ChowNow Clone Features: The Restaurant Keeps the Customer
A commission-free platform sells a restaurant two things: a cost it can forecast, and a customer record that stays where the orders were placed. Both are structural rather than marketing. The plan is an object you build and price, billing runs on a schedule with locks so it cannot double-charge, and the restaurant panel is a real application at 503 files across 29 modules rather than a read-only view of your console.
Request a Live Demo →Full OverviewFeature Set by Role
Five surfaces over one Laravel backend, arranged around the restaurant rather than around the marketplace.
The Restaurant Owner
The side that decides whether they renew. A real application at 503 files across 29 modules: menus with variations and add-ons, photos, hours and holidays, items marked sold out in one tap, staff logins beneath the owner, expenses, and a statement showing exactly what was charged and when.
The Diner
They land on an ordering surface carrying the restaurant's own name and look rather than yours, build a cart with sizes, extras and allergen notes, order for now or a slot later, and set a standing weekly order if they want one. Points, rewards and wallet balance follow them across every restaurant on the platform.
The Counter
A built-in till inside the restaurant panel for walk-in and phone orders, so nothing the restaurant sells happens outside your books or theirs. For a commission-free operator this matters twice over, because a plan priced against total volume needs to see total volume.
The Multi-Outlet Brand
One account with per-outlet menus, hours and reporting under a single brand. This is the first thing a franchise group asks for and the thing most platforms retrofit badly, because it has to sit in the data model rather than in the interface.
The Billing Desk
Build packages, set prices and billing cycles, decide what each unlocks, and let recurring billing run on cron-expression gates reading live settings, with overlap locks so a slow cycle never charges twice. Plan revenue appears in the reports beside commission and payouts.
The Onboarding Team
Applications, document checks, approval and plan assignment as a recorded workflow, so who approved a restaurant and on which package is a query rather than a memory. On subscription economics this record is what a renewal conversation is built on a year later.
Console and panel roles are scoped so a support user can help a restaurant without reaching billing, and a restaurant can reach its own outlets and nothing else.
Clone vs Generic Script vs an Aggregator Listing
Most routes to commission-free ordering hold up until the first renewal.
| What decides it | Miracuves ChowNow Clone | Listing on an aggregator |
|---|---|---|
| What a restaurant pays | A monthly fee it can forecast | A percentage that rises with success |
| Who holds the diner record | The platform the restaurant is on | The aggregator, permanently |
| Whose name is on the ordering site | The restaurant's own | The aggregator's, with a logo |
| Walk-in and phone orders | A built-in till, in the same books | Outside the platform entirely |
| A brand with six outlets | One account, per-outlet reporting | Six listings and six sets of numbers |
| Changing the charging model | A stored setting, both can run | Not a conversation you are invited to |
| What last month's bill says next year | Exactly what it said, frozen at settlement | Whatever today's rate card recalculates |
| Source code | Yours outright, no per-order royalty | None, and no export worth having |
ChowNow itself is the reference for what commission-free ordering looks like; it is not a product you can buy or self-host. The useful comparison is the second column against the third, and against a custom build, which is covered on the Development Cost page.
How It Works, End to End
Seven stages, running from signing a restaurant to billing it again next month.
A restaurant is signed and approved
Application, document checks, approval and plan assignment run as a recorded workflow with the operator and timestamp attached, so the terms a restaurant was signed on are a query rather than an email somebody has to find a year later.
It gets a surface in its own name
Each restaurant gets an ordering site carrying its own name and look, so the diner experience reads as the restaurant rather than as your marketplace. Alongside it sits an indexable ordering website of 33 routed pages with policies, registration funnels and tracking.
The restaurant builds its own menu
Sizes, crusts, toppings, extras and allergen notes modelled as variations rather than separate products, with availability, daily stock counters and one-tap sold-out. You keep visibility over category structure and pricing changes without having to make them.
Diners order, from anywhere
Now, at a slot later, or on a standing weekly repeat, paying through thirteen gateways plus wallet, cash and operator-defined offline methods. Points, rewards and coupons sit underneath, with a discount funded by you or by the restaurant and the split recorded either way.
Counter trade lands in the same place
Walk-in and phone orders go through the built-in till into the same pipeline, and dine-in runs the same order with the delivery steps skipped. Delivery itself is a choice per restaurant: your riders, their own staff, or collection only.
The restaurant is billed and paid
Recurring billing runs on cron-expression gates reading live settings with overlap locks so a slow cycle never charges twice, and scheduled disbursement settles what the restaurant is owed from what was actually charged, with a statement it can read itself.
Next month says the same thing
Plan price, commission percentage where used, and discount split are all frozen onto the transaction at settlement. Raise a plan price next month and last month's statement still says what it said, which is the whole reason a restaurant trusts a bill it did not calculate.
Billing runs, disbursement, notification fan-out and export pipelines all run off the request path with a scheduler behind them, so a billing cycle never competes with a dinner rush.
Every Feature Earns Its Place
Each row is here because subscription economics stop working without it, not because a competitor lists it.
| Module | Why it is in the base build |
|---|---|
| Plans as objects you build | A subscription business whose packages are hardcoded can only sell what somebody chose at build time. Naming, pricing and deciding what each plan unlocks is the product design of this model, so it has to be operator work. |
| Billing with overlap locks | Recurring billing that runs twice charges every restaurant twice, and on plan economics that is the fastest way to lose a cohort. Cron-expression gates reading live settings, with locks, is what makes the cycle safe to automate. |
| A real restaurant panel | On subscription economics the second year of a restaurant is worth more than the first, so retention is the metric. The panel is what they use every day, and 503 files across 29 modules is the difference between a tool and a portal. |
| The built-in till | A commission-free operator still needs to see total volume, because that is what justifies a plan price at renewal. Counter and phone orders outside the platform make both the restaurant's numbers and yours wrong. |
| Multi-outlet as a data shape | A brand with six outlets under one account with per-outlet menus, hours and reporting is what franchise groups ask for first. Retrofitted into the interface it produces six accounts and a spreadsheet. |
| Commission kept available | A restaurant with no volume cannot justify a fixed fee, and refusing them means refusing the newest half of your market. Both models in one billing spine widens the funnel without forking the product. |
| Discount funding recorded | A promotion paid for by you and one paid for by the restaurant produce different statements. Recording the split at settlement is what stops the payout conversation becoming an argument nobody can settle. |
| Delivery as a choice | Some restaurants want your riders, some deliver with their own staff, and some only do collection. Making fulfilment a per-restaurant setting is what lets one platform serve all three rather than only the first. |
Rewards, points and wallet balances sit at the diner level rather than the restaurant level, which is the machinery that makes a second order from the same person likely.
The Technology Behind the Features
Built so that both economics live in one billing spine rather than as two subsystems bolted together.
One Laravel monolith owns every business rule and roughly 120 named settings keys are read at request time, so moving a restaurant between charging models is operator data rather than a deployment.
What Is Not Included in the Base Package
A fixed price only means something if the boundary around it is stated, and on subscription economics the first item is the one to read carefully.
Billing is recurring, not sophisticated
Plans, cycles, entitlements and scheduled charging all ship, with locks that stop a slow cycle charging twice. Proration when somebody changes plan mid-cycle, trial periods, dunning and retry ladders on failed charges are not built, and on a plan-led business those are worth scoping early rather than late.
No POS hardware integration
The built-in till captures counter and phone orders in software. Receipt printers, cash drawers and terminal integrations beyond it vary enough by market and by hardware that they are scoped separately rather than promised generically.
Riders are yours, or an integration
Delivery is a choice per restaurant: your fleet, their own staff, or collection only. Connecting a third-party courier company for operators who run no fleet at all is scoped separately and depends on the API that company publishes.
The platform ships in test mode
One-time passcodes are exposed for testing, cross-origin rules are permissive and transport and frame headers are not emitted, all named in the documentation rather than found later. No second factor sits in front of console or panel sign-in, on a console that can change what a restaurant is billed.
Three things are scoped separately
Signing and releasing the iOS builds, bringing staff sign-in under your identity provider with a second factor, and shaping the reports and exports into a feed for a warehouse your own analysts run. Each is quoted before it starts.
What is built is real
Plans as priced objects gating 258 panel routes, recurring billing with overlap locks, a 503 file restaurant application in source, the built-in till, multi-outlet under one account, per-restaurant fulfilment, discount funding recorded at settlement, and a control map published against OWASP categories rather than asserted.
What no codebase supplies is restaurants. On plan economics that gap is felt differently than on commission: you need a partner to believe a fixed monthly cost is worth paying before they have seen a single order, which is a sales problem rather than a software one.
See how Miracuves compares to agencies and freelancers
The deployment process, the nine questions worth asking anyone bidding on a billing-led build, the red flags, and the Flyereats engagement we delivered in 2025 - on the Development Company page.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does commission-free actually mean here?
Why does a restaurant care about a flat fee?
Can one brand run several outlets?
What stops the billing run charging twice?
Does the restaurant have to use my delivery riders?
What happens to old bills when I raise a plan price?
Build a plan, then bill against it
On the demo, create a package, price it, decide what it unlocks, assign a restaurant to it, and then read the statement the restaurant sees at the end of the cycle.
Explore the ChowNow Clone
Predictable for them. Predictable for you.
A restaurant paying a flat fee can forecast its software cost, and an operator billing flat fees can forecast next month's revenue. Both halves of that run on a platform you own outright.
Talk to Us →Miracuves is an independent software development company. We are not affiliated with, connected to, sponsored by, or endorsed by ChowNow.
“ChowNow Clone” is used descriptively. It is how the software industry refers to building a platform with functionality similar to ChowNow, and how clients search for it.
The entire design and codebase is built by our own team. The product contains no code, design, graphics, or content originating from the ChowNow website or applications.
ChowNow and all other third-party names and marks are the property of their respective owners, referenced here solely to describe the category of software offered.
