Community Announcement | Jan 20, 2024 - Hamilton, ON

Chow Local Commission-Free Restaurant Ordering App, Coming To Hamilton, Ontario.

Hi everyone! Allow me to introduce Chow Local. We are a commission-free takeout & delivery platform founded in Canada in 2021 and now starting up in Hamilton.
As you know, the "big food delivery apps" charge restaurants as much as 30% in commissions every time they get an order. Popular restaurants end up spending thousands every month in commissions. We're here to offer restaurants in Hamilton a commission-free alternative.
Instead of commissions, we charge restaurants a small monthly fee of only $199*. This is a fraction of what an average restaurant would pay the big delivery apps. What's more, we give 100% of the delivery fee & tip to our drivers (couriers) so that they can make a decent living.

We also don't charge our end users (you, the person ordering food) any service fees or "hidden" fees. Nothing! Zilch! In fact, many restaurants inflate their menu prices on the big delivery apps to compensate for the high commissions, so you might even find you end up paying less when you order through our website or app.
As such, we are an ethical takeout delivery platform that treats the restaurant and drivers fairly. Every time you order takeout or delivery from the restaurants on our platform, the restaurant operator does a little happy dance!
Here's the deal (and sorry for the long post). Due to our revenue model, we can't really afford to do much advertising, nothing like the big delivery apps. In the other communities where Chow Local operates, it's people like you (who want to support local restaurants) that drive the growth, reach, and ultimate success of this platform.
Follow us, and make sure to invite your favorite local places to check us out. Tag them below.
* We are offering the first 30 restaurants in Hamilton that sign up lifetime discount of $100/month. The rate of $199 mentioned above is the discounted rate for Founding Partners (instead of our regular rate of $299/month) and includes a free website (with unlimited technical support and design revisions) for those who need one. If you own a restaurant, please visit https://secure.chowlocal.com/founding-partner-offer to learn more and take advantage of this introductory offer.

Update | Jan 21, 2024 - Hamilton, ON

What to expect next...

Thank you so much to everyone who has posted positive comments and let us know they support our efforts. We really appreciate all the positive feedback!!
Just so everyone knows what we are doing behind the scenes right now, and what to expect. Firstly if you download our app or if you go to our home page and look up "Hamilton, ON" you will not see any restaurants listed right now. We are working on getting restaurants set up (accounts need to be created, menus need to be input, and we need to do a bit of training with restaurant operators).
Please feel free to download our app right now and sign in, even though we don't have any restaurants live yet. This way we can at least notify you when we do our soft launch. When we are ready to go live with the first few restaurants we'll probably do some giveaways and pick one or two lucky users.
It will take a bit of time for us to get to the point where we can do a soft launch, once the first 10 places are ready to receive orders. Once we do our soft launch, we will initially only allow orders for pickup until we can see how many drivers we actually need to handle delivery orders. By now, having done this in other communities we have a good idea of how many delivery orders we need to expect, based on pickup order numbers.
The last thing we want to do is have too many drivers onboard, all expecting to get lots of work, when we are still ramping up. We like to have just the right number of drivers onboard and keep them as busy as possible so they can all make decent money.
Those of you who have already applied to drive for us, thank you. You would have received an email informing you that you are currently on our waiting list (which is essentially a spreadsheet), and that you should join our Discord (invite link below). Pls do this since we have a private chat channel in Discord for drivers on the waiting list, where we will post a message once we are ready to start interviewing and onboarding drivers. If you are in this channel you will be the first to know.
A few restaurant owners have already signed up and others have reached out to ask questions. If you signed up, we'll get you onboard (and set up your free website, if you need one) in the order that you signed up and paid your first month's fee. If you emailed us with questions, we'll get back to you with a reply within a day or two.
The best way to "talk to us" is to join our Discord. There you can live chat with a member of our team. We are on Discord all day long, since it is our main communication tool for all internal comms. That's why this is the best place to reach us if you want a quick reply. This quick video will show you how easy it is to join our Discord. Go to https://discord.gg/xz63vM8fP7 to join our Discord. Once you are ready to sign up, you must fill out the form on this page to get your restaurant in our production pipeline.
Thanks - Chow Supportmoc.lacolwohc%40troppus