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Comment by rory096 | Hacker News Reader

Hey Mike! Not to blatantly self-promote on HN, but my startup Foodio (http://getfoodio.com) is based around the ideas that GrubHub's fees are insane; restaurants can't wait for their money for a week; and online ordering should promote the restaurant's brand, not a middleman. We charge $295 to build custom online & mobile ordering, and then it's just 5% of sales.

We're a small startup out of Charlottesville, VA, but we'd love to help out your mother if we can! Hit me up at rory at getfoodio dot com if you're interested.

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Your choice really depends on your brand. I live in NYC and most of the time that I order food online I just go to Seamless and decide what looks good. There's only been one restaurant that I order from off their own site and that's a pizza place that I love that isn't on Seamless.

If you're a random sushi or Chinese place it's worth the 25% to be in the Seamless directory because otherwise no one will ever order from you. Katz's Deli could probably get away with ordering on their own site because their brand is good enough.

I agree, there's something to be said in many cases for marketing to new customers with those services. But those restaurants should have both- high-fee marketplace services for discoverability, and reasonably priced online ordering of their own for loyal customers and when directing customers online. No restaurant should have to tell people the only way to order online is to find them on a site buried under every competitor in town- unless they pay big extra commissions to float to the top.

They may be on Seamless or Grubhub (both the same company) so that their business may be noticed in the crowded NYC delivery market, but when they can offer a +25% reduction in delivery price by having their own site you will see people using GrubHub as a directory not an ordering platform. What I am getting at is that it is not a sustainable business model, especially because chain restaurants which make up most of the growth in restaurants can afford to make and market their own ordering platform. Also for a small business outside of a "hip" city there is little traction for a service which creates bad faith with customers by jacking up prices, which I've seen can make some people really angry.

It's against ToS to offer lower prices outside of Seamless than you offer on Seamless. That's why no one does it.

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