Online ordering for restaurants in the US that keeps the order, and the guest, with you

Direct ordering in the United States: a practical read before you sign anything

US restaurants have an advantage most other markets do not: the big marketplaces publish their rate cards. DoorDash lists Basic, Plus and Premier marketplace plans at 15, 25 and 30 per cent of delivery orders, with pickup at 6 per cent and self-delivery at 15 per cent; Uber Eats lists Lite, Plus and Premium at 20, 25 and 30 per cent, pickup at 7 per cent, and a 15 per cent self-delivery fee (both checked October 2026 on the merchants’ pricing pages). Whatever you think of those numbers, you can at least put them in a spreadsheet.

The pickup column is the one to look at first

Operators tend to focus on the delivery commission because it is the biggest number. The pickup column is more interesting. A marketplace pickup order costs 6 or 7 per cent and the guest walks in anyway. The same order on your own site costs a card fee and nothing else, and you have the guest’s phone number for next time. For a counter-service spot doing a heavy lunch trade, moving pickup orders direct is the fastest, least risky change available, and it needs no drivers.

Delivery: be honest about what you can staff

Porter, the courier service Tuckly connects to, does not operate in the United States, and Tuckly has no other courier integration here. If you want delivery on your direct site, it will be your own drivers, assigned from the order screen. That suits restaurants that already employ a driver or two for catering and large orders. It does not suit a two-person kitchen with no vehicle.

The honest recommendation for a lot of US restaurants: run pickup and to-go on your own site, leave marketplace delivery switched on for the reach, and revisit self-delivery once direct volume justifies a driver shift. The delivery management page walks through both setups.

Tax, tips and accessibility are not afterthoughts

Three things that trip people up:

Sales tax. Under marketplace facilitator laws in many states, the marketplace collects and remits tax on orders placed through it. Your own site is not a marketplace facilitator; you are the seller, so your checkout needs the right rate and your returns need to include direct sales. Your accountant will know whether your city or county adds anything to the state rate.

Tips. Guests expect a tip line on delivery orders. Tipping on direct orders is not a confirmed feature of Tuckly’s checkout, which is why it is listed as a question to ask us rather than a bullet point. If your drivers rely on tips, settle this before launch.

Accessibility. ADA Title III covers restaurants and the goods and services they offer on the web. Tuckly’s ordering pages are built with semantic markup, labelled form fields and keyboard operation. That is a baseline rather than a legal guarantee, and it is a fair question to put to any ordering vendor.

POS integration: what “available” would need to mean

Toast requires a partnership agreement and certification before granting production API access, and write access is generally limited to partners. Square’s APIs are open to any developer, with payment processing supported in the US. Clover reviews each production developer account. Lightspeed reserves K-Series API access for partners and approved merchants. The integrations directory states, for each of these, whether Tuckly pushes orders in, syncs menus, both, or neither yet. We do not list an integration as available because an API exists.

What to do this week

Print your ordering link on the bag. Add the order button to Google Business Profile. Tell the regulars at the register. Then watch the order screen for a fortnight and compare what the same orders would have cost on your marketplace statement. The commission calculator does that arithmetic with your own figures, and the promotion guide linked above covers what to do after the first fortnight.