ChowNow Review

ChowNow is the commission-free online-ordering and marketing layer for independent restaurants that want guests ordering on their own branded site and app instead of handing 20–30% of every ticket to DoorDash — you pay a flat monthly fee plus card processing and keep the margin. It is not a POS: it sits on top of Toast, Square, Clover, Revel, Skytab, or Genius/Heartland and pushes direct orders into whatever you already run. If you have real third-party-delivery volume and want to claw that margin back, the flat fee pays for itself; if you take only a handful of online orders a week, the math is harder to justify.

ChowNow, Inc. is a privately held, VC-backed company founded in 2011 and headquartered in Culver City, California — an online-ordering specialist, not a reseller and not a payment processor.

What Is ChowNow #

ChowNow is a direct online-ordering and marketing platform for independent restaurants and small local chains — full-service, quick service, fast casual, pizzerias, and cafés that already get third-party delivery orders and want to move those diners onto channels they own.

The core pitch is commission-free ordering. Instead of paying a delivery marketplace a per-order commission, you pay ChowNow a flat monthly subscription and take unlimited direct orders through a branded ordering website, a native branded mobile app, a listing in ChowNow's own diner marketplace, and order buttons spread across Google, Apple Maps, and Yelp. Around that it bundles a website builder on Squarespace templates, email and SMS marketing, a loyalty and rewards program, catering, QR-code ordering, and a dashboard that aggregates your DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub tickets alongside your direct orders.

ChowNow runs two sides of the same network: the B2B restaurant platform you subscribe to, and a consumer-facing ChowNow marketplace app where diners browse participating restaurants. For an operator, that means a listing in the marketplace feeds direct orders on top of the ones that come through your own site and app — without a per-order cut.

The through-line is channel ownership. A guest places an order on your ChowNow site or app, the order drops straight into your POS and prints to the line, and the diner's contact details stay in your account rather than the marketplace's. ChowNow states restaurants get full access to diner ordering data and contact information — "your diners, your data" — which is what turns a one-time delivery order into a marketing list you can run repeat-business campaigns against.

Features #

Direct ordering suite #

The commission-free ordering tool runs off the restaurant's own site, backed by an SEO-optimized website built on Squarespace templates and a native iOS/Android app under your own brand. A diner lands on your site, builds a cart, and the order flows into your POS the same way an in-house ticket does — no marketplace sitting between you and the margin. A listing in ChowNow's commission-free marketplace and order links across a discovery network (Google, Apple Maps, Yelp, and more) route additional direct orders your way, so a guest who finds you on a Google listing can order without ever touching DoorDash. Catering and QR-code ordering extend the same order flow to large-party and on-premise use.

Marketing and loyalty #

Automated and on-demand email and SMS campaigns reach your diner list, and you can upload in-store guests by CSV to grow it past just the people who ordered online. A loyalty and rewards program ties repeat business back to the diner record, so a lapsed regular can be pulled back with a targeted offer instead of a marketplace promotion that trains guests to shop on price. Because the ordering and the marketing share one diner database, a first-time online order becomes a contact the restaurant owns and can re-market to. Higher tiers raise the contact and SMS-credit ceilings and add print marketing, including complimentary flyers.

Operations and order consolidation #

Third-party order aggregation consolidates DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub tickets into one ChowNow dashboard, so staff work a single screen instead of a wall of tablets during a rush. Centralized menu management pushes a price or 86'd-item change across both your direct channels and the connected marketplaces at once, which keeps the menu from drifting out of sync between DoorDash and your own site. ChowNow states it provides fraud and chargeback protection on orders without limits, absorbing the card-fraud risk that otherwise lands on the operator. It runs more than 20 POS integrations plus delivery management and reporting, and offers ChowNow-managed Flex Delivery for restaurants without their own drivers. Support is 24/7 by phone and chat, and every partner gets a dedicated onboarding advisor.

How it fits your stack #

ChowNow is the ordering-and-marketing layer, not the system of record. Orders captured on your branded site, app, and marketplace listing sync into the POS you already run — Toast, Square, Clover, Revel, Skytab, or Genius/Heartland — where they print, fire, and post to sales reporting alongside dine-in. Third-party tickets from DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub flow the other direction, aggregating back into the ChowNow dashboard for one menu and one view of online demand. The diner data that each order generates stays in your account to feed the loyalty and email tools.

Pricing #

ChowNow sells three flat monthly tiers, with the lower number for annual billing and the higher for month-to-month. There are no per-order commissions — that is the point — but there is a card-processing fee and a setup fee on top.

Published fees on top of the subscription:

ChowNow is software-first, so there is no proprietary in-store hardware to buy — it runs on your existing website, app, and POS, and the only hardware cost is an optional order printer. The flat-fee model is the whole value case: a built-in calculator on the pricing page estimates savings against an average 22% third-party commission rate, and the more delivery volume you run, the more the flat fee beats per-order commissions. The breakeven is simple arithmetic — a restaurant doing a few thousand dollars a month in online orders pays the same flat fee whether that number doubles, while a marketplace commission scales straight up with it.

The annual-versus-monthly gap is a flat $20/mo per tier, so a Launch operator saves $240 a year committing annually. ChowNow's pricing page does not publicly state a minimum term or early-termination fee on the annual plan, which is worth settling before you sign. The processing rate of 2.95% + $0.29 applies per transaction regardless of plan, and the setup fee lands once at onboarding — budget both alongside the headline monthly number rather than treating the subscription as the full cost.

Who It's For (and Who It Isn't) #

Good fit: independent, owner-operated restaurants — full-service, quick service, pizzerias, cafés — that are bleeding margin to third-party delivery and want their own branded ordering site and app, plus operators who care about owning diner contact data. It fits single-location and small multi-unit brands well.

A concrete good-fit picture: a single-location pizzeria or fast-casual spot taking a steady stream of delivery and pickup orders, tired of handing a fifth of each ticket to the marketplaces, that wants its own ordering app and a diner list it can text a slow-Tuesday offer to. For that operator the flat fee is predictable and the margin recovery is real.

Weaker fit: anyone shopping for an actual POS — ChowNow layers on top of Toast, Square, or Clover, it does not replace them. Large enterprise and multi-brand chains that need high-volume digital-ordering aggregation are Olo's lane, not ChowNow's. Restaurants that want online ordering built into one all-in-one POS may prefer Toast's or Square's native ordering instead of a separate subscription. And a very low-volume operator — a café taking a handful of online orders a week — may find the flat $229+/mo plus setup fee harder to justify than a pure pay-per-order model, since the subscription costs the same whether it moves five orders or five hundred.

Is It Legit and Worth It? #

ChowNow has run since 2011 and is one of the best-known names in commission-free ordering, and its top praise in third-party reviews is exactly its core promise — the margin it preserves by moving orders off the marketplaces — along with ease of use and its POS integrations.

The honest cons are worth pricing in. The flat subscription plus the 2.95% + $0.29 processing fee and the setup fee is the most recurring complaint — for a restaurant with thin online volume, the model can feel expensive relative to how many orders it actually captures. Reviewers also cite limited flexibility in how the branded ordering pages can be customized, a learning curve on getting full value out of the marketing tools, and occasional integration friction depending on the specific POS and stack. None of these undercut the margin argument for a high-volume operator — they are the trade for a flat, predictable fee instead of a commission.

Alternatives #

• Toast — if you want online ordering built into the same system that runs the floor and the kitchen rather than a separate subscription on top; the trade is Toast's processor and hardware lock-in.
• Square for Restaurants — free native online ordering bundled with the POS; the simplest path for a café or small QSR that doesn't want a second vendor.
• Clover — online ordering as part of a POS stack, useful if you're already on Clover hardware and want ordering in the same dashboard.
• Compare the field in our restaurant online ordering systems guide.

Login & Support #

Restaurants sign in at get.chownow.com (the "Login" link) into the restaurant dashboard. Support is 24/7 by phone and chat — call or text 888.707.2469, or email [email protected] — and every partner gets a dedicated onboarding advisor.