ezCater for Restaurants: How It Works, From Signup to Payout

ezCater is the largest marketplace for business catering in the US. Offices, clinics and event planners go there to order lunch for a meeting, and ezCater sends the order to a restaurant nearby. The company says it works with 125,000 restaurant partners, that its average order is over $420, and that it takes orders from more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies.

For a restaurant, it's a way to get catering orders without finding the customers yourself. In exchange, ezCater takes a commission, sets rules on how you accept and deliver orders, and keeps the customer relationship. This guide walks through the whole thing as a restaurant experiences it, from the application to the bank deposit.

Everything below is taken from ezCater's restaurant partner documentation as of September 17, 2026. Your partner agreement is the final word.

What you need to get listed

ezCater's onboarding requirements are short:

• A brick-and-mortar storefront, with the food prepared at the listed address. No ghost kitchens or home kitchens.
• At least six months of reviews and a 3.5-star or better rating on Yelp or Google.
• A menu that suits catering: trays, packages, boxed meals.

Insurance requirements, delivery capability and the approval timeline are not published. If you have self-delivery, say so in the application. If you don't, ezCater's own delivery network covers most of its partner locations.

Once approved, ezCater builds your marketplace listing and your Partner Portal account. You then set your lead time (ezCater recommends 12 to 24 hours to start), your daily order capacity (the default is three orders a day), your delivery radius and fees, and your cancellation policy.

Your menu on ezCater

You don't build the menu yourself. ezCater transcribes it from a spreadsheet, a link to your website or a PDF. Two rules matter:

Price parity. Your ezCater prices must match the lowest prices you charge for the same items on your own website or any other online channel. You can't mark items up to cover the commission.

Changes go through ezCater. Menu edits are submitted through a Partner Portal form or by email. Simple changes take about two business days. A full menu overhaul takes longer. If you change prices in the restaurant, plan for the lag.

How orders arrive and how fast you have to act

A new order comes in by email, text message, a push notification from the partner app, and in the Partner Portal. You then accept or reject it, and the clock is short:

You can set a dollar threshold under which orders are accepted automatically, which is worth doing for small orders so you never miss the window overnight.

ezCater tracks three operational metrics and expects 100% on-time acceptance, 95% or better on-time delivery, and 99% or better order accuracy. It enforces them. Under its operational accountability policy, a store with seven or more orders in 90 days can be paused from receiving new orders if it rejects 30% of them or cancels 10%. A third pause in 12 months means removal from the marketplace.

So set your capacity and lead time honestly. Rejecting an order you can't fill costs you more than never getting it.

Cancellations and disputes

You set your own cancellation policy for customers. The default is a 25% fee on the subtotal for orders cancelled within 24 hours of the event, and you can choose 0, 15, 25, 50 or 100% at 6, 12, 24 or 48 hours. Customers pay nothing to cancel an order you haven't accepted yet.

If an order goes wrong, ezCater may compensate the customer. If the problem was the restaurant's, that compensation can be deducted from your payout. You can dispute a deduction in the Partner Portal within 45 days, and ezCater says it responds in about two business days.

Delivery: your drivers or theirs

Self-delivery. You set a radius by miles, zip codes or a custom map, and delivery fees that are flat, per mile or a percentage of the subtotal, with different minimums by distance. Details are in ezCater's self-delivery guide.

Dispatch. ezCater's delivery network, available to about 97% of its partner locations and typically within 20 miles in covered metros. It charges the restaurant $30 minimum for subtotals up to $300, or 10% of the subtotal above that. On-Demand Dispatch can be requested up to 90 minutes before the delivery time. Tips on Dispatch orders go to the driver.

The customer still pays whatever delivery fee you set, and you pay Dispatch. If your fee is lower than the Dispatch charge, you cover the gap. The commission on delivery also changes with Dispatch. Our ezCater fee breakdown walks through the numbers.

What ezCater charges

Tips are excluded from both. On a $500 order with $30 delivery and $40 tax, that is $96.54 in fees. The fee article has a calculator.

There are also optional programs, all paid by the restaurant and deducted from payouts:

• Preferred Partner. You add a fee of 2% to 20% of the food subtotal to rank higher in search. Requires a 4.0 rating or better.
• Customer Rewards. You fund a 2% to 5% rewards multiplier for buyers, shown to you as marketing spend.
• Sponsored Listings. Pay-per-order ads. You pay when a shopper clicks your ad and orders within 28 days.
• Marketplace Promos. Partner-funded discounts applied automatically at checkout.
• Meal Program, formerly Relish. A recurring employee lunch service where individual items are priced around $12 to $15. Its commission rate is not published.

None of these are required. Each one is a bet that more marketplace volume is worth a thinner margin on every order.

When you get paid

ezCater pays weekly by ACH. The billing cycle runs Monday to Sunday, payouts are processed on Tuesday for the previous cycle, and the deposit usually arrives within one to two business days. Commission, processing and any program fees are already taken out.

The Financials tab in the Partner Portal has payment reports by billing cycle, with CSV export. Reconcile each cycle against your own order log. The fee article has a checklist.

What you can see about the customer

Here's the part nobody notices until later. For marketplace orders, ezCater does not provide the customer's contact information. You see the order, the delivery address and a name. The relationship, and the next order, belong to the marketplace.

Online Ordering is different. Orders placed through the ezCater link on your own website include the customer's contact details, and you can download the customer list from the Partner Portal, including opt-in status for marketing. It costs 7% instead of 15%, but those customers came from your website, not ezCater's.

Support

Partner support is 24/7 by phone at 1-800-488-1803, plus chat in the Partner Portal and separate email teams for menus, photos, delivery, tax and onboarding.

What this means for your catering business

ezCater does one thing well: it puts your restaurant in front of office buyers who are ready to order today. For a restaurant with spare kitchen capacity, that's worth 15%.

What it doesn't do is build you a catering business. The buyer who liked your food goes back to ezCater for the next meeting, sees your competitors, and you pay 15% again if they pick you. Over a year, a good account can cost more in commission than it would have cost to find that account yourself.

The restaurants that get the most out of ezCater treat it as a discovery channel and run their own direct channel alongside: a catering page with packages and online ordering, outreach to nearby offices, and follow-up after every order. Our guide to growing a catering business is the playbook, and reducing ezCater dependence covers how to shift repeat orders without losing the marketplace volume you want to keep.

Common questions

Is ezCater free for restaurants to join?

There is no signup or monthly fee. ezCater charges a 15% commission on marketplace orders, 7% on orders through its Online Ordering product, plus 2.99% payment processing. Optional programs like Preferred Partner, Rewards and Sponsored Listings cost extra and are deducted from your payout.

What does a restaurant need to get on ezCater?

A brick-and-mortar location where the food is prepared, at least six months of reviews with a 3.5-star or better rating on Yelp or Google, and a menu that suits catering. ezCater does not publish an approval timeline.

Do I have to accept every ezCater order?

No, but you must respond in time: within 4 hours for orders placed at least a day ahead, within 30 minutes for orders placed less than 24 hours out. Restaurants with 7 or more orders in 90 days can be paused from receiving new orders if they reject 30% or cancel 10% of them.

Can I contact customers who order through ezCater?

Not for marketplace orders. ezCater only provides customer contact information for orders placed through Online Ordering on your own website, and lets you download that customer list from the Partner Portal.

When does ezCater pay restaurants?

Weekly by ACH direct deposit. Payouts are processed every Tuesday for the previous Monday-to-Sunday billing cycle, and usually land within one to two business days, with commission and processing already deducted.