Takeaway / delivery-only / Order-ready alerts
Telling collection customers their order is ready
Scored and compared prices dated
The short answer
A takeaway shop has no seating area for a customer to watch a number screen from, so the notification has to reach them wherever they actually are, in the car, on the pavement, or a few doors down. A browser-based buzz sent to the customer's own phone solves that directly; a number screen only works for someone standing right in front of it.
Reviewed by the editorial team · updated 11 August 2026
Step 3
What matters most to you?
Pick one or two. Everything below re-scores instantly, and we show you the maths.
Winner overall
Bzz
Browser-based waitlist, buzzers, reservations and in-wait marketing, with no pagers and no SMS bill.
The trade-off
No offline mode. Guests track their place through a browser, so a dead signal at the door is a dead queue.
Why it won
- price
- ease of setup
- support
- volume
- integrations
Our scores, 1 to 5, defined on the methodology page.
Everything else, ranked the same way
| # | Product | From | Contract | Card rate | Score | Price checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Bzz Browser-based waitlist, buzzers, reservations and in-wait marketing, with no pagers and no SMS bill. | Free, then $11.99 | none, month to month | not applicable | 4.8 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 02 | Square for Restaurants The default answer for anyone who wants to be selling this afternoon. | Free, then $49 | none | 2.6% + 10¢ in person on the free plan, 2.5% + 15¢ on Plus | 4.2 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
What's different about buying this for takeaway / delivery-onlys
This category looks similar to a food truck's problem but for a different reason: it is not that the venue moves, it is that there is no seating area at all, so a customer collecting an order has nowhere to sit and watch a screen the way they would in a fast-casual dining room. They are in a car, on the phone, or standing outside, and a number board does nothing for any of those.
Square's built-in order number display still works for someone standing right at the counter, but that is a smaller share of a collection business than it is for a counter with seating. A browser-based buzzer scanned at order time follows the customer wherever they physically are and buzzes their own phone when it is ready, which fits how collection customers actually behave.
The trade-off is the same one it is everywhere else this approach shows up: it needs signal on the customer's phone, which is rarely the constraint it once was, but is worth knowing if your shop sits somewhere with a genuinely weak signal.
Questions people actually ask
- What do customers do if they wander off before their order is ready?
- With a browser-based system, nothing changes; the page keeps tracking their order and buzzes them wherever they are. That is the specific advantage over a number screen for a collection-only shop.
- Do delivery drivers need a different notification method?
- Usually, yes; most delivery apps handle driver notification themselves through their own app. This category is really about your own collection customers.