scales without adding a person.
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Your own app
Same thing in an icon. Worth it once you have enough regulars to justify asking for a download, rarely before.
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A QR code on the table, the bag or the receipt
The cheapest channel shift a restaurant can run. A code on the bag of an app order points a diner you already fed at the place you would rather they ordered from.
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The phone
Still direct, still yours, and still the most expensive per order because it consumes a staff member during a rush. Direct does not mean free.
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Catering inquiries and house accounts
Large orders arranged by email or a form. Almost always direct, almost always unmeasured, and often the highest margin volume in the building.
Not direct
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A DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub listing
The platform brought the diner, holds the identity and takes 15 to 30 percent base commission. Useful as paid discovery. It is not your channel.
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A third party ordering page on someone else's domain
If the link sends a diner to vendorname.com/yourrestaurant, the search value and the traffic accrue to the vendor even when your logo is on the page.
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A PDF menu on your website
A menu is not a channel. If the diner has to read it and then pick up a phone, you own the traffic and none of the convenience.
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A social media page with a delivery app button
You paid for the audience with your own posts and then handed the transaction to a marketplace. This is the most common unforced error on the list.
The test is simple. If a company other than yours could stop the order from reaching you, or could email that diner about a competitor tomorrow, the channel is not yours.
Why does the channel matter more than the order?
Two identical $40 orders, same food, same kitchen, same twelve minutes on the grill. One arrives through a marketplace at 30 percent commission and returns roughly $28. The other arrives on your own site and returns the food revenue in full, plus the tip. The kitchen cannot tell the difference. The bank account can.
The second difference outlasts the first. On the marketplace order you receive a ticket and a first name. On the direct order you receive a person: name, phone, email, address, and everything they have ever ordered from you. One of those can be texted a Tuesday offer for nothing. The other has to be bought again, from the same platform, at the same rate, every time.
That is why operators who think in channels end up in a different position than operators who think in orders. Orders are this week. Channel mix is what your business is worth in three years.
How do you read your own channel mix?
Take last month. Count orders by route: your own site, phone, walk in, and each marketplace listed separately rather than lumped together. Then do it again in dollars kept rather than dollars sold, using the commission rate on each platform statement. The gap between the two views is the number worth acting on, and it is usually larger than the owner expected.
Then ask one more question of the marketplace column: how many of those diners have ordered from you before. Repeat customers arriving through a platform are the most expensive orders in the building, because you are paying a discovery fee for someone who was already discovered.
How do you shift the mix without losing volume?
Slowly, and without switching anything off. Four moves, in the order that works.
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Put a code on every bag that leaves
Including the marketplace bags. That diner already likes the food. The next order is the one worth competing for.
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Make the direct price never worse
Marketplace menu prices are often marked up to cover commission. Leave your direct prices at menu price and the difference does your arguing for you.
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Give the staff one sentence
Something a cashier can say in four seconds while handing over a bag. Not a speech, not a card, one sentence.
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Keep the apps running
Turning them off to force a shift loses the new names. The apps are a customer acquisition cost, and they are worth paying when they bring someone you have never fed.
Where does Zayos fit?
Zayos builds and runs the direct channel for independent restaurants: a branded ordering site on the restaurant's own domain, a customer list the restaurant owns and can export, and direct orders landing on the same kitchen tablet that already shows the marketplace orders, so the line runs one screen instead of four. Pricing is flat per location per month, $499, $599 or $699, month to month with no setup fee, and the restaurant keeps 100 percent of food revenue and tips. Naya Grill in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach runs its direct channel on Zayos today and keeps more than $48,000 a year that previously went to commissions, at roughly 3,000 orders a month.
Keep reading: what white label ordering means, how QR ordering moves diners across, and the commission free ordering guide.