Website for food businesses: bookings and orders

A marketplace or your own website: whose customer is it?

A food business can be found online in two ways, and they don't compete so much as answer different customers. A marketplace or a delivery app is where someone goes when they are hungry and haven't decided where to eat: your kitchen appears in a list, and the platform is paid for the orders or the tables it sends. Your own website is where someone goes once they have decided on you, or been told about you. Nothing is charged for the introduction, because nobody made one.

The difference that lasts is the customer's details. A table booked or a deposit paid on your own website leaves you a name and an email address, and with them the chance of a second visit: on Pro, a loyalty programme gives your regulars a reason to come back to you, not to the app. Ask any platform who holds those details when the booking goes through it.

So the useful question isn't which one to choose. It is which customers you are paying a platform to reach who would have found you anyway, by your name, on Google.

Allergens: what your menu must say, online as in the dining room

Irish rules on allergens go further than a note at the bottom of the menu. The FSAI lists 14 allergens that must be declared by law, and for food sold loose, which includes what restaurants, cafés and takeaways serve, the information must be in writing, in English or in Irish and English, easy to find before the sale, and tied to each dish. Customers must have it before buying and must not have to ask for it.

Orders taken at a distance have their own paragraph. For food ordered over the phone or via a website, the allergen information can be written on the menu or the online information used to order, and given again at delivery, in writing or verbally; or given in writing at delivery if it was only given verbally at the point of ordering.

For your website, that comes down to three habits:

• Name the allergens under each dish on the online menu, not on a separate page a customer has to look for.
• Change the online menu the same day the kitchen changes a recipe or a supplier.
• Put the same information in the bag or on the receipt for anything delivered or collected.

FSAI, “Food Allergens - Advice for Businesses”, read on 02/10/2026

VAT since 1 July 2026: 9% on food and catering

The 9% VAT rate came back on 1 July 2026 for food and catering services, down from 13.5%, and the Department of Finance says it has no end date this time. Revenue's page on the second reduced rate spells out what it covers: catering and restaurant supplies, excluding alcohol, soft drinks and bottled water, and hot take-away food and hot tea and coffee.

Two practical consequences for a website. A price shown to a consumer includes VAT, so if the change moved your prices, the online menu and the one on the wall should have moved together. And a set menu sold with drinks included mixes rates: how to split it is a question for your accountant, not for a booking tool.

Department of Finance, “Government Marks Reduction of VAT Rate to 9% for Food Businesses and Hairdressers”, read on 02/10/2026 · Revenue, “Second reduced rate of VAT”, read on 02/10/2026

Deposits for groups, set menus and catering: what the CCPC says

Money taken at booking decides who carries the cost of a table nobody turns up for, or of food bought for an event that is called off. The CCPC's consumer page is plain about the starting point: generally, a business does not have to refund a deposit when the customer changes their mind, though its terms may allow it. If the business cannot do what it agreed, the customer can ask for the deposit back.

For a caterer there is a second rule worth knowing. Consumers who buy a service online normally have a period in which they can cancel, but the CCPC's guidance for businesses lists exemptions for contracts to be performed on a specific date, and catering is one of them. That doesn't remove the need for clear terms; it makes them the only thing both sides can point to.

A deposit sized on what the empty table or the cancelled event would cost you is easier to defend than a round number:

• A fixed amount per head on large tables, where one missing party empties a section of the room.
• The full price of a set menu or a tasting evening, where the food is bought in advance.
• A percentage of a catering quote at confirmation, and the balance a stated number of days before the event.
• Nothing on a table for two midweek, where asking may cost you the booking.

CCPC, “Deposits”, read on 02/10/2026 · CCPC, “Selling services”, information for businesses, read on 02/10/2026

Tips and service charges: the notice your customers have a right to read

Since 1 December 2022, employers must clearly display how cash and card tips, gratuities and service charges are distributed. Citizens Information lists what the notice states: whether tips are shared among staff, how and in what amounts, and the same for any service charge. A mandatory charge can only be called a ‘service charge’ if the money is treated like electronic tips, which means it goes to employees.

This matters on a booking page as soon as you add a charge to large tables or to private events. Say what the charge is called, how much it is and where it goes, in the same place as the deposit rule. A customer who reads ‘12.5% service charge on tables of eight and over’ before booking doesn't discover it on the bill.

Citizens Information, “Tips, gratuities and service charges”, read on 02/10/2026

Cooking from home or from a dark kitchen: the rules are the same

A caterer who starts in a home kitchen, or a brand that only exists on delivery, is a food business like any other. The FSAI puts it without ambiguity: operating a food business from home does not exempt it from food hygiene legislation, which requires registration of the business with the Health Service Executive, hygiene rules, training, a food safety management system based on HACCP, and traceability.

A website doesn't replace any of that, and it shouldn't go live before it. What it can do, once you are registered, is say so: who you are, where the food is prepared, what you cook and for how many, and how to order or ask for a quote.

FSAI, “Starting a Food Business at Home”, read on 02/10/2026

What a website and ordering system costs a food business in Ireland

Prices are hard to compare in this trade because the products bundle different jobs. Flipdish's Irish pricing page, read on 02/10/2026, lists its Essential package, a point of sale with online ordering and a branded website and apps, from €119 a month per site billed annually, or €139 billed monthly, excluding VAT. It is a different product from a website with booking: a till first, with ordering attached. If your till is already paid for, ask what the ordering part costs without it.

Web agencies price by the build. On the same day, Digimark's pricing guide gave a brochure site at €800 to €1,500 and a booking or appointment site at €2,000 to €4,500, and Arrow Design's cost guide a small brochure site at €695 to €1,500 + VAT with an online booking system as an extra at €300 to €800 + VAT. A one-off build leaves the menu changes, the hosting and the booking tool's own subscription to be counted on top.

Traxo's Starter plan is €50 a month excl. VAT with no commitment, or €40 a month on yearly billing, paid in one go (€480 excl. VAT for twelve months): the website, online booking day and night, online payment in full or as a deposit, and customer records. Online payment costs 3% of what is paid, nothing else. Pro is €100 a month, or €80 on yearly billing. For booking systems one by one, the restaurant page compares list prices at a real volume.

Flipdish, pricing (Ireland), read on 02/10/2026 · Digimark, “Website design cost in Ireland”, read on 02/10/2026 · Arrow Design, “Website development costs in Ireland”, read on 02/10/2026

Six questions to ask before you sign

Whatever you choose, a platform, a bundle with a till or a website of your own, the same questions show what the monthly price leaves out:

Traxo's answers: a flat subscription, 3% on payments taken online and no commission per cover or per booking; customers book on your own website; no commitment on monthly billing. If you stop, the website and the domain name stop with the subscription, and your customer records are returned to you on request within thirty days, then deleted. You open your account online, build the website, pay, and put it online in one click; a free fifteen-minute launch call is there if you want it.

• What will I pay in a busy month, with every add-on and VAT counted?
• Is there a commission per order, per cover or per booking, and on which customers?
• Do customers book or order on my website, under my name, or on your app?
• Whose list do the customer's details end up in, and can I contact them again?
• How long is the contract, does it renew itself, and how much notice do I give?
• Who updates the menu, the hours and the allergens, and how fast does a change show?