- Customer snapshot
- Meet Sam’s Pizza by City Catering
- The challenge wasn’t getting orders — it was managing delivery on the restaurant’s terms
- Why AI Dispatch became the turning point
- One business needed two different menu workflows
- Bringing every ordering channel into one manageable system
- The numbers behind Sam’s Pizza’s ordering mix
- What other pizzerias can learn from Sam’s Pizza
- See how Orders.co can simplify your pizzeria
- Frequently asked questions
- More Helpful Reads
Sam’s Pizza by City Catering wanted to run its own deliveries – assign drivers and control fulfillment itself – without hiring a full team of drivers. For more than a year, the pizzeria asked a major delivery platform for that feature and never got a straight answer. When they brought the same request to Orders.co, the feature was already there.
Over a year of waiting, against a few weeks of setup, is the story of how Sam’s Pizza now runs its pizza orders, catering orders, in-store sales, and marketplace deliveries through one system. It is a useful pizza POS system case study for any operator weighing what a modern setup should do and how fast a provider can stand it up.
“Orders.co delivered in weeks what a major platform could not deliver in over a year.” — Sam’s Pizza by City Catering
Customer snapshot
| Field | Detail |
| Restaurant | Sam’s Pizza by City Catering |
| Location | Paterson, New Jersey |
| Business type | Independent pizzeria and catering business |
| Years in business | 7 |
| Primary challenge | Needed delivery dispatch and easier management of multiple ordering providers |
| Additional challenge | Pizza and catering required different menus, providers, features, and workflows |
| Solution | Orders.co POS, AI Dispatch, centralized provider management, a direct ordering website, and a separate catering menu |
| Reported results | 5,656 orders and $106,146.26 in tracked sales |
Meet Sam’s Pizza by City Catering
Sam’s Pizza by City Catering has served the Paterson community on Main Street for seven years. It is a neighborhood pizzeria with a catering operation attached — two connected sides of a single business that operate on very different workflows. The menu goes well past a slice shop, spanning pizza and specialty pizzas, sandwiches, pasta, fried chicken, combos, and catering preorders. That range is part of why the operation outgrew tools that handled only the basics, and why the team eventually looked for a system that could keep up with everything it was trying to build.
The challenge wasn’t getting orders — it was managing delivery on the restaurant’s terms
Sam’s Pizza was never short on demand. In-store business was strong, and orders were coming in from Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and other channels. Volume was not the problem.
The missing piece was delivery on the restaurant’s own terms. The team wanted a dispatch option that gave them more control over how deliveries got fulfilled — the ability to run deliveries like an in-house operation without the cost and overhead of building a full driver fleet.
They pursued that capability through a major delivery platform for more than a year and never got a clear answer. For a business trying to grow deliberately, that kind of stall is costly in terms of time and momentum.
What Sam’s Pizza needed was not a longer feature list. It was a partner that could respond to how the operation actually worked — and a pizza POS system flexible enough to fit the business rather than the other way around.
Why AI Dispatch became the turning point
AI Dispatch was the feature Sam’s Pizza had been chasing, and Orders.co had it ready to go.
In plain terms, AI Dispatch lets staff handle delivery fulfillment straight from the POS. They can send an order to the restaurant’s own driver, or request a third-party driver, without opening and juggling a separate delivery app. The order and the driver are managed from the same screen that the team already uses for everything else.
The practical effect is a delivery workflow that feels closer to an in-house operation, without the restaurant having to hire and maintain a full fleet of drivers to get there. For Sam’s Pizza, that was the turning point — the capability it had waited a year for, available from day one.
“We spent over a year chasing a feature from a major platform and got nowhere. Orders.co had exactly what we needed and got us up and running without the runaround. That is the kind of partner a small business actually needs.” — Sam’s Pizza by City Catering
One business needed two different menu workflows
The second thing that changed how Sam’s Pizza operates is easy to overlook but hard to live without: the ability to run a completely separate menu for catering.
Regular pizza orders are immediate and high-frequency. Catering differs in its items, providers, preparation requirements, and lead times, which don’t fit a walk-up order screen. Forcing both into one undifferentiated menu creates friction on both sides.
Orders.co let Sam’s Pizza build a separate catering menu with its own providers, features, and flow, while still managing both sides of the business inside the same platform. The two operations stay organized and separate, exactly the way the team needs them. A flexible pizza POS system should support a pizzeria’s everyday orders without forcing its catering operation into the same workflow.
Bringing every ordering channel into one manageable system
Before Orders.co, the picture looked like most growing pizzerias: several ordering providers, several workflows, delivery functionality that didn’t match the business, pizza and catering competing for the same menu, and too much effort spent just tracking where an order came from.
With Orders.co, those channels come together:
- Marketplace orders from Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and other providers land in one place instead of on separate tablets.
- POS and direct online orders sit in the same centralized workflow.
- Catering runs on its own separate menu.
- AI Dispatch is available directly through the POS.
- Every order is easier to oversee, regardless of which provider generated it.
The team put it simply: managing online orders from all their providers became easier, and that easier oversight freed them up to focus on making great food and delivering the experience their community keeps coming back for.
The numbers behind Sam’s Pizza’s ordering mix
Here is how orders and sales broke down across channels.
| Channel | Orders | Sales | Share of sales |
| POS | 4,443 | $71,000 | 67.60% |
| Uber Eats | 920 | $26,000 | 25.38% |
| DoorDash | 173 | $4,000 | 4.08% |
| Grubhub | 72 | $2,000 | 1.91% |
| Orders.co website | 47 | $1,000 | 1.01% |
| Total | 5,656 | $106,000 | 100% |
Three things stand out:
- In-store business is the foundation. POS accounted for more than two-thirds of reported sales, so the counter is still where most of the revenue lives.
- Marketplace delivery is significant. Third-party providers together brought in 1,166 orders and $33,316.39 in sales – a meaningful share of the business that manages, rather than fights.
- Direct ordering is an emerging channel. The Orders.co website added 47 orders and $1,000 outside the marketplaces. It is a growing direct-to-customer line that sits alongside the delivery apps, not a sign that Sam’s Pizza has moved most of its customers off them.
“If you are a restaurant owner who has been told no or made to wait by the big platforms for features your business actually needs, do yourself a favor and look at Orders.co. They listened, they delivered, and they continue to show up for us every single day.” — Sam’s Pizza by City Catering
What other pizzerias can learn from Sam’s Pizza
You do not have to be in Paterson to take something from this. A few lessons carry over to almost any pizzeria weighing its options.
- Choose a POS around your real delivery workflow. A pizzeria’s POS should handle delivery, custom orders, modifiers, marketplace integrations, and high-volume service — not just payments. Treat online ordering, delivery management, order customization, and fast service as core requirements, not add-ons.
- Don’t force catering into the regular pizza menu. Separate menus and workflows make sense the moment catering has different lead times, prices, providers, or fulfillment needs. Keep the two organized on their own terms.
- Ask providers how fast they can implement what you actually need. A long feature list matters less than whether the provider can configure the specific function your restaurant needs — and how quickly. A year of waiting is a real cost.
- Centralization should remove work, not add another dashboard. The goal is a single predictable workflow, not another screen for staff to babysit during the rush.
- Keep direct ordering and marketplace discovery working together. Sam’s Pizza’s numbers show marketplace sales staying meaningful while the website adds a direct channel. The lesson is diversification and control, not abruptly walking away from the delivery apps that help customers find you.
See how Orders.co can simplify your pizzeria
Sam’s Pizza stopped waiting on a major platform and got the delivery control, separate catering workflow, and centralized order management it needed in a matter of weeks. If your pizzeria is juggling tablets, fighting one menu to do two jobs, or waiting on a feature that never arrives, it may be time to look at a system built around how you actually operate.
See how Orders.co can simplify your pizzeria and book a free Orders.co POS demo.
Frequently asked questions
A pizza POS system should do more than take payments. Look for order customization and modifiers for build-your-own pizzas, direct integrations with delivery marketplaces like Uber Eats and DoorDash, menu management, kitchen routing, direct online ordering, reporting, and delivery dispatch. If the business also caters, the ability to run a separate catering menu and workflow matters too.
Order consolidation brings every connected marketplace into a single screen. Instead of watching a separate tablet for each provider, orders from DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and other channels feed into one central workflow alongside POS and direct online orders, so staff track every order from the same place.
AI Dispatch lets restaurant staff request and assign delivery directly from the POS. Instead of opening and managing a separate driver app, staff can send an order to their own driver or request a third-party driver from the same system they already use. That gives the restaurant a delivery workflow closer to an in-house operation without maintaining a full driver fleet.
Yes. A restaurant can build a completely separate catering menu with its own items, providers, and fulfillment flow while managing it inside the same platform as its regular pizza orders. This keeps high-volume everyday orders and catering preorders, which often have different lead times and requirements, from being forced into a single menu structure.
