How Does ezCater Work for Restaurants? Orders, Fees, Payouts

Most restaurants sign up for ezCater knowing roughly what it is and not much about how the money moves. That gap is where the margin goes.

ezCater is a catering marketplace. Office managers, assistants and event planners search it for food for a meeting, pick a restaurant, and pay through ezCater. The restaurant makes the order and gets it there. ezCater takes a cut.

That is the whole model. The details decide whether it makes you money.

Catering Funnels is a done-for-you lead generation and automation platform built for restaurants with active catering operations. We work alongside the marketplaces restaurants already use, so this guide walks through ezCater from the restaurant side: how orders arrive, who delivers, what it costs, and who ends up owning the customer.

How does an ezCater order reach a restaurant?

A buyer finds your listing, builds an order from your catering menu, and checks out on ezCater. Your listing shows up next to every other caterer that serves their location, date and headcount.

Once the buyer submits, ezCater's own help center says it authorizes the buyer's payment method, sends them a confirmation, and audits the order. Then the restaurant has to accept it. Until you do, the order is not locked in (ezCater).

You see and accept orders in ezCater's Partner Portal or its ezManage app. ezCater says the app sends push notifications for new orders and lets you accept, reject or confirm changes from your phone. The app is built for iPhone, with an Android waitlist (ezCater).

The buyer never pays you directly. ezCater collects the money and pays you out, minus its fees.

Does ezCater connect to my POS?

It can, through a partner. ezCater lists integration partners including Olo, Deliverect, Checkmate, PAR, Lunchbox, Otter and Stream (ezCater).

What each one does differs. ezCater says an accepted order sent through Olo flows into Olo Rails and on to your POS, depending on how your restaurant is set up. Deliverect pulls ezCater orders into the same workflow as your other ordering channels. Checkmate and Stream focus on keeping menus in sync (ezCater).

If your POS is not on that list, plan on working orders from the portal or the app.

Who delivers ezCater orders?

You do, or ezCater's driver network does. Many restaurants send orders with their own staff. ezCater also runs Dispatch, a delivery service for restaurants that do not want to staff drivers.

Here is how ezCater's own Dispatch page describes it (ezCater):

• No signup or monthly fee. You pay per delivery.
• $30 per delivery on orders with a subtotal up to $300.
• 10% of the subtotal on orders over $300.
• Withheld from your payout. You keep the delivery fee the customer paid, and ezCater takes the Dispatch fee out of what it pays you.
• Request a driver up to 90 minutes before the order is due, order by order or automatically for every order.

Those are the figures ezCater published at the time of writing. Check the Partner Portal for the terms on your account before you build them into your pricing.

Either way, the order has to arrive on time and set up right. Late or wrong orders hurt your rating, and your rating decides where you show up in search.

How much does ezCater charge restaurants?

ezCater does not publish its current rates, and terms can vary by agreement. Third-party analyses report around 15% commission on marketplace orders, plus roughly 3% card processing. Orders through ezOrdering, the tool for orders placed on your own website, are reported at about 7% plus processing. Your partner agreement has the figure that applies to you.

In real dollars, at those third-party-reported rates:

• A $5,000 order: about $750 in commission at the reported 15%, plus about $150 in processing at the reported 3%.
• $20,000 a month in marketplace volume: about $3,000 a month in commission at the reported 15%, or $36,000 a year, before processing.

Delivery through Dispatch, if you use it, comes on top of that.

Want your own numbers? Run them in the ezCater commission calculator. For how every marketplace compares, see catering marketplace commissions vs direct ordering.

What does the buyer pay on ezCater?

The buyer pays your menu prices, taxes, a delivery fee and an optional tip. ezCater's buyer guide says it does not allow hidden catering service fees (ezCater).

You set the parts that shape the order. ezCater says each restaurant sets its own order minimum and its own delivery fee, as a flat charge, a charge by distance, or a percentage of the food subtotal (ezCater).

That makes your delivery fee and minimum two of the few levers you control on the platform. Set them to cover your real cost of getting food out the door.

Who owns the customer on ezCater?

ezCater does. This is the part most operators miss.

The buyer is ezCater's customer first. They pay ezCater, they reorder on ezCater, and next week they can pick the restaurant listed right under you. A great order makes the marketplace stickier. It does not make that office yours. When the office manager wants lunch again, they open ezCater, not your website.

Your partner agreement governs what contact is allowed with customers who came through the platform. The ezCater comparison covers that tradeoff in full, and it is the reason a direct pipeline is built in parallel, not by moving marketplace customers off the platform.

What happens when an ezCater order is cancelled?

It depends on timing and on your own settings. ezCater's buyer help center lays out the defaults (ezCater):

• Standard fee: a 25% fee generally applies to orders cancelled within 24 hours of delivery or pickup.
• Your own terms: many restaurants set their own cancellation fees or cutoff times, and buyers see them on your page and when they cancel.
• Before you accept: if you have not accepted the order yet, the buyer is not charged a cancellation fee.
• Rescheduling: moving the event date after your cutoff counts as a cancellation.

If last-minute cancellations are eating your prep cost, check what your listing says before the next big order. A clear cutoff protects the kitchen.

Is ezCater worth it for a restaurant?

It can be. ezCater is good at one thing: putting your menu in front of buyers who are ready to order today. If you are new to catering and need volume, that is worth paying for.

It gets expensive once you have steady accounts. The same office ordering every week pays the commission every week, on an account you already earned. The math on recurring office lunch accounts shows how fast that adds up.

A simple way to think about it:

• Stay on ezCater when you need new demand and your margins can carry the commission.
• Build direct accounts once you have offices ordering from you on a regular basis.
• Build your own demand when you want orders that cost a flat amount, not a percentage.

Not sure how to reduce your dependence? Read how to leave ezCater without losing corporate orders. It covers the sequencing.

How do restaurants get catering orders without ezCater?

They go to the buyers directly. The offices on ezCater are real companies with real people who order lunch, and those people can be reached without a marketplace.

That means finding the people who book catering at nearby offices, reaching out with a menu and an offer, following up, and making reordering easy. The job titles that order corporate catering are a good place to start. It is more work up front. The payoff is an account with no per-order cut.

It works. Bain Barbecue, in Memphis, booked a $5,550 corporate catering order for 150 people from a single LinkedIn message. Fob Grill booked a 600-person corporate holiday party for $22,000, direct, no marketplace, no commission.

This is what Catering Funnels builds for restaurants: a direct corporate pipeline for a flat monthly price with no commission. See pricing, the full list of ezCater alternatives, or Catering Funnels and ezCater side by side. To run the outreach yourself, the Corporate Catering Playbook has the scripts and cadence.

Common questions

Does ezCater charge the customer or the restaurant? Both pay something, for different things. The buyer pays your menu prices, taxes, your delivery fee and an optional tip, and ezCater says it does not allow hidden service fees. The restaurant pays a commission on the order, which third-party analyses report at around 15% plus roughly 3% processing; ezCater does not publish current rates.

Is it free to list my restaurant on ezCater? ezCater's Dispatch page says that "as always at ezCater, you don't pay any signup or monthly fees." What you pay is per order: the commission, which third-party analyses report at around 15% plus roughly 3% processing, and Dispatch if you use it. Confirm the terms in the partner agreement you are offered before you sign.

Does ezCater integrate with my POS? Through partners, yes. ezCater lists integration partners including Olo, Deliverect, Checkmate, PAR, Lunchbox, Otter and Stream. ezCater says accepted orders sent through Olo flow on to your POS depending on your setup. Without a supported integration, you work orders in the Partner Portal or the ezManage app.

Does ezCater deliver for restaurants? It can. ezCater's Dispatch service lists a $30 fee per delivery on subtotals up to $300 and 10% above $300, withheld from your payout, with drivers requested up to 90 minutes before the order is due. Many restaurants still deliver with their own staff.

Did Uber buy ezCater? Uber agreed on October 6, 2026 to acquire ezCater for $2.3 billion in cash, and the deal is expected to close in the coming months, subject to regulatory approval. Neither company has said whether restaurant commissions, fees, or terms will change. Here is what the Uber deal means for restaurants.