The delivery apps are renting you your own regulars
When a customer finds your restaurant on a big delivery app and keeps ordering through it, that customer is not really yours. The app holds the relationship, the data, and a cut of every order. Commission on the major platforms often runs well into the double digits per order, and it comes straight off a margin that was thin to begin with. You pay it forever, even on the regulars who would happily order direct if you made it easy.
Direct online ordering changes the deal. The order comes through a link on your own website and your Google profile, the money lands in your account, and the customer stays yours. Same food, same person, far more of the payment kept. Run that across a year of repeat orders and the gap between renting and owning them is real money.
What a proper ordering and booking system includes
Online ordering is the headline. The useful version is wider than one button. It is e-commerce built for a kitchen or a booking calendar instead of a warehouse, set up so the numbers protect your margin and not someone else's.
- Online ordering linked from your website and your Google Business Profile
- Table reservations for restaurants, appointment booking for salons and clinics
- Automatic confirmations and reminders that cut no-shows before they cost you a slot
- Catering and party-enquiry forms that catch big-ticket requests instead of losing them to voicemail
- Gift-card sales built into the flow
- Menu and price sync so the same numbers show on your site, your ordering page, and your POS
- Staff training and order-flow testing, so the first busy Friday does not fall apart
The aim is a system your team can actually run, wired into the tools you already use.
The smart move is balance, not burning the apps
Dropping the delivery apps overnight is usually a mistake. They are paid discovery. New customers find you there, and that reach is worth something. The setup that wins uses both. Let the apps bring in first-time orders, then make the direct path the easier choice for the people who come back. You keep the discovery and stop paying commission on customers you already earned.
For appointment businesses the numbers work a bit differently. Reminders reliably reduce no-shows, and a deposit or card-on-file policy, where it suits your market, reduces them further. A confirmed chair beats a hopeful gap in the day.
What funding may help pay for it
Here is the honest version. There is rarely a grant labelled "online ordering system." What exists are digital-adoption and business-modernization programs, and ordering or booking technology can sometimes qualify as part of a larger project a program approves. Programs change and every funding decision rests with the administrator, so read the figures below as starting points, not promises.
A few that come up across Canada:
- Ontario's Digital Modernization and Adoption Plan reimburses up to 50% of eligible costs, up to $15,000, to build a roadmap of which technology to adopt. It funds the plan; the build is a separate step.
- The Step Forward Entrepreneurs Program is a matching grant covering 50% of eligible costs, up to $10,000, and a company can use it twice.
- The Business Scale-up and Productivity Stream offers up to $500,000 toward up to 50% of eligible costs for established businesses investing in productivity. It is a repayable contribution, which means money you pay back, not a grant.
- Financing is another route. The BDC Inclusive Entrepreneurship Loan runs up to $350,000. A loan is money you repay with interest, so weigh it as financing.
- Regional agencies such as ACOA in Atlantic Canada and CED in Quebec offer interest-free repayable contributions for growth and productivity projects.
Eligibility and rules vary by program and region, and some exclude particular industries outright. That is the part worth checking before you build a plan around any one of them.
See what fits you, then let us build it
The quickest way to know whether your ordering or booking project could attract funding is to check your fit. Tell us your business, your city, and what you want to fix. We match you to the programs that could apply, then guide you through the application so you do not leave money you were owed on the table. When the funding lines up, BBN builds the ordering, booking, and website setup that keeps your customers and your margins where they belong: with you.
Check your funding fit and BBN calls you within 2 business days.