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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ontray

Zuul Kitchens Acquires Ontray’s Online Ordering Technology

Ghost Kitchen network Zuul Kitchens has acquired online food-ordering platform Ontray, according to a Zuul press release. In addition to acquiring key technology assets from Ontray, Zuul has also made the company’s CEO and cofounder, Tyler Wiest, its Chief Technology Officer.

Zuul opened its first ghost kitchen facility in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood in 2019. The location serves as a place where restaurant chains like Sweetgreen and Junzi can rent kitchen space to fulfill delivery orders and grow their off-premises strategies. 

Philadelphia-based Ontray, meanwhile, has an online ordering platform aimed at smaller restaurants who might not have the cash or inclination to pay the massive commission fees associated with bigger delivery services like Grubhub and DoorDash.

Ontray’s software lets restaurants create a custom website integrated with an online ordering platform or add online ordering capabilities to existing sites. The idea is to let restaurants retain control over their own branding and, most important, customer data, two things they must give away when working with third-party delivery services like Grubhub. Restaurants can view sales and customer data, monitor SEO, manage multiple restaurants, and import menus with Ontrays system. Ontray also charges lower commission fees than a restaurant would typically have to pay with a bigger service.

Making delivery more affordable for all restaurants is a major concern right now, particularly with demand for off-premises orders rising steadily and ghost kitchens becoming the new norm in foodservice. By acquiring Ontray, Zuul will be able to offer its restaurant clients more options when it comes to fulfilling those orders.

That in turn could make Zuul a more attractive choice for a wider range of restaurants considering ghost kitchens — especially those with thinner margins who need more visibility into their customer data to stay competitive. “Joining Ontray and Zuul Kitchens is a natural move,” Wiest said in a statement. “Both companies share a similar goal: returning the power and purse back to individual restaurants.”

Zuul has said it will continue to open ghost kitchen locations throughout NYC. 

Ontray Provides Online Ordering and Delivery for Smaller Restaurants

A recent CNN Money headline read “Why Uber Eats and GrubHub partnerships are risky for restaurants.” The post lays out reasons for caution, including squeezing already tight restaurant margins with third-party delivery fees and increased chances of poor customer experiences with your brand (think: late delivery of lukewarm food).

The siren song of these alluring delivery services is enticing, especially considering the large audiences companies like Uber Eats and Grubhub have. In the fourth quarter of last year, GrubHub alone had 14.5 million “active diners” (a 77 percent year-over-year increase). And in the cutthroat world of the restaurant biz, you have to go where the customers are.

Ontray, a small Philadelphia-based startup, doesn’t want eateries to abandon services like GrubHub and Uber Eats. But it does return some of the power (and the purse) back to individual restaurants.

It does this with a SaaS-based tool that makes it easy for smaller restaurants to create their own websites, complete with online ordering and delivery capabilities. There’s no upfront cost for the restaurant; Ontray only charges a 5 percent commission on sales, which the restaurant can assume or charge to its customers.

Armed with their own site, restaurants can better claim their own SEO, and they aren’t driving repeat customers to an aggregator like GrubHub. If forced to go to a service like Uber Eats, a customer could be distracted by a different restaurant listed or even nudged into a restaurant owned by Uber.

Ontray Founder and CEO, Tyler Wiest, considers his company complimentary to delivery services. He thinks restaurants should take advantage of the big audiences GrubHub and Uber Eats provide, but those services should serve as springboards. Wiest suggests that when restaurants fulfill those outside delivery orders, they should include a coupon offering 10 percent off the next meal if it’s ordered directly through the restaurant’s site. In other words, a third party like GrubHub should become more of a marketing arm for a restaurant rather than an ongoing driver of business.

To broaden its reach, Ontray also partners with smaller, regional delivery services like Chow Caddie just outside of LA, and Catskills Delivery outside of NYC. These local services can do the leg work of reaching out and bringing neighborhood restaurants onto the Ontray platform.

While this moves Ontray in the right direction, Wiest’s company still faces competition from a number of bigger players like Olo, LevelUp and MonkeyMedia–all of whom offer tools to get restaurants online. Additionally, while Ontray-created sites are mobile friendly, they don’t yet offer restaurants the ability to create their own mobile apps.

While it’s great that Ontray wants to even the playing field for the little guy, targeting small businesses makes it more difficult for the startup to scale. The company isn’t venture backed as of yet, and Wiest, the only employee, has had to manage both the technical and business development side of his startup, which can put a strain on both.

Wiest remains undaunted, however. In an email he told me, “Ontray is primarily using online ordering to gain a foothold in both the restaurant and delivery industries. Using this foothold allows us to build an ecosystem facilitating interactions between not only restaurant and delivery providers but also marketing agencies, reservation application, ticket management / POS systems etc..” He sees Ontray becoming the glue that brings together any system the restaurant wants to use to facilitate order and delivery.

Until then, however, restaurants looking to get online can give Ontray a try. Since there’s no upfront cost, that relationship probably isn’t terribly risky.