Ginger Direct
Your own ordering site. $0 a month, no commission.
Orders print straight to the printers already in your kitchen — nobody re-types anything. Keep the POS you run today; Ginger never touches it, so how old it is does not matter. The customer pays $1 an order, where a delivery marketplace would take 15-30%.
Monthly fee
$0
No contract
Per order
$1
Paid by the customer
Hardware
Included
Box + iPad
High-volume, small-ticket shops — boba, coffee, quick counters — are 5% per order instead.
Why this exists
15-30%
What a delivery marketplace takes from every order — including from the regulars who already know your name.
$149-$499
What most direct-ordering platforms charge per month, due whether you sell anything or not.
Re-keying
And plenty of ordering sites simply email you the order, so somebody types it into the POS mid-rush.
Ginger Direct removes all three: your own site, nothing due monthly, and the order prints itself in your kitchen. Marketplaces are still worth keeping as paid discovery — they put you in front of people who have never heard of you. The direct channel is for the regulars who already have, and those orders should not carry a commission.
How it prints without touching your POS
This is the part nobody else does. The alternatives either replace your POS or email you an order for somebody to re-key mid-rush. We do neither.
We talk to the printer, not to your POS
Your kitchen and counter printers already sit on the restaurant network with their own address. Ginger sends tickets straight to them, the same way your current POS does. There is no integration to build, no API to open, and nothing your POS provider has to agree to.
Two systems, one printer
Most thermal printers accept one connection at a time. When your POS has the printer busy, Ginger waits its turn instead of dropping the ticket — and it resets the printer to default after every cut, so the next receipt your POS prints comes out exactly as it always did.
Nothing new to wire
The Box plugs into your router. The printers stay where they are, on the cabling they already have. No second ethernet run to the kitchen and no electrician.
Setup is plug in and power on
Plug in the Box we send you, switch on the iPad, and it finds the printers on your network. From the first order, tickets print front and back with nobody re-typing anything.
This works with network printers — the kind with their own address on your restaurant network, which is what most kitchen printers installed in the last decade are. Send us a photo of yours and we will tell you before you commit either way.
What the others charge
| Provider | Monthly | Restaurant pays per order | Diner pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ginger Direct | $0 | — | $1 per order (5% on small tickets) |
| Menufy | $149-$179 | None stated on their page | — |
| ChowNow — Launch | $249 | 2.95% + $0.29 | — |
| Owner.com | $249 or $499 | 5% (Flexible) | 5% |
| A delivery marketplace | $0 | 15-30% | Delivery + service fees |
Recurring terms only, taken from each provider’s own pricing page and verified August 2026. Card processing is separate except where a rate is shown, and one-off charges are excluded — ChowNow additionally lists $119-$499 setup and a $250-$420 printer.
What you get
Your own ordering website
Built and hosted by us, under your name, with your menu and your photos — not a listing on somebody else’s marketplace. The customer is your customer.
Paid before it prints
The customer pays when they order, so every ticket that reaches the kitchen is already settled. Nothing to collect at the door, and no walkaways.
Prints to the printers you own
Every order prints twice at once: the kitchen so the line starts cooking, the front counter so whoever hands the bag over has the slip. Nobody re-keys anything.
One Ginger Box and one iPad
Included. The Box plugs into your router; the iPad is where you watch orders arrive.
Full reporting on the channel
Itemised sales, daily and custom ranges, by hour, card versus cash — the same reporting the full POS uses.
It is the whole POS, sitting dormant
The Box running Ginger Direct is the same Box that runs the full Ginger POS. You are simply not using the rest of it. If you ever want to bring the floor over too, you switch it on — nothing to install, nothing to migrate.
The trade-off worth stating plainly: on Direct, your online sales report in Ginger while your in-store sales stay in your old POS. The two do not add themselves together.
Send us your menu
We build the site, ship the Box and the iPad, and get it talking to your printers.