Tableside vs Menufy: True Cost Comparison for Restaurants (2026)
Menufy has served independent restaurants for years with a solid two-part pitch: commission-free online ordering on your own website, plus done-for-you marketing. That bundle is real and worth acknowledging — plenty of independents would rather have someone else run the marketing. But the subscription price is not the whole story. Once you add card fees, the per-order convenience fee, and everything Menufy is not, the math changes.
The Number That Matters: $149 Is the Floor, Not the Bill
Menufy publishes its pricing: about $179/month month-to-month, or $149/month on an annual agreement, for the Marketing + Online Ordering plan — same features on both, no per-order commissions. What the headline number leaves out:
- **Card processing still costs** — 2.75% + $0.30 per order on top of the subscription, which is roughly $350/month on 250 orders at $10K in online revenue.
- **A per-order convenience fee** — Menufy's own help center describes a convenience fee on every order, with the amount unpublished and the payer depending on how your account is set up. Either your guests pay it (friction at checkout) or you absorb it.
- **It is not a POS** — Menufy is ordering plus marketing. You still run, and pay for, the point of sale that actually runs the dining room.
Ask any vendor for three numbers in writing: monthly SaaS per location, per-order and processing fees at your real volume, and the all-in Year 1 total. Compare those — not the headline plan price.
Starter Tier: Side by Side
Single location, 250 orders/month, $10K monthly online revenue, annual billing:
- **Tableside Starter + Ordering — $325/mo, ~$1,350 setup, Year 1 ~$5,250.** Published pricing, no per-order surcharge, no mandatory processing markup.
- **Menufy realistic all-in — ~$149/mo subscription plus ~$350/mo in card and convenience fees, Year 1 ~$6,000** before the separate tools for what ordering-plus-marketing never included — a POS (~$69–$150/mo), loyalty depth (~$50–$100/mo), and review management (~$50/mo).
So the patched-together Menufy stack lands at roughly $550–$700/mo all-in — above Tableside — while you still run the restaurant itself on a separate POS, with separate logins, separate support lines, and separate bills.
What Else to Weigh
Ordering plus marketing is not a stack. Menufy's done-for-you marketing is a genuine differentiator among ordering vendors — but it is marketing for the ordering channel, not the whole operation. You keep your existing POS (and its bill) and reconcile two systems every night: orders in one dashboard, sales and labor in another.
AI and updates. Menufy assigns marketing work to its team on its timetable. Tableside is built around an AI assistant with done-for-you updates — you approve, it publishes — plus AI phone answering, review responses, and social content, backed by a 90-day guarantee.
Fee friction at checkout. A convenience fee your guests can see is a conversion decision on every order. Tableside charges no per-order fee at all — the menu price is the price, and the margin stays yours.
Who Should Pick Which?
- **Pick Menufy** if you love your current POS and want an ordering button with someone else handling the marketing emails — it does that bundle well.
- **Pick Tableside** if you want one stack — POS, ordering, loyalty, gift cards, review responses, and AI updates — with published pricing at $325/month flat, where one saved reservation a week pays for it.
Next Steps
Add up your Menufy subscription, your card and convenience fees at real order volume, your POS bill, and your loyalty and review tools. If the total surprises you, request a demo and we will walk through the Tableside equivalent line by line — no mandatory processing markup, no per-order fee.