How a Montreal Restaurant Took Control of Online Ordering and Made Local Delivery Free

For a restaurant, the delivery fee is part of the customer’s decision. Bombay Mahal Jean-Talon rebuilt its online ordering experience so customers can see a live delivery quote, choose free local delivery when eligible, and order through a system the restaurant controls.

A $30 meal can feel very different when checkout adds another $8 to $12 for delivery. That final number can decide whether someone completes the order, changes platforms, or gives up entirely.

Bombay Mahal Jean-Talon wanted to compete for that order at checkout.

The problem was bigger than one fee

Before the new system, the restaurant’s online presence was spread across multiple websites and vendors. Costs, logins, customer history, and daily operations lived in different places. The restaurant did not control every important part of its domain, ordering experience, or customer relationship.

Its previous ordering vendor could take up to 15% of online order revenue for the ordering platform alone. Delivery was separate. The platform also offered no practical way to present Bombay Mahal’s own drivers as a visible local-delivery choice.

That meant paying a substantial percentage while still lacking control over the experience customers actually saw.

The goal was to put online ordering back under the restaurant’s control.

One checkout, two real delivery choices

Nestego built Bombay Mahal Jean-Talon a direct ordering system that compares two fulfillment paths at checkout.

When a customer enters an address, the system retrieves the current Uber Direct quote. If the address is eligible for Bombay Mahal’s own local delivery, checkout also displays that option. It is free to the customer.

A typical Uber delivery quote is approximately $8 to $12. On a $30 food order, avoiding that charge can reduce the customer’s total by roughly 27% to 40% compared with paying the delivery fee.

Customers see both delivery options and the savings before payment, without having to call the restaurant or guess whether a less expensive option exists.

The selected delivery route then flows directly into the restaurant’s operational dashboard.

Lower platform costs without losing capability

The direct system uses Stripe for payment processing at its standard published rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful card transaction, rather than giving an ordering-platform vendor up to 15% of online order revenue.

At $100,000 per month in online orders, a 15% platform fee reaches $15,000 per month.

That is $180,000 annually for one location. If all four operator locations eventually process that volume through the direct system, the equivalent platform-fee exposure would be $720,000 per year.

Those are projected comparisons, not claimed realized savings. Jean-Talon is currently ramping up direct orders while customer traffic remains split between the restaurant’s system and third-party marketplaces.

Percentage-based platform fees grow with the restaurant’s sales. An owned ordering system keeps more of that growth with the business that earned it.

Ownership also changes what happens after checkout

The restaurant now controls the data created after checkout.

Bombay Mahal can now access the customer and order information needed to operate the relationship: customer details, delivery addresses, order history, fulfillment choices, and coupon activity. Promotional communication is limited to customers who opt in.

The loyalty system works without forcing customers to create an account. Eligible first orders and orders over $100 can generate a 10% reward for the next order. Every fifth eligible paid order can generate a 15% reward. The strongest available reward is selected automatically, expires after 15 days, and cannot be stacked.

The restaurant can also enable or disable menu items from the tablet dashboard with a single action. Because the process is connected from order placement through fulfillment, there are fewer manual handoffs and fewer opportunities for mistakes.

A restaurant system should serve the restaurant

Bombay Mahal needed an operation it could own, adapt, and eventually extend to additional locations.

As operator Prashant Daroowala put it: “We finally have a system we own. Nestego listened, worked quickly, and applied changes as we needed them.”

Direct ordering gives independent restaurants control over the customer experience, makes lower-cost delivery visible, keeps loyalty in-house, and lets growth benefit the restaurant instead of increasing a vendor’s percentage.

See the full Bombay Mahal case study, ordering experience, and projected savings calculator:

[embed]Bombay Mahal: Direct Ordering Under Restaurant Control How Nestego built Bombay Mahal Jean-Talon a direct ordering system with free local delivery, loyalty automation…www.nestego.com