02What a full ordering system adds
An ordering system lets the customer finish the whole transaction on their own phone. Rotiseria Baba Novac, a rotisserie in Bucharest, came to PROOF48 because it sold through a delivery aggregator that took a cut of every order and owned the customer relationship. What shipped was a menu the restaurant manages, a cart, Stripe checkout, pickup slot selection, a confirmation email on every order, order tracking for the customer and an admin view the kitchen uses during service. It went live at rotiseria.ro inside a week. That is a different product from a menu page, and it is priced as an online store, 2,500 to 4,500 EUR, not as a 48 hour website.
- Rotiseria's build: menu, cart, Stripe checkout, pickup slots, confirmation email, order tracking, kitchen admin view
- Priced as a store, 2,500 to 4,500 EUR
- Its own timeline: Rotiseria went live inside a week, which is not a 48 hour promise
- The point of it for Rotiseria was getting orders out of an aggregator and keeping them
03How to choose between the two
Ask what you want the phone to do. If the answer is show people what we serve, build the menu page. If it is let people order and pay without calling, you need ordering. A third case sits between them: a menu page with a call button, a WhatsApp link or a booking link. Contact forms, WhatsApp, booking links and maps are all on the 48 hour list, and for a place where staff take orders by phone or at the table they cover a lot. The real test is what you lose today. If an aggregator keeps a cut and the customer relationship, as it did for Rotiseria, an ordering system is how you take that back. If you take no online orders now, you are not paying a commission yet, and a cart may only add work for the kitchen.
- Show the menu, hours and map: a menu page
- Let guests call, message on WhatsApp or book: a menu page with those links
- Take orders and payment online, and keep them out of an aggregator: an ordering system
- No online orders today: start with the page and see what people ask for
04Where PROOF48 fits, and where it is the wrong choice
The menu page fits the 48 hour website offer: a business website of up to about five pages, so a home page, a menu, a contact page and a couple more, at 500 to 2,500 EUR depending on pages and integrations. You send one link to a site whose look you like, and at hour 48 you get a live preview. No deposit, and you pay only if you keep it. You own the code, the domain and the hosting account. Maintenance Plus, 57 EUR a month, includes one content update a month, and VIP, 97 EUR a month, includes two. We are the wrong choice if you want ordering with payment, which is a store with its own scope, if you edit the menu several times a day yourself, since our plans list content updates per month rather than a self-service editor, or if the dish photos do not exist yet.
- Menu page: up to about five pages, 500 to 2,500 EUR, preview at hour 48, nothing owed if you walk away
- Ordering with cart and checkout: a store, 2,500 to 4,500 EUR, not a 48 hour build
- Maintenance Plus, 57 EUR a month: one content update a month. VIP, 97 EUR: two
- Photography that does not exist yet gets its own timeline
A rotisserie that wanted out of the aggregator
Rotiseria Baba Novac in Bucharest sold through a delivery aggregator that took a cut of every order and owned the customer relationship. PROOF48 built them their own ordering system: menu, cart, Stripe checkout, pickup slots and email confirmations, live at rotiseria.ro inside a week. We do not publish their order volume, because that number is theirs to share.
See the build: Rotiseria Baba NovacQuestions, answered
Can the QR code just open a PDF of the menu?
Yes, a QR code opens whatever address you give it. A page is built for a phone screen and sits inside your site, with hours, map and contact beside the dishes. PROOF48 builds the page, not the PDF.
Does PROOF48 supply the QR codes?
Not as a listed part of the offer. We build the page and the code is a link to its address, so you can generate and print it once the page is live.
Can I add online ordering to a menu page later?
Ordering is quoted as its own project, a store at 2,500 to 4,500 EUR with its own scope and timeline. If you expect to want it, say so in your first message.
Should I get a WhatsApp chatbot instead?
That is a different question, covered in our post on restaurants and WhatsApp. PROOF48 does not sell a standalone WhatsApp chatbot. A WhatsApp assistant is a custom build, priced on request.
Where PROOF48 fits
If guests only need to read the menu, a menu page behind a QR code is enough, and it fits PROOF48's 48 hour website at 500 to 2,500 EUR with nothing owed if you walk away from the preview. If you want orders and payment kept out of an aggregator, that is an online store at 2,500 to 4,500 EUR, as Rotiseria Baba Novac's ordering system was.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.