Restaurant Direct-Order Conversion Engine That Actually Pries Customers Off DoorDash and Uber Eats
A restaurant owner posted on r/smallbusiness about already running their own commission-free direct-ordering page (cheaper for the customer) and stuffing flyers in every Uber Eats bag for three months — and customers still won't switch. The thread blew up to 164 upvotes and 137 comments of restaurateurs sharing partial workarounds: coupon-in-the-bag tactics, free-meal first-order codes, points-and-rewards layers built on top of their websites. Toast/ChowNow/Owner.com sell the order page; nobody sells the conversion engine that gets the existing Uber Eats customer to actually open the page a second time.
The product is mechanics, not software — every restaurateur in that thread already has 'a website.' Lead with one thing: a printable QR-coupon roll that hot-locks each code on print, ties to a no-account-needed redemption page, and emails the owner a weekly conversion report. That's the v1. Fancy retargeting comes later. Price at $39/mo flat or you'll lose to ChowNow on enterprise demos.
landscape (4 existing solutions)
Direct-order plumbing is a solved problem with multiple decent vendors. Customer-acquisition-from-aggregators is still being solved by hand: print shop + coupon code + hope. The wedge product is a vertically-integrated 'every Uber Eats bag gets a personalized scratch-off QR with a verifiable single-use coupon, redemptions feed back into a loyalty engine, abandonment SMS goes out at hour 48' — and crucially, it has to work for a $50/mo single-location operator.