Phone orders vs online orders: cost per order and what guests do

On a $30 pickup order, the card fee is about the same whether the guest calls or orders on your own site: $1.20 for a card read out and typed in on Square, against $1.17 for Square online ordering. The gap comes from two other costs. A phone order takes staff time, and a marketplace order carries a commission of 6% to 30%. Which one costs more depends on your order size and how long your calls run.

This page puts the three channels side by side for one order. For the monthly fees of commission-free ordering systems, see our guide to commission-free online ordering. For every Square fee, see Square POS pricing.

What does each channel charge per order?

These are the printed rates. Square prints card rates by plan on its fees help page. DoorDash and Uber Eats print their commissions on their merchant pricing pages. Toast does not print its card rates, so ask for a quote and see our Toast pricing guide for how to compare one.

How the order comes in	Printed rate	Source
Phone order, card read out and typed in	Square manual entry or card on file: 3.5% + 15¢ on Free, Plus and Premium	Square fees
Phone order, guest pays in person at pickup	Square tap, dip or swipe: 2.6% + 15¢ on Free, 2.5% + 15¢ on Plus, 2.4% + 15¢ on Premium	Square restaurant pricing
Your own online ordering on Square	Online: 3.3% + 30¢ on Free, 2.9% + 30¢ on Plus and Premium	Square restaurant pricing
Uber Eats Webshop (your own ordering site)	2.5% order processing fee + $0.29 per order	Uber Eats pricing
DoorDash marketplace	Delivery 15% (Basic), 25% (Plus) or 30% (Premier); pickup 6% on each plan	DoorDash pricing
Uber Eats marketplace	Delivery 20% (Lite), 25% (Plus) or 30% (Premium); pickup 7% with validated in-store pricing. Lite starts lower in some cities	Uber Eats pricing

DoorDash's 6% pickup rate requires pickup menu prices that match in-store prices. Uber Eats notes that in some cities its Lite rates come with payment processing fees on top. Ask either one whether a card fee applies to your orders beyond the commission.

What does one $30 order cost? A worked example

The inputs are ours. The restaurant is on Square Plus. A phone order takes three minutes of a worker's time, a figure we made up, so replace it with your own. We price that time at $15.24 an hour, the May 2025 median wage for food and beverage serving and related workers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We leave out payroll taxes, packaging, refunds, and the staff time an online order takes to check and bag, which flatters the online rows.

Channel	Working	Cost of the $30 order
Phone, card typed in	3.5% × $30 = $1.05, + $0.15 = $1.20 card fee; 3 minutes × $15.24 an hour = $0.76 wages	$1.96
Phone, guest pays at pickup	2.5% × $30 = $0.75, + $0.15 = $0.90 card fee; $0.76 wages	$1.66
Square online ordering	2.9% × $30 = $0.87, + $0.30	$1.17, fee only
Uber Eats Webshop	2.5% × $30 = $0.75, + $0.29	$1.04, fee only
DoorDash pickup	6% × $30	$1.80, commission only
Uber Eats pickup	7% × $30	$2.10, commission only
DoorDash delivery, Basic to Premier	15% to 30% × $30	$4.50 to $9.00
Uber Eats delivery, Lite to Premium	20% to 30% × $30	$6.00 to $9.00

Each extra minute on the phone adds about $0.25 at this wage ($15.24 ÷ 60). The wage cost is the same on a $15 order as on a $60 one, while a commission grows with the order. At these inputs, a typed-in phone order costs more than a DoorDash pickup order for any order under about $36. The working: the 6% commission is 2.5 points above the 3.5% card rate, and that gap has to cover $0.91 of fixed cost per phone order ($0.15 + $0.76). $0.91 ÷ 0.025 = $36.40.

For delivery, your own online ordering still needs a driver. Our commission-free ordering guide covers who pays for delivery on each system.

What do guests actually do?

The sources below measure app use and spending. None of them splits takeout between phone and online ordering, so use them for direction and your own POS for the answer.

• Apps are common. Purdue University's Consumer Food Insights Report for September 2024, a survey of 1,200 US consumers, found that around two-thirds had used a food-ordering app at least once for takeout, delivery or both. Of those app users, nearly half used one at least once a week. The same survey found that 68% "sometimes," "often" or "always" use discounts or promo codes when ordering food online.
• App spending rose and stayed higher. The USDA Economic Research Service compared three-month spending from December 2019 to February 2020 with October to December 2022. At quick-service restaurants, third-party app delivery spending went from about $0.4 billion to about $1.4 billion, and carryout through restaurants' own apps from $0.9 billion to $1.6 billion. At full-service restaurants, both rose from about $0.1 billion to about $0.4 billion. The study ends in 2022 and does not measure phone orders.
• Callers still call to order. In Maple's published phone audit, 39.8% of calls to restaurants that take phone orders showed ordering intent, and roughly 19% of all calls arrived outside business hours. The cohort is paying Maple customers, with data queried April 28, 2026. It counts what callers asked for, and it does not count completed orders.

For your own split, export four weeks of orders from your POS by source: phone, your site, each marketplace and walk-in. Add average ticket per source. That tells you which rows in the example above matter most.

Which orders suit each channel?

This table is our suggestion, based on the costs above. Test it against your own numbers.

Order type	Channel to steer it to	Why
Regular pickup order	Your own online ordering	Lowest cost per order in the example, and no talk time
Large order or catering	Phone	Fixed staff time is small against the ticket, and the guest often has questions
Order with allergies or many changes	Phone, or online with a notes field	Someone can confirm the details before the kitchen starts
Guest who finds you in a delivery app	Marketplace	The commission pays for the reach; a menu insert can point repeat guests to your site
Calls during the rush that nobody can answer	An ordering link by text or voicemail, or an answering service	An unanswered call brings in no order

How can you lower the cost of phone orders?

1. Time your calls. Take ten order calls on a normal night and note the length. Replace our three minutes with your average.
2. Take payment at pickup where you can. On Square Plus, a card tapped at the counter costs 2.5% + 15¢ against 3.5% + 15¢ typed in.
3. Route calls you cannot answer. Our pizza phones guide covers lines and hold queues, and the voicemail greeting guide covers what callers hear when nobody picks up.

An AI phone agent is another option for the talk time. Maple Pro takes phone orders into supported POS systems and includes payment over the phone and order confirmation texts, for $350 a month billed monthly or $220 a month billed annually. Ask which card rate applies to payments taken on the call. The integrations page lists the POS systems it writes orders into.

Published by Maple, which sells AI phone answering and ordering for restaurants. This AI-assisted guide combines Square, DoorDash and Uber Eats pricing pages, BLS wage data, a Purdue University consumer survey, a USDA Economic Research Service study and Maple's published phone audit with an original worked example. The call length and order size are our assumptions. It does not report a test of any ordering system or promise a saving.