Do you replace Resengo, Zenchef or TheFork?
Not automatically. For restaurants with a handful of tables and no complex waiting list, Resengo and Zenchef do the job well and go live faster than custom work. We come into the picture once the standard solution starts to chafe: custom waiting list logic, deposits for groups, a private dining flow with separate approval, a gift card integration, or a deep integration with your POS and CRM. Often a standard platform and custom work run side by side: open tables on Resengo, group and event bookings on your own site. We manage the integration between them through our
reservation system layer.
Why build your own ordering flow instead of Thuisbezorgd or Uber Eats?
Marketplaces do bring reach, that's true — but at 25-35% commission on every order, and without you ever getting to know your customer. A direct checkout flow on your own site, with Mollie or Adyen as PSP, costs you only the PSP's transaction fees and gives you all the guest data. We usually recommend running both: marketplaces for cold reach, your own flow for returning guests you reach by email and SMS. Many restaurants shift 30-50% of their delivery revenue to their own channel within the first year.
How does online ordering for pickup and delivery work in practice?
Guests choose a dish on your site, optionally with add-ons (an extra topping, an allergen filter), pick collection or delivery, pay with iDEAL, Apple Pay or Tikkie, and get a time estimate. The order arrives straight on your kitchen screen or POS receipt. For delivery we integrate with a courier pool or an external last-mile partner (Stuart, Trunkrs, Yource). The entire tracking flow runs on your own domain: your brand, your data, no marketplace in between.
What about the Allergen Information Regulation on the menu card?
EU Regulation 1169/2011 requires you to state which of the 14 statutory allergens are contained in every pre-packaged and non-pre-packaged dish served. We build menu cards where that data is structured per dish — your kitchen maintains it in one place, guests see the filter on the site, and the kitchen sees it automatically with every order. That prevents errors and keeps you legally compliant.
Do you also work with digital signage and menu boards for in-venue use?
Yes. Alongside the website, we often build a digital signage layer — screens at the bar, by the counter or in the waiting area — powered by the same menu database. Changing the daily menu? One edit in your back office and all screens and QR codes are updated. For cafés with daily-changing bar snacks or breweries with rotating taps, that saves time and gives a far more professional look than a printed sheet taped to the wall.
What about gift cards and the Dutch Gift Card Act?
Gift cards fall under consumer law: they may not expire too soon, the remaining balance must be visible to the buyer, and your accounts need to show what is still outstanding. We build gift card flows with the correct minimum validity periods, an audit trail from issue to redemption, and a clean integration with your accounting so the tax side stays aligned. This often runs through your
payment layer.
Can you also handle events and private dining bookings?
Yes. For chef's tables, private dining, brewery tours, cooking workshops and venue hire, we build a dedicated booking flow with capacity per time slot, optional approval, deposits and personalised confirmation emails. It's the same pattern we use for a
ticketing system, but with the right hospitality flow built around it.
How do you help our hotel become less dependent on Booking.com?
The biggest lever is your own booking engine on your domain that feels genuinely faster and more polished than Booking.com, plus an active direct bookings programme with loyalty, an email flow and targeted gift cards. We integrate the engine with your PMS (Mews, Apaleo, Cloudbeds) and keep rates, availability and restrictions synchronised one-to-one. Building your own channel is a project of several sprints, not a quick fix, but the commission you save on Booking.com pays back the investment within a reasonable timeframe.
Do you also host the website, or will it run somewhere else?
We host it ourselves on a European cloud platform (Google Cloud or Hetzner, as you prefer), with daily backups, monitoring and a CDN. For existing clients who prefer to keep their own hosting provider, we deliver a containerised build that you can run on AWS, Azure or a Dutch hosting company. We never lock you in: all code, content and data belong to you and can be exported.
How do you approach SEO for hospitality search terms?
From sprint one, we build the site on solid technical SEO foundations: fast load times, clean HTML, structured data for restaurants, hotels and menus (Schema.org), and a properly implemented multilingual setup if you serve tourists. On top of that, we advise on searches such as "restaurant + your town", "lunch + your neighbourhood" and specific dish searches where your competitors currently rank. SEO remains a marathon: we provide the framework, and you or an SEO agency fill it in.
What about multilingual support for tourists and international guests?
As standard, we build the site in Dutch and English, with integrated translation management. For hotels and larger restaurants in tourist areas, we often add German, French and sometimes Spanish or Italian. URL structure, hreflang and language detection are set up correctly from the start, so Google shows the right version to the right guest.
Who pays the POS, PMS and PSP subscriptions?
These are held in your company's name, not through us. We have no retainer or recharge on these parties. If you were the owner, you wouldn't want that either, as switching suppliers would otherwise leave you locked in. We do advise on which subscription tier suits your volume, and we help with the sign-up requests where that is useful.
What does a typical project with you look like?
We start with a short discovery phase: we shadow your team on location, map out the guest journey, look at which systems are running now and which parts genuinely need to stand out. We then set up sprints with measurable deliverables, such as a working reservation flow, a first version of ordering and a gift-card layer, and test early with an internal group or a small circle of guests. At go-live, we run a soft launch at one location or for one guest segment, followed by a wider rollout. After launch, we deliver an evaluation using data from the ordering, reservation and gift-card layers, so the next step can be planned more precisely.
What does a custom hospitality website cost?
It depends heavily on scope. A simple brand website with a menu and a clean integration with Resengo is a considerably smaller project than a full platform with its own reservation engine, online ordering, gift cards, event bookings, a PMS integration and a multilingual hospitality group with three locations. We work in sprints and, after a short planning phase, provide a concrete proposal based on your concept, target audience and existing systems. We often start with one layer (reservations, ordering or the brand website) and expand each season. That keeps the risk manageable and lets the site grow along with your business.
Who owns the code, content and data?
You do. We deliver all code in a git repository under your control, all content in a user-friendly CMS that your team can edit directly, and all data in a database from which you can export at any time. Switching to another agency or an in-house team is therefore always possible: no vendor lock-in on a proprietary SaaS, no exit fee, and no negotiating over who owns your reservations, guest data or gift cards. For us this is not a marketing claim; it is how we set up every project.
Does this also suit a hospitality group with multiple brands and locations?
Yes, and that is exactly where custom work often delivers the most. A group with three to thirty locations typically has a collection of separate websites, separate reservation systems and separate accounting links, which makes central reporting, shared gift cards and group-wide marketing a manual puzzle. We build a shared platform where each location keeps its own brand and menu, sitting on top of one common guest database, one accounting integration and one CRM. For groups that also run a commerce layer (a gift card webshop, merchandise, subscriptions), our
headless commerce architecture is a logical building block.
