A great way to grow your restaurant's sales is to offer online ordering. You can certainly set up your own system for taking online orders, especially with a web developer's help. But, often, a simpler, faster, and cheaper option is to use an online ordering system made just for restaurants.

Here, you'll find four options many restaurants prefer to provide online ordering for their guests. Use the chart to compare their pricing and features, and be sure to click the logo to watch a short video overview of each solution:

DoorDash

DoorDash is the go-to choice for more than 450,000 restaurant owners, mainly because it's a recognizable name for their customers.

Here's why we like it.

First, DoorDash makes it easy to start selling. It takes almost no time to list your business and upload your menu. No solution created by a web developer is as fast or as easy.

Second, DoorDash handles the promotion. The company has a broad, effective advertising strategy that constantly pulls diners to their site. You don't have to spend additional advertising dollars to attract people to your online ordering service.

Finally, DoorDash offers great flexibility. You can choose to use the platform for orders and delivery. Or, you can sign up to take orders through the app and use your own drivers for delivery. You can also take orders through your own site, social media, or another channel and depend on DoorDash drivers for delivery.

The drawback: This service is pricey. Restaurants wanting to depend on DoorDash for delivery can pay between 15-30% commission. Still, the model works for many businesses, especially when it helps bring in enough business to offset the costs.

Interested in checking out DoorDash? Follow this link to get started.

TouchBistro

TouchBistro is a great choice for owners who are looking for an all-in-one ordering solution. Whether you have a full-service restaurant, a quick-service restaurant, or a food truck, you can increase your sales, simplify your processes, and deliver a great customer experience with this solution.

TouchBistro is a much more robust solution than DoorDash, offering tableside ordering, staff management, floor plan and table management, menu tools, and inventory management features. Online ordering is an add-on.

Of course, this means that you must first buy the TouchBistro solution and pay an additional fee for the online ordering functionality, but unlike with delivery services, you won't pay a commission on orders and can keep 100% of the profits.

One feature we really like is their menu synchronization. When you change your restaurant's menu within TouchBistro's system, it automatically pushes out to your online ordering tool. This can be a huge timesaver and eliminate the possibility of having conflicting menus across your platforms.

TouchBistro is one of our favorites for online ordering, especially for restaurants that plan to employ their own delivery fleet or offer pickup service and not delivery. More than 29,000 restaurants use it every day for this and other purposes.

Would you like to check out a free online demo? Get started here.

Toast

Toast is an even more popular option. Like TouchBistro, it's an all-in-one point-of-sale (POS) platform that doesn't require owners to pay out commissions. More than 40,000 restaurants rely on Toast and its best-in-class functionality.

You can see many of Toast's great features in the table above. To recap, these include optional integrations with delivery services and the ability to take online orders without paying fees to third parties. Here's another: With Toast, you can upsell by making recommendations for featured menu items or items Toast recognizes as being most popular. And, when your restaurant is slammed, you can throttle orders to help your kitchen work at a comfortable pace.

Toast can also allow your guests to reorder their favorite menu items or schedule their orders ahead of time. These are two features guests love, making orders—and repeat orders—simple for them to complete.

Toast is certainly a tool worth checking out. Ready to see a demo? Follow this link to get started.

Eat App

Eat App is our final pick. Like a few of the others we've mentioned, Eat App is a robust restaurant management system. Online ordering is just part of what they do. But, like the others, they do online ordering for restaurants well.

One of the great things about Eat App is its mobile-friendly online ordering widget. With it, you can set up seamless online ordering from your site, social media accounts, and services like TripAdvisor and Zomato.

We also like the digital menu options restaurant owners can access through Eat App. These include options for upsells, downtime discounts, and the ability for diners to make special requests.

Plus, the menus are clean, simple, and ultra functional, making them a great resource to offer your guest.

Eat App is the most expensive full-service option we list here, but the tool is packed with features that include reservations, table management, automation, analytics, marketing, and much more. It's worth considering as an all-in-one tool for your restaurant.

You can check out a demo by following this link.

What's next?

Ready to check out some other tools you can use to get your business up and running? Our restaurant guide can point you in the right direction.

Then, be sure to log into your owner's portal for more articles and a step-by-step guide to taking on the administrative, legal, financial, and marketing aspects of running your business.