Ginger Direct
Online Ordering Without Switching Your POS
Competitor prices taken from their own pricing pages, August 2026
Most restaurants that still hand 15-30% to a delivery marketplace are not doing it because they like the terms. They are doing it because the alternative appeared to mean replacing the POS, retraining the staff, and paying a monthly fee for the privilege.
It does not. Ginger Direct is a direct ordering channel that runs beside whatever POS you have — including an old one — and prints straight to the printers you already own — kitchen and front counter both. The customer pays on the site, so the ticket that prints is already paid for. No monthly fee, no contract, and the hardware comes with it.
The Three Reasons Restaurants Don't Have This Already
Almost every owner who has looked at direct ordering stopped for one of three reasons. Each is worth answering plainly:
“I would have to replace my POS”
No. Ginger Direct sits alongside the system you use now. Your staff keep ringing in dine-in exactly as they do today, on the same screens, with no retraining. Nothing is uninstalled and nothing is migrated.
“It costs too much”
It is the reasonable assumption, because the category is expensive — the table below is taken from competitors' own pricing pages. Ginger Direct has no monthly fee and no contract. The platform fee is $1 per order and the diner pays it, not the restaurant.
“Orders would land on a tablet and we would re-key them”
That is the failure mode worth avoiding, and it is why the ticket prints instead. An order placed on your site prints in both places at once — the kitchen printer, so the line starts cooking, and the front counter, so whoever handles pickup has the slip. Nothing is re-keyed, and nobody has to watch a tablet for the kitchen to get the order.
How It Works
One box, one iPad, your existing printers
We build your ordering site, and ship a Ginger Box and an iPad. The Box plugs into your router and talks to the printers you already own — it prints the order to the kitchen and to the front counter at the same time, with no step in between and nothing re-typed. Because it addresses the printers rather than your POS, there is nothing to integrate and no compatibility list to check — the age and brand of your POS genuinely do not matter, because it is never involved.
The iPad is for the orders, not the ordering
The ticket printing is what the kitchen runs on. The iPad is there so someone can see the queue, check an order, mark it ready or refund it — not because anyone has to sit and re-type. If it is switched off, tickets still print.
The customer pays on your site
Card details are entered and charged on your own ordering page — not passed to you over the phone, not collected at pickup, not settled in cash at the counter. The order does not reach your kitchen until it is paid for, so a printed ticket is a paid ticket and nobody chases anyone. That also removes the no-show pickup that was never going to be collected.
Every order lands in real reporting
This is not a plugin that drops orders into an inbox. The online channel reports the way the rest of the POS does: every order itemised, daily totals and custom date ranges, sales by category, hour by hour, card against cash, plus discounts, refunds and tips. You can see which dish sells at 8pm on a Tuesday, not just what the day added up to.
This approach is not unique, and we will not pretend it is
Printer-direct online ordering exists elsewhere; several products send tickets to a networked printer without touching a POS. What differs is the commercial terms — no monthly fee, no contract, and the hardware included rather than sold to you.
What the Alternatives Charge
Every figure below is taken from the company's own pricing page in August 2026. Quotes vary by restaurant, so treat these as published list prices and ask for yours in writing:
| Option | Monthly | Other costs on their own page |
|---|---|---|
| ChowNow Launch | $249 ($229 annual) | $119–$499 setup; 2.95% + $0.29 processing; $250–$420 printer; $99/yr Apple fee for a branded app |
| Owner.com Flexible | $249 | plus a 5% restaurant fee per order; diners also pay a 5% order support fee |
| Owner.com Flat Rate | $499 | no per-order restaurant fee; diners still pay the 5% support fee |
| Menufy annual | $149 | 12-month agreement; free equipment included |
| Ginger Direct | $0 | $1 per order, paid by the diner; Ginger Box and iPad included; no contract |
Note what a monthly fee means for a quiet month: at $249 a month, a hundred online orders costs about $2.49 each before processing — and the same fee is due in a slow January when you take thirty. A per-order fee cannot bill you for orders you did not get.
The Marketplace Comparison
The point of a direct channel is not that it replaces the marketplaces — for a lot of restaurants they are still worth it as paid discovery. The point is what happens to your regulars:
- -A marketplace takes 15-30% of the order, from the restaurant, on every order forever — including from the customer who was always going to order from you.
- -A direct order through your own site costs the restaurant nothing per order; the diner pays the $1 platform fee.
- -A weekly regular moved from a 25% marketplace tier to direct ordering keeps that commission on every future order. On a $30 weekly order that is roughly $390 a year, from one customer.
- -You also keep the customer's details, which the marketplace does not give you.
Work out what your own marketplace mix costs before deciding anything — the numbers are usually larger than the impression. Delivery commission calculator
Small Tickets Get a Different Number
A flat $1 is wrong for a boba shop
On a $6 order, $1 is a sixth of the ticket. That is a real problem with flat per-order pricing and we would rather say so than let you find it yourself in the first week. High-volume, small-ticket shops — boba, coffee, quick counters — negotiate the fee down to $0.25 or $0.50 an order depending on online volume. Tell us your order count and average ticket and we will quote it.
The Honest Trade-off
Two systems means two sets of numbers
Keep your existing POS for the dining room and run Ginger Direct for online, and your online sales report in Ginger while your in-store sales report in your old POS. They do not add themselves together. The online side is reported in full detail, down to the item and the hour; it simply is not added to the in-store side for you. For many restaurants that is fine — online was already a separate line in the books — but you should know it going in rather than discovering it at month end.
It is a whole POS you are not obliged to use
The Box running your ordering is the same Box that runs the full Ginger POS — floor plan, split checks, staff, reporting, all of it. It sits dormant until you want it. If you ever do, there is nothing to install and nothing to migrate: you switch it on, and the two sets of books become one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I take online orders without changing my POS?
Yes. Ginger Direct runs as a separate channel alongside the POS you already use. The Ginger Box plugs into your router and prints tickets to your existing printers, so it never integrates with your POS and never depends on how old it is. Your staff keep ringing in dine-in exactly as they do now.
What does Ginger Direct cost?
There is no monthly fee and no contract, and one Ginger Box and one iPad are included. The platform fee is $1 per order, paid by the diner rather than the restaurant. High-volume shops with small tickets can negotiate that to $0.25 or $0.50 per order depending on online volume.
How is that different from ChowNow or Owner.com?
Mainly the commercial terms. From their own pricing pages in August 2026: ChowNow Launch is $249/month ($229 annual) plus a $119–$499 setup fee, 2.95% + $0.29 processing and $250–$420 for a printer; Owner.com is $249/month plus a 5% per-order restaurant fee, or $499/month flat, with diners paying a 5% support fee on both plans. Ginger Direct has no monthly fee, no contract, and includes the hardware. Printer-direct ordering itself is not unique to us.
How does the customer pay for an online order?
On your ordering site. Card details are entered and charged on the page itself, so the order is paid before it reaches your kitchen — nothing is taken over the phone, at pickup, or in cash at the counter. A printed ticket is therefore always a paid ticket, and the pickup that never gets collected stops costing you food.
Do online orders print to my kitchen and my counter?
Both, at the same time. The Ginger Box plugs into your router and sends each online order to the printers you already own — the kitchen printer so the line can start cooking, and the front counter so whoever hands the bag over has the slip. Nobody re-types the order into anything, and no tablet has to be watched for the kitchen to receive it.
Does this replace DoorDash and Uber Eats?
Not necessarily, and it does not have to. Marketplaces are worth keeping as paid discovery — they put you in front of people who have never heard of you, at 15-30% per order. The value of a direct channel is moving your repeat customers onto it, where the restaurant pays no commission and keeps the customer's details.
What is the catch with a free online ordering system?
Every free product has a revenue source, and the honest answer here is the $1 per order the diner pays, plus the possibility that you later choose the full POS the Box is already running. What there is not is a monthly fee, a contract, a setup charge, or a hardware bill. The real trade-off is operational rather than financial: run Ginger Direct beside another POS and your online and in-store sales report separately until you consolidate.
Keep Your POS. Take the Orders Anyway.
Send us your menu and we will build the ordering site. No monthly fee, no contract, Ginger Box and iPad included — and the diner pays the $1.
© 2026 Ginger. Free restaurant POS with built-in AI phone ordering.