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01

Built for Restaurants & Hospitality

25% of every delivery dollar goes to someone else.

We build custom online ordering, reservation systems, and loyalty programs for restaurants. Everything connects to your POS, and you keep both the guest data and the commission the apps would have taken. Orders flow straight into Toast, Square, or Clover, with real-time menu management and modifier logic. We also design and build the restaurant's website.

Orange heat breaking through dark metal beside rising steam, like demand finding a direct path into restaurant online ordering and reservations
02Sound familiar?

Why restaurants keep losing margin

15–30%

commission on every third-party delivery order, per DoorDash's own pricing

DoorDash's published partnership plans take 15% (Basic), 25% (Plus), or 30% (Premier) of each app order. Direct online ordering on your own site keeps that margin in the house. (DoorDash (official merchant pricing), 2026)

28%

of Americans say they skipped a restaurant reservation in the past year

OpenTable's YouGov survey put a number on no-shows. Reminders, deposits, and easy rebooking, built into your own reservation flow, are how operators claw those covers back. (OpenTable (YouGov survey, official press release), 2021)

64%

of delivery customers would rather order directly from the restaurant

Only 18% prefer a third-party app, per the National Restaurant Association. Your customers are already on your side. What they're missing is a direct way to order from you. (National Restaurant Association, 2021)

03The shift

The same restaurants & hospitality business. A different machine.

Shift 01

Today

DoorDash and Uber Eats take 15-30% of every order

With Upforge

Your own ordering platform, zero commission

Shift 02

Today

Phone reservations, paper waitlists, no-show chaos

With Upforge

Online booking, SMS waitlist, automated reminders

Shift 03

Today

Guest data lives in third-party platforms you don't control

With Upforge

You own every guest profile, order, and preference

04What we build

Built for how restaurants & hospitality actually works.

01

Custom Online Ordering

A branded ordering flow for pickup, delivery, or both, with POS integration, a promo engine, and no 25% commission on every order. We build menu management with real-time 86ing, modifier logic, and scheduled ordering for catering. Orders flow directly into Toast, Square, or Clover, so your kitchen never misses a ticket. Customers see your brand at every step instead of a marketplace listing surrounded by competitors.

Learn more about Custom Online Ordering
02

Reservations & Waitlist

Online reservations, an SMS waitlist, table management, and automated reminders. We work from your floor plan, so guests can book specific seating areas like the patio or a private room. Confirmation and reminder texts cut no-shows, and walk-ins on the waitlist get real-time updates on their place in line by text. Your host spends the shift on hospitality instead of the phone.

Learn more about Reservations & Waitlist
03

Loyalty & Guest Data

Custom loyalty programs with points, rewards, and membership tiers, built on guest data you own, so you can run segmented campaigns and track repeat visits and lifetime value. We fit the program to your concept, from a simple punch card to multi-tier memberships with exclusive perks. Guest profiles capture order history, preferences, and visit frequency, so you can run targeted promotions to lapsed guests or reward your regulars without paying a third party for access to your own customers.

Learn more about Loyalty & Guest Data
Free restaurants & hospitality audit

Want to know what your current setup is costing you?

The free audit checks your website the way your restaurants & hospitality customers experience it (speed, mobile, accessibility, and search visibility) and puts what's worth fixing in writing. It's automated and free, and the report is specific about what it finds.

06What changes

How the machine removes each problem.

01

Ordering

Let guests order directly; payment processing and delivery services are scoped separately.

02

Reservations

Confirm bookings and send reminders, then measure attendance.

03

Guest records

Your team can work with guest records in the systems agreed in your proposal.

04

Returning guests

Connect visits with relevant follow-up and measure return bookings.

Restaurants & Hospitality FAQs

Common Questions From Restaurants & Hospitality

Yes. We integrate with Toast, Square, Clover, and most modern POS systems via their official APIs. Orders from your custom platform flow directly into your kitchen display system in real time, including modifiers, special instructions, and scheduled catering orders. Nobody re-enters orders by hand, and tickets don't go missing during a rush. See our application development integration approach.

We integrate with third-party delivery services like DoorDash Drive and Uber Direct for last-mile fulfillment while you keep the customer relationship and all order data. Or we can build your own dispatch flow with driver tracking and route management. Either way, delivery orders go through the same kitchen queue as pickup. See our automation capabilities.

We build custom loyalty systems with points, rewards, and membership tiers tailored to your concept, running under your brand and your rules. Programs can reward specific menu items, referrals, or visit frequency with tiered perks that drive repeat visits. Guest profiles capture order history and preferences so you can run targeted promotions to lapsed customers or reward your regulars. See our automation capabilities.

A focused online ordering platform with POS integration is typically 8 to 12 weeks. Adding reservations, loyalty, and multi-location support extends to 3 to 5 months. We deliver in two-week sprints, so you can start taking live orders while loyalty and reservations are still being built. See our application development timeline.

Yes. We design and develop restaurant sites on Next.js that rank for local searches and show off your menu and your food photography. They connect directly to your ordering and reservation systems, and each one includes structured data markup that helps Google surface your restaurant in local pack results. Performance optimization is included from day one.

Most restaurant ordering platforms range from $5,000 to $50,000 depending on features, and most land between $18,000 and $35,000. A focused ordering system with POS integration sits at the lower end, while a full platform with reservations, loyalty, and multi-location support sits higher. If you do 200+ delivery orders a week, the commissions you stop paying cover the build within months. See our application development pricing approach.

We offer ongoing maintenance and support that covers menu updates, feature additions, POS updates, and performance monitoring. It runs on a retainer: you put down a deposit, the work is billed against it at $150 an hour, and you get a monthly summary. You own your frontend and can bring its maintenance in-house. Sonor remains the shared backend service.

We use Stripe for payment processing, with card fields Stripe hosts, so card numbers go straight to Stripe and never touch your server. Stripe is certified as a PCI Level 1 service provider, and tokenized payments and encrypted transit keep card data out of your systems. That reduces your PCI scope; it doesn't remove it. PCI compliance is a shared responsibility, so as the merchant you still complete your own annual self-assessment and attestation. See our application development approach for our security standards.

Yes. We build multi-location architectures with shared menus, location-specific pricing, and centralized reporting. Each location can have its own ordering page while sharing a single loyalty program and guest database. Owners get a unified dashboard across all locations. See our portfolio for multi-location examples.

We typically build with Next.js for the frontend, Node.js for the backend, and PostgreSQL for data. Stripe handles payments, Twilio powers SMS for waitlist and reminders, and we connect to your POS via their official API. It's a modern, documented codebase that any developer can maintain. See our web development services for more.

Restaurants & Hospitality: key facts (with sources)

  • 15–30% commission on every third-party delivery order, per DoorDash's own pricing (source: DoorDash (official merchant pricing), 2026)
  • 28% of Americans say they skipped a restaurant reservation in the past year (source: OpenTable (YouGov survey, official press release), 2021)
  • 64% of delivery customers would rather order directly from the restaurant (source: National Restaurant Association, 2021)

Sources

Each source opened and verified · last checked
  1. · DoorDash's own partnership plans charge restaurants a 15% (Basic), 25% (Plus), or 30% (Premier) commission on orders placed in the DoorDash app and delivered by Dashers, plus 6% on pickup orders (plans available to restaurants with 75 or fewer US locations).
  2. · 28% of Americans say they have not shown up for a restaurant reservation in the past year, per a YouGov survey of 1,326 U.S. adults conducted April 19-20, 2021 for OpenTable.
  3. · 64% of delivery customers prefer to order directly from the restaurant, while only 18% prefer to order through a third-party service, per the National Restaurant Association's 2021 State of the Restaurant Industry report.

Your restaurants & hospitality business, running on your terms.

Tell us where the hours are going, and we’ll show you what a system built for your operation looks like, with a fixed price before any work starts.