Orderich

After spending some time off to enjoy the holiday season, researching and further validating the idea with other restaurant owners I knew, I discovered many restaurants suffered from the exact same facts: (1) restaurants found the 13-30% commissions charged by delivery services unsustainable; (2)

After 2 months of putting together a handful of free Woocommerce plugins + 1 month of content import, feedback processing and translating everything to Dutch, I managed to set up a fully-fledged online ordering webshop for my client's restaurant. Despite only using free Woocommerce plugins, it did have all the "premium" features delivery apps had, such as limited delivery zone, separate service hours for delivery and takeout orders, automatic order receipt printing, etc.

The MVP-webshop went live in December 2019 and orders started rolling in. Both my client and I were happy with the result – a restaurant online ordering system that did not charge commissions on every order, essentially reducing costs by 50%. My client also got to keep all the customer data that he could use for email marketing purposes, loyalty programs, satisfaction surveys, etc. Apart from a lump sum that he had to pay me for the project, I charged him around €60/month for maintenance and support.

After this little success, my client suggested me to build a reusable solution out of this, so he could also use for the second restaurant that he owned. I said I'd think about it during the Christmas holidays. It's safe to say that my client both paid me and gave me a validated startup idea. What else could one wish for?

Next to working in lead design & consulting positions at various software companies and agencies, I've always been freelancing as a Design & Tech consultant to startups and small businesses (mainly restaurants), helping them from designing a logo to building fully-fledged mobile apps.

As we all know, food delivery is a huge thing these days. In the Netherlands, where I'm based, we have a "Big 3" situation consisting of Takeaway.com, Uber Eats, Deliveroo. It's all fun and games for consumers, but not so much for restaurants when delivery services charge 13-30% commissions on every order. With an average profit margin of 40%, such hefty commission rates are not sustainable for many restaurants, including some restaurant-clients of mine.

With that said, a long-time restaurant-client of mine requested me for a webshop, where his customers could place delivery orders online. He wanted his own webshop for his restaurant so he could (1) do away from the high commissions and (2) have ownership over his customer data. I said "okay" and quickly put together a quote after researching all the features delivery apps offered. I ended up with quite a long list of features, but I still decided to build it using Woocommerce and only free plugins. It took me 2 part-time months to replicate all the features that delivery apps had, all without spending a penny on paid plugins or hiring developers.