Compared
QR code ordering for restaurants: Gilded Plate against the ways you take orders today.
The short version. Guests order and pay from their own phones, the money lands in your own payment account, there is nothing to buy and no long contract to sign, and your servers still take orders for anyone who would rather they did. Below: how each alternative takes an order today, and what changes with Gilded Plate.
This is for you if
- Your guests sit down, or queue at a window, and could order from a phone if it took no app and no account.
- You take card payments through Square or Stripe, or would, and want the money to land in your own account.
- You would rather run the kitchen board on a tablet you already own than buy a terminal.
- You are one place, or a few, and want the person who built the software on the phone when you need them.
Alternative one
Paper menus and a server taking the order.
The default, and the one everything else is measured against.
- How it works today
- A server takes the order by hand, carries it to the pass, and comes back when the table wants the bill. Every dish is relayed twice, a busy section waits for eye contact to pay, and a price change waits for the next print run.
- With Gilded Plate
- The order reaches the kitchen the way the guest typed it, with the table number attached — no handwriting, no relay, no "was that the medium or the medium-rare?". Guests pay when they are ready rather than waiting to catch someone's eye. A price change is live on the next scan. Your servers still take orders for anyone who would rather they did, and enter them into the same system — the hospitality stays a person, and the paperwork stops.
Alternative two
Your POS vendor's QR ordering add-on.
Toast, Square and others sell QR ordering as part of their point-of-sale. If you already run on one, it is the obvious first question.
- How it works today
- Toast's Mobile Order & Pay and Square's QR ordering come bundled with the vendor's point-of-sale: guests scan and order, and the order routes through that vendor's terminal, kitchen system and contract. Each is sold as part of the POS rather than on its own, and neither vendor's page states a price for the feature.12
- With Gilded Plate
- Nothing to bundle. Gilded Plate runs in a browser on the tablets and laptops you already own, alongside whatever you use at the register: your own Square or Stripe account, so card payments settle to you directly and we never hold your money; no long contract; and a menu with photos, dietary tags, allergens and modifier groups that you build once and guests see the same day. QR ordering without changing your point-of-sale to get it.
Alternative three
Delivery and ordering marketplaces.
DoorDash, Uber Eats and the like. Often mentioned in the same breath, and doing a different job.
- How it works today
- A marketplace puts your food in front of people who have never heard of you, and charges for it on every order: DoorDash's Marketplace plans take 15%, 25% or 30% commission on delivery orders and 6% on pickup; Uber Eats' plans take 20%, 25% or 30% plus a 7% pickup fee, with lower rates in some cities. The guest is the marketplace's customer, and its brand sits between you and them.34
- With Gilded Plate
- Gilded Plate is for the guest who is already in your room or at your window. There is no commission on orders, the guest relationship is yours, and there is no brand between you and them. Plenty of restaurants run a marketplace for delivery and Gilded Plate for the room — they do different jobs, and only one of them takes a cut.
Our side of the table
The commercial model, in plain terms.
Pricing set with you
We set prices with our first restaurants rather than before them. Early clients get preferential rates held as we grow, and you know what you pay before you owe anything.
No commission
We don't take a percentage of orders. Your processor's card fees are paid to the processor as they would be for any card sale.
Your own payment account
Every card payment is created against your Square or Stripe account and settles into your bank. A card number never reaches our servers.
Nothing to buy
The console, the kitchen display and the take-payment queue run in a browser. Guests use their phones. QR codes print from the browser.
No lock-in
Disconnecting your payment account is one click in Settings, and your menu and order history leave with you. The terms of service say the rest in plain language.
Sources
Where the competitor facts come from.
Every statement about another company on this page is on their public site at the address below, as read on the date shown. If a page changes, we change the sentence or remove it.
- 1Toast — https://support.toasttab.com/en/article/Mobile-Order-and-Pay-OverviewAccessed 2026-09-05.
- 2Square — https://squareup.com/us/en/online-ordering/qr-code-orderingAccessed 2026-09-05.
- 3DoorDash — https://merchants.doordash.com/en-us/products/marketplaceAccessed 2026-09-05.
- 4Uber Eats — https://merchants.ubereats.com/us/en/pricing/Accessed 2026-09-05.
Ready to see what changes?
Tell us how you take orders today and we will walk you through what a service looks like on Gilded Plate.
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