How is ChowNow different from DoorDash or Uber Eats?
DoorDash and Uber Eats are marketplaces. Diners find you inside their apps, those apps own the customer relationship, and they take a cut of every order, usually somewhere between 15 and 30%. ChowNow works the other way around. Your ordering lives on channels you own: your website, your branded app, and our Discovery Network. You pay a flat monthly subscription instead of per-order commissions, so a busy month never turns into a bigger bill. And the diner is yours. Their name, email, and order history stay with you, not with us. You still pay standard card processing, but nothing gets skimmed off your direct orders.
Can I still offer delivery?
Yes. ChowNow does not take delivery off the table, it just does not lock you into one way of doing it. You can run your own drivers, or use Flex Delivery, which dispatches orders across Uber Direct and DoorDash Drive at a flat rate per order, without per-distance surcharges or percentage commissions. You choose how it gets handled, and you decide whether to pass any delivery cost along to the diner.
How long does setup take?
Most restaurants are up and running within a few weeks, depending on how much menu and design customization you want. You get a dedicated onboarding expert who does the heavy lifting alongside you, and if you’re connecting a POS, we coordinate that setup directly with your POS provider.
Does ChowNow integrate with my POS?
Very likely, yes. ChowNow integrates with over 20 of the leading POS systems, including Toast, Square, Revel, and Clover. Orders flow straight from every ChowNow channel into your POS and to the kitchen, so there’s no re-keying and no separate tablet to babysit. Don’t see yours? Ask our team. The list keeps growing.
Is ChowNow a good fit for my restaurant?
If you’re an independent operator who wants to own your customer relationship and stop handing 15 to 30% to the marketplaces, yes. ChowNow is built for independents, not national chains, and it works best when you’re doing real online order volume and want that revenue and that diner data to stay yours. If you’re mostly happy renting customers from the big apps, we’re probably not your fit, and we’d rather tell you that up front.
