Selling direct, and what each route to the sale actually costs. Restaurant online ordering on your own site →
Ordering links a restaurant never chose can sit beside its name on Google, taking commission on orders it had won. Two settings say which link it asks Google to show first.
A card-free checkout removes the scheme fee from every order. The card-scheme dispute routine a restaurant answers a contested order with is not among the protections it names.
The kitchen fires the ticket four minutes after a direct order lands, and the guest rings five minutes later. With no stated cutoff, the refund argument falls to whoever answers.
The upsell a server makes by habit is easy to leave out of an online menu, and the loss is invisible: no abandoned basket, no complaint, just a smaller order nobody recorded.
Losing a merchant account stops the till, the checkout and every held deposit at once. A new statutory notice floor arrives in April, but the contract date decides who is exposed.
A \"free delivery over £40\" offer does not make the fee non-calculable: a mandatory delivery charge must stay in the running total until the basket reaches the threshold.
With some ordering arrangements a restaurant's takings sit with a payment firm, outside FSCS cover; firms that failed between 2018 and 2023 left average shortfalls of 65%.
The regulatory contactless ceiling was removed in March 2026; the number is now each provider's decision. Most are expected not to move it, and no restaurant is told either way.
The packaging fee on a restaurant's own order page was priced against a tax rate that has risen in four consecutive Aprils, and the cost is buried in the container price.
Visa's enhanced evidence route needs two earlier undisputed charges on the same card, so a first-time diner's deposit fails it on day one. The ordinary evidence route stays open.
The ordering button on a restaurant's Google result can point at a page the owner never chose. Provider-supplied links arrive automatically, carrying a commission nobody priced.
Reimbursement covers individuals, microenterprises and charities. On ONS bands two in five licensed restaurants are outside the ten-person limb — excluded from one route, not all.
