Industries · Food & beverage
Online ordering, QR menus, and POS for restaurants.
WhatsMenu runs the order-taking side of your restaurant — dine-in via QR code, takeaway and delivery online, WhatsApp orders straight to your inbox, all from one menu and one dashboard. Built for the way restaurants actually run service in Malaysia and Singapore: lunch rushes, kitchen printers, daily covers, and split fulfilment modes.
Where service breaks down for most restaurants
Five frictions every restaurant runs into during service. The problem usually isn't the food — it's the order flow.
Orders piling up across phone, WhatsApp, walk-in, and delivery apps
Every channel has its own quirks — the WhatsApp customer wants no chilli on the nasi lemak, the phone caller forgot to mention dine-in, the GrabFood ticket arrives out of sequence. Your team rewrites tickets onto the kitchen's pad by hand and someone's anniversary set gets missed.
Kitchen tickets get lost or misread
A waiter scribbles the modifier ("kurang pedas", "tambah telur"), the kitchen prints something different, the table gets the wrong dish. Even a 1% error rate during peak service means refunds, comps, and a frustrated team.
Same menu changes by daypart, season, or stock
Lunch sets at noon. Dinner mains after 5. Breakfast nasi lemak off the menu by 11. Friday char kway teow specials run out by 8pm. Your printed menu lies; customers order what's no longer available; your team disappoints them face-to-face.
Daily order caps that you have to enforce manually
You can serve 80 covers a night. The reservation list says yes to 95 because nobody coordinated. Or your delivery kitchen runs out of prep at 9pm but the orders keep flowing in. Manual cutoffs are how mistakes happen.
Multiple delivery platforms eating 25–30% per order
GrabFood, Foodpanda, ShopeeFood — each takes a cut and owns the customer relationship. Repeat customers should be ordering directly from your storefront, but you don't have one set up yet — so every regular order gets taxed too.
How WhatsMenu fits a restaurant's flow
Each pain point above maps to a feature WhatsMenu already ships — turn on what you use.
Kitchen tickets in your own format
Design the kitchen ticket layout in Order Print — pick the paper size (58mm or 80mm thermal), drop in items, modifiers, table number, order channel. One template renders the same way regardless of where the order came from: dine-in QR, web checkout, WhatsApp share-cart. Print one-click from any browser. For auto-print on every new order, add the PrintNode integration.
Learn more →Scheduled availability turns menu items on and off automatically
Set lunch sets to show 11am–2:30pm. Hide breakfast nasi lemak after 11. Make Friday-only specials only orderable on Fridays. The storefront never shows what isn't available, so customers don't order disappointment.
Learn more →Daily limit caps total orders per night
Set how many delivery orders or total items you can fulfil per evening — separately, with weekday and date overrides. Once an evening hits its cap, the storefront stops the flow for that fulfilment date and the yellow capacity banner tells customers to come back tomorrow — no manual disable, no apologies the next morning. For per-item caps on something like a wagyu set or a chef's special (only 12 a night), use Stock Management with qty reset each evening.
Learn more →Loyalty points reward repeat customers without a separate card
Customers earn points on every paid order; redeem at checkout for a discount. Runs on the same storefront and dashboard — no plastic cards, no separate loyalty app. Useful for converting a one-time delivery customer into a returning regular.
Learn more →Reviews from real customers, in your dashboard
Registered customers can leave a star rating and comment from their order page once it's delivered or closed. Reviews land in your Reviews dashboard tied to the original order — useful for spotting service issues by date / staff and for identifying happy customers to ask for Google reviews. Public on-storefront review display is on the roadmap.
Learn more →A typical Wednesday at a Malaysian café-restaurant on WhatsMenu
Wednesday morning the lunch menu auto-flips on at 11am — last night's dinner mains hidden, today's sets visible. By 12:30 the kitchen printer has 18 dine-in QR orders and 6 delivery tickets, all in the order they arrived. A regular WhatsApps a share-cart link asking for "the usual nasi lemak set, kurang pedas"; chef confirms in chat, the order joins the kitchen queue. At 2pm lunch sets close (scheduled), dinner mains reveal at 5pm. The 9pm cap on delivery hits at 8:45 — the storefront shows "fully booked for tonight," your kitchen finishes the queue cleanly. By Friday a regular has earned 1,200 loyalty points; redeems for a free dessert at checkout. Same operations brain, fewer chasing-tickets moments.
- Lunch menu auto-flips on at 11am. Scheduled Availability hides last night's dinner mains and reveals today's lunch sets without anyone touching the menu.
- Kitchen printer prints tickets in arrival order. Dine-in QR orders, web checkouts, and WhatsApp share-cart orders all print on the same 80mm thermal layout designed in Order Print.
- A WhatsApp regular sends a share-cart link. Chef confirms in chat, the order joins the kitchen queue with the rest. Same dashboard, no double-entry.
- Lunch closes, dinner reveals — both scheduled. At 2pm lunch sets disappear; at 5pm dinner mains appear. No staff scramble between shifts.
- Daily delivery cap fires at 8:45pm. Once the 9pm cap is reached, the storefront blocks new delivery orders and shows a "fully booked for tonight" notice. Kitchen finishes the queue cleanly.
- Regulars redeem loyalty points at checkout. A regular hits 1,200 points by Friday and trades them for a free dessert — without a punch card or separate app.
WhatsMenu vs GrabFood / Foodpanda / ShopeeFood
Most restaurants run both — marketplaces for discovery, your own WhatsMenu storefront for repeat customers. Here's how they actually compare on the things that hit your P&L.
| What you get | Marketplaces (GrabFood, Foodpanda, ShopeeFood) | WhatsMenu |
|---|---|---|
| Per-order commission | 25–30% on every order | None. Flat monthly subscription, your gateway's fee only (~2.9%). |
| Customer relationship | Marketplace owns it. You get an order ID, not a phone number. | Yours. Customer phone, name, and order history live in your dashboard. |
| Branding on customer's screen | Marketplace branding; your logo is one of hundreds. | Your subdomain, your logo, your brand colours, your About page. |
| Discovery (new customers) | Strong — the marketplace surfaces you to in-app browsers. | Weak by itself; you drive traffic via WhatsApp, Instagram, signage, QR codes. |
| Repeat customers | Marketplace re-targets them via discounts (you pay). | They reorder directly from your storefront — at full margin. |
| Dine-in / takeaway / WhatsApp ordering | Delivery only. | All four service modes from one menu. |
| Best when | You need new-customer reach this week. | You want to stop losing 25–30% on customers who'd order from you anyway. |
Run both. Use the marketplaces as your top-of-funnel, then convert one-time delivery customers into direct-to-storefront regulars where the margins are intact.
Recommended setup
Modes to enable
Features to enable
Frequently asked questions
Can WhatsMenu print kitchen tickets to a thermal printer?
Yes. Order Print lets you design a kitchen ticket layout (58mm or 80mm paper) with item names, modifiers, table number, and channel. Click Print on the order and it goes through your browser print dialog to the connected thermal printer. To make it fire automatically on every new order, add the PrintNode integration — that pushes jobs straight to the printer without opening the dialog.
Can I run dine-in QR ordering and delivery from the same menu?
Yes. One product catalog, multiple fulfilment modes. Customers picking dine-in QR see the same items as customers ordering delivery; pricing and availability are per-item, not per-mode. Scheduled availability lets you hide breakfast from delivery after 11am even if dine-in still sees it.
How does WhatsMenu compare with GrabFood / Foodpanda for delivery?
GrabFood and Foodpanda own the customer relationship and take 25–30% per order. WhatsMenu gives you your own storefront — your branding, your customer list, your direct-to-merchant relationship. You can run BOTH (most restaurants do): use the marketplaces for discovery, drive repeats to your own storefront where margins are intact. See the comparison table above for the side-by-side.
Can I cap orders per night so the kitchen doesn't get overwhelmed?
Yes — Daily Limit caps total orders and total items per day (set them independently, or just one). Once a cap hits, the storefront stops accepting orders for that fulfilment date and the yellow capacity banner closes the flow. For caps on a specific item (e.g. a chef's special at 12 a night, or 50 nasi lemak sets), use Stock Management with the qty refreshed each evening.
Does WhatsMenu support service charge and SST (Malaysia)?
Yes. The Tax module handles SST and any service-charge percentage you configure. Tax shows separately on the kitchen ticket and customer receipt. Configurable per item if some items are tax-exempt.
How much will I save vs GrabFood / Foodpanda?
Concrete example: a restaurant doing RM 30,000 / month in delivery loses RM 7,500 – 9,000 to GrabFood's 25–30% cut. On WhatsMenu the same volume costs only the gateway processing fee (~RM 870 at 2.9% Stripe rate, less for FPX or DuitNow QR). That's RM 6,600+ kept per month, on a flat subscription that doesn't scale with order volume — most restaurants break even within the first month of moving repeat customers to direct ordering.
Other industries that fit
Cafés
Pre-order pickup via WhatsApp before the morning rush. QR code dine-in so the barista isn't taking orders. Loy...
Learn more →Bakeries
Customers pre-order tomorrow's sourdough on Friday night. A birthday cake order with the message "Happy 30th,...
Learn more →Catering
Set menus, gala packages, headcount-driven pricing — catering is high-ticket and bespoke. WhatsMenu gives you...
Learn more →Run service with fewer fires.
Catalog, dine-in QR, delivery, kitchen printing, loyalty — one platform.
Create your storefront