Third-party delivery apps are excellent at putting a restaurant in front of new diners, but they were never designed to be the whole business. For Hot Potato Pie, the turning point was not dropping those apps. It was building a direct ordering channel strong enough to sit alongside them, then pulling every order into one place so the team could actually run the operation instead of chasing it across tablets. Over roughly a year and a half, direct online ordering grew into a channel worth more than $66,000 across two locations.
The operator
Hot Potato Pie is an independent restaurant that has grown from one location into two. Owner Richard Parr runs the kind of business that depends on volume and speed: a steady flow of takeout and delivery, several ordering channels active at once, and no back office to absorb the overhead when something goes wrong. That profile is common among independent operators, and so is the problem it creates.
The challenge: too many providers, not enough control
Before switching, Hot Potato Pie had the setup most multi-channel restaurants recognize. Orders arrived through several delivery marketplaces, each with its own tablet and its own dashboard. Managing those platforms ate up time that should have gone into service, and the restaurant had no single source of direct orders that it actually owned.
“Managing delivery platforms used to eat up so much of our time,” Parr said. The deeper issue was control. When orders live in separate systems, no one has a clear view of the whole business, provider issues are slow to resolve, and every new channel adds another screen for staff to watch.
The hidden costs stack up in three places. First, time: someone has to monitor each tablet and re-key orders into the kitchen flow, which is exactly the kind of manual work that produces mistakes on a busy night. Second, margin: every order that comes through a marketplace carries commission, typically 15% to 30%, so a restaurant that relies on apps for most of its online volume is handing over a meaningful slice of each ticket. Third, ownership: when a customer orders through an app, the app keeps the relationship. The restaurant doesn’t get the contact details it needs to bring that diner back directly. For an operator planning to grow, that fragmentation gets worse with each location, not better.
The solution: one connected system
Hot Potato Pie moved its ordering onto Orders.co to consolidate those channels and add a direct one. Three pieces did the heavy lifting.
Order consolidation. Orders from DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and the restaurant’s own website flow into a single screen instead of a row of tablets. Staff stops re-entering tickets by hand, which reduces errors and gives the team back time during the rush.
A commission-free direct ordering website. Instead of sending every online customer through a marketplace, Hot Potato Pie added its own branded ordering website. Customers order directly, the restaurant keeps the relationship and the contact details, and the per-order commission that marketplaces charge stays in the business. Just as important, a direct channel gives the restaurant a customer list it owns, which is the raw material for repeat orders, loyalty offers, and marketing that does not depend on paying an app for the same diner twice.
Provider and dispute support. With every channel running through one platform, provider order problems get handled in one place rather than across five separate support lines. That single point of contact is part of what makes consolidation hold up during a rush, when there is no time to log into a different dashboard for each marketplace.
“The control Orders.co gives you over your providers is unlike anything else,” Parr said. “What used to take us significant time and effort is now simple and completely in our hands.”
The results: direct ordering became a top revenue channel
The clearest evidence is in the channel data. Across both locations, Hot Potato Pie’s Orders.co website generated 1,793 direct online orders and around $66,000 in sales. That is not a rounding error on the side of the marketplaces. It is a primary channel that the restaurant fully owns.
At the first location, tracked from February 2025 through August 2026, the direct website produced $50,000 across 1,345 orders, at an average ticket of about $37.60. That made direct ordering 19.25% of the location’s total sales, ranking behind only DoorDash and the POS. It also outperformed the location’s Grubhub and Uber Eats channels combined, which together brought in $23,000. The restaurant’s own website generated more than twice the sales of those two marketplaces put together.
The second location, tracked from October 2025 through August 2026, shows the same pattern at a different mix. There, the POS carries most of the volume at 65.63% of sales, but the direct website still delivered $15,800 across 448 orders and 11.52% of sales, roughly three times the combined total of Grubhub and Uber Eats at that location.
The contrast between the two locations is worth sitting with, because it reflects how real restaurants actually operate. The first location leans heavily on delivery, with DoorDash as its single largest channel. The second location is far more counter and dine-in-driven, with the POS accounting for nearly two-thirds of sales. The mix is different, the trade area is different, and the customer behavior is different. Yet at both, direct online ordering outperformed the smaller marketplaces and became a channel the restaurant could count on. That consistency across two very different profiles is the point: a strong direct channel is not something that only works for a particular type of restaurant. It scales with the operator.
Put the two locations together, and the picture is hard to argue with. Hot Potato Pie’s direct website generated $66,000 while its Grubhub and Uber Eats channels combined generated $28,800. The restaurant earned about 2.3 times as much through the channel it owns as through those two third-party providers combined, and it did so on ordering volume that would otherwise have carried commission on every ticket.
Beyond the channel numbers, Parr credits the switch with a broader lift in how the business runs. “After over a year with Orders.co, I can say with confidence it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made for my restaurant,” he said, pointing to better organization and smoother order flow as the operation grew.
Support that keeps a busy kitchen moving
Technology only helps if someone answers when it breaks. Parr singled out the support team as a reason the transition held up under pressure. “Any time we’ve had a question or run into an issue, including provider order problems, they’ve handled it quickly and professionally,” he said. For an independent operator without a dedicated IT function, having one number to call for every channel is part of what makes consolidation practical rather than just tidy on paper. A missed or stuck order during a Friday rush is not a support ticket that can wait until Monday, and the difference between a channel a restaurant trusts and one it merely tolerates often comes down to how fast problems get resolved. That reliability is also what gives an operator the confidence to lean into a channel rather than treat it as a backup.
What the data says to other operators
The Hot Potato Pie numbers illustrate a pattern that shows up across independent restaurants once they build a real direct channel. Marketplaces still do valuable work bringing new diners in, and they remain a meaningful slice of the mix. But when a restaurant gives customers an easy way to order directly, a large share of that demand shifts to a channel the restaurant owns, keeps, and can market to again.
The commission math is what makes the shift matter. The same $66,000 in orders, if it had run through a marketplace instead, would have carried the 15% to 30% commission those platforms typically charge. Every order that moves to the direct channel keeps that portion of the ticket in the business. Multiply that across nearly 1,800 orders and two locations, and direct ordering stops looking like a nice-to-have and starts looking like margin the restaurant was previously giving away.
For Hot Potato Pie, direct ordering is no longer a supplement to third-party delivery. It is one of the largest revenue lines at both locations and a foundation on which the business can scale. As Parr put it, “I recommend Orders.co to any restaurant owner who wants more control, better results, and a team that genuinely has your back.”
Want to see what a direct ordering channel could add to your own revenue mix? See how Orders.co consolidates every order into one system and gives you a commission-free ordering website you own by booking a free call with us.
Frequently asked questions
A commission-free online ordering website lets customers order directly from a restaurant instead of through a third-party app. The restaurant keeps the full ticket minus payment processing, rather than paying the 15% to 30% commission that delivery marketplaces typically charge on each order.
Order consolidation routes orders from every channel, including DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and a restaurant’s own website, into a single screen. Staff no longer juggle separate tablets or re-key tickets by hand, which cuts entry errors and frees up time during service.
A POS records and processes transactions, mostly for in-store and counter sales. An online ordering system is the digital storefront customers use to place orders remotely. When the two connect, online orders flow straight into the POS instead of being entered manually by staff.
Third-party apps are strong discovery channels that put a restaurant in front of new diners. Direct ordering captures those diners as repeat customers, keeps their contact details for marketing, and avoids per-order commission, so more of each ticket stays with the restaurant as profit.
A delivery dispatch system lets a restaurant offer delivery without maintaining a full driver roster. The restaurant requests a driver through its POS, and the platform assigns one on demand. Operators keep control of delivery pricing and reach while paying only for the deliveries they use.
