- Customer Snapshot
- A Small Team Was Managing Too Many Points of Failure
- What Opa Cafe Needed From Its Next Technology Partner
- Building the Direct Ordering Channel From the Ground Up
- The Result—Opa Cafe’s Website Became Its No. 1 Ordering Channel
- Direct Ordering Reduced Dependence—It Did Not Require Abandoning Marketplaces
- What Changed Behind the Counter
- Why Onboarding and Support Were Part of the Result
- Three Lessons for Other Independent Restaurants
- Conclusion
- More Helpful Reads
For a five-person restaurant, the busiest online ordering channel isn’t supposed to be the one the restaurant owns. The delivery apps are supposed to drive volume; the restaurant’s own website, if it has one, is the quiet afterthought. At Opa Cafe, it worked out the other way around.
Over the reporting period, the Mediterranean café in San Francisco took 11,000 orders through its own Orders.co ordering website—more than it took through DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub combined. The restaurant reports a 70% increase in online orders since switching. And it got there without walking away from a single marketplace.
That result is a long way from where Opa Cafe started. Before Orders.co, the same small team was running online orders through several third-party provider tablets that kept failing. The tablets caused missed orders, which disrupted service, and the restaurant had no direct line between its customers and its kitchen. This is the story of how a café with five employees closed that gap.
Customer Snapshot
| Restaurant | Opa Cafe |
| Location | 2401 Post Street, San Francisco, California |
| Concept | Mediterranean café, corner grocer, deli, and catering business serving Lower Pacific Heights, Fillmore, and Laurel Heights |
| Team size | Five employees |
| Years in business | Eight years |
| Challenge | Multiple third-party ordering tablets that failed often, caused missed orders, and offered no direct ordering channel |
| Solution | A custom Orders.co ordering website, plus consolidation of major delivery providers into one system |
| Reported result | 70% increase in online orders |
| Direct website orders | 11,000 |
| Sales processed through the website | $275,000 |
| Reporting period | March 24, 2022 – July 24, 2026 |
A Small Team Was Managing Too Many Points of Failure
Opa Cafe has built its eight-year reputation on quality food, generous portions, and value—the kind of place regulars come back to. But behind the counter, the online ordering setup was working against the team.
Like many independent restaurants, Opa Cafe took online orders through a stack of separate third-party tablets, one for each provider. On a good day, that means glancing between screens during a rush. On a bad day, it means a tablet freezes, a provider’s system hiccups, and an order that a customer already paid for never makes it to the kitchen.
That’s what kept happening. The tablets frequently encountered technical problems, which contributed to missed orders. A missed order isn’t a small thing for a café this size. With five people covering the counter, the deli, catering, and the phone, there’s no spare person to babysit a wall of tablets and catch the ones that drop. Every missed ticket pulls someone away from food or service to sort out a problem they didn’t cause.
What Opa Cafe Needed From Its Next Technology Partner
After losing orders and struggling to get timely help from its previous provider, Opa Cafe knew what it was looking for. Not more features—more reliability, and a way to take back some control. In plain terms, the restaurant needed:
- Order flow it could trust, so paid orders stopped slipping through the cracks
- A direct ordering channel, so customers had a way to order straight from the restaurant
- Provider consolidation, so the team managed orders in one place instead of across a row of tablets
- Help build the menu, rather than a blank system to figure out alone
- Onboarding and support from real people who would actually pick up when something went wrong
Building the Direct Ordering Channel From the Ground Up
Opa Cafe chose Orders.co for its ability to provide a custom-branded ordering website and to bring the major delivery providers together into one system.
The part that mattered most on day one was the setup. Rather than handing over a login and wishing the team luck, Orders.co built the menu from scratch and handled the implementation.
“The onboarding process was very smooth. The sales, onboarding, and menu teams went the extra mile to make sure everything was set up correctly.”
For a five-person team, that difference is the whole ballgame. Nobody at Opa Cafe had to carve out a week to configure software. The website went live, the providers were consolidated into a single view, and the menu was built and tested by people who do it every day.
The Result—Opa Cafe’s Website Became Its No. 1 Ordering Channel
The clearest way to see what changed is to look at where the orders actually went over the reporting period.
A 70% increase in online orders
Opa Cafe reports that online orders rose 70% after moving to Orders.co. That figure comes from the restaurant’s own account of the change, and it captures the headline: more people ordering online, more reliably, than before.
11,000 orders through the website
Across the reporting period, the website took 11,862 orders. That’s not a secondary channel quietly ticking along in the background—it’s the main one.
52.8% of all active online orders
Next to marketplaces, the website accounted for 52.8% of Opa Cafe’s active online orders. A slim majority of everything the restaurant sold online came through its own channel.
More website orders than all marketplaces combined
DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub together delivered 10,620 orders over the same window. The website delivered 11,862—1,242 or about 11.7% more than all three apps combined.
$275,000 in sales processed through the website
The website processed $275,000 in sales over the reporting period. It’s worth being precise about what that number is: it’s the total value of transactions that ran through the site, including items, taxes, tips, and delivery charges collected on those orders. It is not $275,000 in new profit, and it isn’t restaurant revenue on its own—but it is a large volume of business flowing through a channel Opa Cafe didn’t even have before.
Direct Ordering Reduced Dependence—It Did Not Require Abandoning Marketplaces
Here’s the part that should reassure any owner nervous about “leaving the apps”: Opa Cafe didn’t leave them.
The marketplaces stayed active and stayed useful. Across the reporting period, they still accounted for 47.2% of active online orders and 52.4% of reported online sales. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub kept doing what they’re good at—putting Opa Cafe in front of new customers who might never have found it otherwise.
What changed is that they stopped being the only option. The website didn’t replace the marketplaces; it took its place beside them as a strong owned channel. That’s the practical shape of the win. Opa Cafe kept the reach of the apps and added a direct line to its customers, rather than betting everything on either one.
What Changed Behind the Counter
Numbers aside, the day-to-day got easier. Instead of watching a row of tablets, each failing in its own way, the team manages orders in one place. Fewer screens mean fewer disruptions, and orders that used to slip through now have a consistent place to land.
“It’s been a day-and-night difference.”
The restaurant describes faster, simpler order management and a smoother experience for the people placing orders.
“The platform has made our daily operations much more efficient.”
For a five-person team, an hour not spent chasing a dropped order is an hour back on food and service. The source doesn’t measure labor saved, so we won’t put a number on it—but the direction is plain: less time fighting the technology, more time doing the work the café is known for.
Why Onboarding and Support Were Part of the Result
It’s tempting to treat setup and support as background details. For Opa Cafe, they were part of the result itself.
The previous provider’s weak support was one of the reasons the restaurant looked elsewhere in the first place—when orders were dropping, help didn’t arrive fast enough. Orders.co took the opposite approach from the start, handling the menu build and implementation so the team didn’t have to, and staying reachable afterward.
“Customer support has been outstanding—10 out of 10.”
That rating isn’t a nicety tacked onto the story; it’s operational value. Software that a small team can’t get help with eventually costs orders. Support that answers is part of what keeps the direct channel dependable enough to remain the busiest.
Three Lessons for Other Independent Restaurants
Opa Cafe’s numbers are specific to Opa Cafe, but the shape of the story is common. A few takeaways carry over.
Lesson 1: Customers can’t order directly unless you give them a usable direct option. Opa Cafe’s regulars didn’t suddenly appear when the website launched—they were always there. They simply had no good way to order straight from the restaurant. Build the door, and people will use it; leave it out, and they’ll keep going through the apps by default.
Lesson 2: The customer-facing site and the staff-facing workflow have to work together. A pretty ordering page doesn’t help if orders still land across five failing tablets, and a tidy back-of-house view doesn’t help if customers can’t reach it. Opa Cafe’s result came from pairing a direct site that customers actually used with a place for staff to manage everything.
Lesson 3: The real measure of restaurant technology is adoption, not advertised features. The website mattered because it got used 11,000 times. A feature list nobody touches proves nothing. Whether customers and staff actually use the tool, day after day, is the number that counts.
And a fourth, for anyone weighing the apps: marketplaces can provide reach while a direct channel protects long-term customer ownership. You don’t have to choose. Opa Cafe kept both, and both did their job.
Conclusion
Not long ago, Opa Cafe’s biggest online-ordering problem was orders that never arrived—paid tickets lost to tablets that froze, and a previous provider that was slow to help. The restaurant had no direct way to reach its own customers online. The busiest ordering channel at Opa Cafe is now the one the café owns.
“We’re receiving far more direct online orders, saving money by moving customers away from third-party providers, and our customers love how easy the website is to use.”
If your restaurant is running orders across too many tablets and doesn’t yet have a direct ordering channel of its own, that’s exactly the gap Opa Cafe closed. See how a direct ordering website could work for your restaurant.
