ezCater Fees for Restaurants: What You Actually Pay

ezCater charges restaurants a 15% commission on marketplace orders plus 2.99% payment processing. Orders that come through your own website using its Online Ordering product, the one that used to be called ezOrdering, pay 7% plus processing. There's no signup or monthly fee.

The catch is what each percentage is applied to. Commission includes the delivery fee. Processing includes tax. So the quick mental math of "about 18% of the food" comes up short on most delivered orders.

Below: the exact bases, a $500 order worked line by line, a calculator that doesn't ask for your email, what the fees add up to over a month, when ezCater pays you, and how to check your payout against your own numbers.

If you're not on ezCater yet, how ezCater works for restaurants covers the requirements, order rules and delivery options. If you're weighing it against the delivery apps, see ezCater vs DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats.

Rates checked against ezCater's restaurant partner documentation on September 17, 2026. If your agreement says something different, your agreement wins.

How much does ezCater charge restaurants?

Voluntary tips are excluded from both commission and processing. Tax is excluded from commission but not from processing. The rates above are for pickup and orders your own drivers deliver. Dispatch, ezCater's delivery service, has its own charges, covered further down.

The customer sees nothing extra. ezCater tells buyers they pay menu prices, tax, delivery and an optional tip with no service or platform fee. The platform's cut comes entirely out of the restaurant's side of the order.

Sources: ezCater's selling fees and payouts and Online Ordering guides.

What ezCater charges on a $500 order

Say you accept an order with $500 of food, charge $30 for delivery, and your own driver takes it. Tax comes to $40 and the customer adds a $25 tip. They pay $595.

Tax and tip pass through, so don't count them as revenue. That $433.46 has to cover ingredients, packaging, prep and the driver. If food costs $160, extra labor $70, packaging $15 and the delivery run $25, this order leaves $163.46 toward overhead and profit. Plug in your own costs. Those are round numbers.

Through Online Ordering the same order pays $37.10 in commission and $17.04 in processing, $54.14 in total, which is $42.40 less. The difference is that ezCater brought you the marketplace customer. For the Online Ordering customer, you did.

What the fees add up to each month

Per-order fees feel small. Monthly totals don't. Using the same delivery and tax proportions as the example above, here is what commission and processing come to at different volumes of food sales.

A restaurant doing $10,000 a month in marketplace catering pays roughly $23,000 a year in commission and processing. That isn't an argument to leave the marketplace. It's the number to weigh against what it would cost you to find those customers yourself.

Estimate the fees on your own order

Enter the amounts from a real order. The delivery input is what the customer paid, which may differ from what the run cost you.

Dispatch delivery fees

If ezCater's Dispatch drivers deliver for you, there are two delivery numbers on every order: what the customer pays you and what Dispatch charges you. They're not the same line.

ezCater's Dispatch guide prices delivery at a $30 minimum for food subtotals up to $300 and 10% of the subtotal above that. With On-Demand or Configured delivery, you cover any gap between the customer's delivery fee and the Dispatch charge. Automatic delivery sets the customer's fee to match the Dispatch cost, so there's no gap.

Commission on the delivery fee also changes. Automatic and Configured Dispatch charge a flat delivery commission of $3 on orders under $500 and $5 at $500 and above, on top of the commission on food. On-Demand charges the percentage commission on the delivery fee instead. ezCater's own guide lists Configured under both rules, so check which one your account is on before you reconcile.

Example: a $500 food order with On-Demand delivery, a $50 Dispatch charge and a $30 customer delivery fee leaves you $20 short on delivery before any commission or processing. That gap grows with volume unless you change the delivery fee or the delivery setting. This is why the calculator above is limited to pickup and orders you deliver yourself.

When ezCater pays you

ezCater pays restaurants weekly by ACH direct deposit. Payouts are processed every Tuesday for the previous week's orders, and the deposit usually arrives within one to two business days. Commission and processing are deducted before the deposit, so the amount that lands in your account is net of fees.

How to reconcile an ezCater payout

A deposit can combine several orders, passed-through tips, adjustments and deductions, so dividing the shortfall by total sales won't give you your commission rate.

Pick a completed payment period and download its report in the Partner Portal. ezCater's reporting guide explains the columns.

1. Split orders by source. Marketplace and Online Ordering orders pay different rates. Blending them into one percentage hides the difference.
2. Check the base for each fee. Commission on food plus delivery. Processing on food plus delivery plus tax. If the delivery was Dispatch, apply the delivery commission rule for your setting.
3. Separate delivery revenue from delivery cost. A $30 customer delivery fee doesn't mean delivery cost you $30.
4. Find the other deductions. Promotions, marketing, Dispatch and adjustments show up as their own lines. Don't treat every shortfall as commission.
5. Keep tax and tips out of revenue. Then subtract food, packaging, extra labor and delivery to see what the order actually contributed.

If a line still doesn't add up, send partner support the order number, the disputed amount and your calculation. That gets resolved faster than asking why the whole deposit looks low.

When paying the commission makes sense

An order you'd never have received is still worth taking. In the example above the restaurant keeps $163.46 after the order's own costs. If the kitchen and driver have room, that's a useful addition to a quiet lunch shift.

It stops making sense when the order needs overtime, a more expensive delivery, or pushes out a better order, so track those costs when you review the channel. Gross catering sales won't tell you whether the work paid.

Direct orders have an acquisition cost too. Hold processing and fulfillment constant and remove the marketplace commission: the saving on the example order is $79.50, not the full $96.54. Spend $80 in advertising or outreach to win that direct order and the first-order advantage is gone. The payoff is in the second, third and tenth order from the same office, where the marketplace would have charged you 15% every time.

So the question for any provider, ezCater included, isn't "what is the fee?" It's "what does it cost me to acquire an account, and what does that account contribute across all its orders?"

How many direct orders cover the cost of finding customers?

Divide your acquisition spending by the contribution each order leaves after processing, food, packaging, extra labor and delivery. Use contribution, not the order total.

For an illustrative direct order with the same $530 food-and-delivery revenue and costs as the example above, removing the $79.50 marketplace commission leaves $242.96 before acquisition spending and overhead. If you spend $400 on outreach and win two additional orders like that, they contribute $485.92. After outreach, $85.92 remains toward overhead and profit. One order would not cover the outreach spend. Any additional ordering subscription or setup cost still needs to be deducted.

That calculation applies to new business you would not otherwise have received. If you are comparing the same orders across channels, use only the commission difference: $400 divided by $79.50 means at least six comparable orders to cover $400 in extra monthly spending, assuming all other costs stay equal. It does not mean six new orders are guaranteed, or that marketplace customers can be moved to a direct channel.

Track the source of each new account and its actual repeat orders. A forecast of weekly lunches is not revenue until those lunches are booked.

Online Ordering gives you the customer list

Online Ordering isn't just a cheaper listing. ezCater lets restaurants download their Online Ordering customers, including name, contact details, company, order history and communication opt-in status, for use in their own marketing. The steps are in its Online Ordering guide.

If you already use it, check whether that export and your current ordering setup do what you need before paying to replace them. Compare the 7% against an alternative's subscription, processing, integrations and the time it takes to run.

That customer access is specific to Online Ordering. Marketplace buyers are ezCater's customers, and the usual marketplace rules apply to contacting them.

Build direct demand without cutting off useful orders

Start with the customers who already know you: regulars, website visitors, and the offices within a few miles. Make the catering menu easy to find, give office buyers a clear way to order, and follow up with anyone who has agreed to hear from you.

You can keep accepting profitable marketplace orders while that builds. Commission-free catering ordering covers what direct ordering tools cost and how to get orders into them. If you need a different provider, compare ezCater competitors. If you need to sort out the numbers first, use our catering revenue guide.

FlashCater's growth service is $400 a month and covers local outreach, catering marketing and reorder follow-up. It's for restaurants that want that work done every week without hiring for it. If your team already brings in enough direct inquiries, spend the money on better ordering and follow-up tools instead.

Common questions

How much does ezCater charge restaurants?

ezCater's published rate is a 15% commission on marketplace orders and 7% on orders placed through Online Ordering on your own website. Both apply to the food subtotal plus the customer delivery fee. Payment processing is 2.99% of food, delivery and tax. There is no signup or monthly fee.

Does ezCater charge a fee?

Yes, to the restaurant. Customers pay menu prices, tax, delivery and an optional tip with no platform or service fee. The restaurant pays commission and payment processing on each accepted order, deducted before payout.

What does ezCater charge on a $500 catering order?

With a $30 delivery fee and $40 in tax, a restaurant-delivered marketplace order carries $79.50 in commission and $17.04 in processing, or $96.54 in total. The same order through Online Ordering costs $54.14. Tips are not charged commission or processing.

When does ezCater pay restaurants?

Weekly, by ACH direct deposit. ezCater processes payouts every Tuesday for the previous week's orders, and the deposit usually lands within one to two business days.

Is ezOrdering the same as the ezCater marketplace?

No. ezOrdering, now called Online Ordering, takes orders through a link on your own website at 7% commission plus processing. It also lets you download your customer list, including opt-in status. The marketplace is where ezCater brings you new buyers at 15%.

Is a direct catering order free of fees?

No. You still pay card processing, and usually something for ordering software, delivery and the marketing that brought the customer in. The saving on a direct order is the marketplace commission, not the whole fee line.