Every café or restaurant owner in Singapore eventually faces the same question: do you build your own ordering page or let the aggregators handle it? The honest answer is that the maths is different for every operator — and most successful businesses end up running both, but with very different roles for each.
What the Aggregators Actually Cost You
The headline cost is the commission, which sits somewhere between 25% and 35% depending on the platform and your negotiating position. That's the obvious line. The less obvious costs are:
- Customer ownership. You don't get the customer's email, phone number, or order history in a usable form. You can't message them later, run loyalty, or invite them back.
- Brand control. Your menu, photos, and ordering experience all live inside someone else's interface. You're a tile on a grid, not a destination.
- Pricing rigidity. Promotions and bundles often have to fit the platform's structure, not yours.
- Discoverability dependence. When the algorithm changes, your orders change with it.
The benefits, to be fair, are real: instant reach to millions of users already in ordering mode, a logistics network you don't have to build, and zero technical overhead.
What Direct Ordering Actually Costs
A direct ordering page — whether built on Shopify, a dedicated F&B tool like Oddle or Atlas, or a custom flow — typically costs $50–$500 per month plus transaction fees of 2-4%. That's dramatically cheaper than aggregator commissions on paper.
But direct ordering only works if you can actually get customers to your site. Without organic traffic, repeat visits, or marketing spend, your beautiful direct ordering page sits empty while the aggregator listings rack up orders at 30% commission.
The Realistic Pattern That Works
For most SEA F&B operators with 1-5 outlets, the pattern that works is roughly this:
- Aggregators handle discovery and trial. First-time customers, people in a new neighbourhood, lazy weeknight orders. You accept the commission as a customer acquisition cost.
- Direct ordering handles repeat customers and high-margin transactions. Regulars, large group orders, catering, gift cards, branded merch, loyalty programme members. The margin difference here pays for the platform several times over.
- Pickup, dine-in QR ordering, and event catering should always be direct. The customer is already on your premises or already chose you. Don't pay 30% to a platform for a transaction the platform didn't create.
The Integration That Makes or Breaks It
The single biggest reason operators avoid direct ordering isn't cost — it's operational overhead. Running two systems means two tablets, two sets of order tickets, two reporting dashboards, and two reconciliation flows at the end of the day.
The fix is integration. Modern POS systems can consolidate orders from your direct site, FoodPanda, GrabFood, and Deliveroo into a single ticket queue and a single end-of-day report. If you're serious about running both, the POS choice matters more than the ordering platform choice.
Worth evaluating: Lightspeed, Square (in markets where it operates), and local options like Storehub, Eats365, and Atlas. Get this layer right and the rest follows.
How to Decide
Run the numbers honestly:
- What's your current aggregator order volume and average commission?
- How many of those orders are repeat customers who could be moved direct?
- What's the realistic conversion rate on a direct ordering link (if you've never tested it, assume 20-30% of regulars would use it if it existed and was easier)?
- What's the cost of a direct platform plus the staff hours to manage two systems?
For most operators we work with, moving even 30-40% of repeat orders to direct pays for the platform in the first month and meaningfully improves margin from month two onwards. That's the prize. The aggregators stay — they just stop being your only option.
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- #Restaurants
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- #SMEs
- #Singapore SMEs
- #Online Ordering
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