How to Switch Your Online Ordering System Without Losing Orders

To switch online ordering system without losing orders, build and test the new system first, run it beside the old one for about a week, then move every link, QR code and listing that points at the old one on a single planned day. Switch the old system off last, once its final payouts and refunds are done. This playbook covers moves from GloriaFood, Flipdish, Storekit and marketplace-only setups, with each provider’s terms read from its own pages on 29 October 2026.

Orders rarely go missing inside the new system. They leak at the joins:

• Links: the order button on your website, social bios, WhatsApp greetings, old leaflets.
• QR codes on tables, windows and menus that point at the old provider’s domain.
• Google: an Order online link that still opens the old system, or a marketplace link shown in its place.
• The old app, still on customers’ phones.
• Payments: a new account that has not paid out yet, or an old one closed while refunds are still due.
• An old tablet nobody is watching.

What your current provider says about leaving

Before you pick a date, find out five things: who owns your domain name, whose developer account holds your app, whose payment account takes your card payments, what notice your contract needs, and what you can export. Here is what the common starting points publish on the last two, quoted from their own pages.

A marketplace-only restaurant has no system to leave: it adds its own ordering channel and keeps the marketplaces running, so the work is the menu, the new link and telling regulars where to find it. If you are still choosing that channel, the best UK ordering systems by need is a priced shortlist.

Step 1: Get your menu across

Export where the old system documents a way (GloriaFood’s Fetch Menu API steps are in our GloriaFood export guide), otherwise rebuild from the live menu. Either way, check every line:

• Prices, including any that differ between delivery and collection.
• Option groups (sizes, extras, meal deals) with the right minimum and maximum choices.
• Allergens for every item; our free allergen matrix helps you lay them out.
• Original photo files, not screenshots of the old site.
• Opening hours, delivery areas, delivery charges and minimum order.
• Promo codes, kept identical so printed leaflets still work.

Then two people check the new menu against the old one, one reading aloud, one ticking.

Step 2: Move your customer list, and use it carefully

Export the list first, and again just before cut-over. GloriaFood’s Clients report and Storekit’s customer CSV export are documented. Flipdish’s terms say you keep ownership of the content and data you provide, but they describe no export method, so ask its support for a customer export before you give notice.

Owning a list is not permission to market to it. In the UK, the ICO’s guidance on electronic mail marketing (ico.org.uk, checked 29 October 2026) sets out a soft opt-in that lets you email or text existing customers about similar products if they bought from you and were given a simple way to opt out when you collected their details and in every message since. It does not cover bought-in lists. Elsewhere, check your own country’s rules.

• Send one clear announcement with the new link and an opt-out.
• Ask whether loyalty balances can be imported. If not, decide how you will honour them before you announce.
• Push permission belongs to the app the customer installed, so a new listing means asking again.

Step 3: Open the new payment account early, close the old one late

Check whether card payments run through an account in your own name or the provider’s own payment service. Assume a provider’s service ends with the contract: GloriaFood’s Oracle Payment eStore Cloud Service ends on 30 April 2027 with everything else.

Open any new account weeks ahead. Stripe’s payout documentation (docs.stripe.com/payouts, checked 29 October 2026) says that after your first live payment, it typically schedules the first payout to complete within 7 to 14 days, so take real paid orders during the parallel week.

Keep the old account, and your login, long after the switch. Refunds go back through the account that took the payment, and Stripe’s disputes documentation (docs.stripe.com/disputes/how-disputes-work) says card networks typically allow cardholders to dispute within 120 days of the payment, sometimes longer.

Step 4: Your domain, links and QR codes

A QR code holds a fixed web address. If the address is on a domain you own, point it at the new system and every printed code keeps working. If it is on the old provider’s domain, the code dies with the account and has to be reprinted. Links work the same way, so list every place one lives: your website, Google, social bios, WhatsApp messages, table codes, window stickers, menus, leaflets and receipts.

If your domain points at the old system, lower the DNS record’s TTL (time to live) a day or two ahead, then change the record on cut-over morning. For reprints, our free order direct print kit makes a window poster, table tent, bag stickers and counter cards with a QR code to your own ordering page.

Step 5: Your Google listing

Google can show marketplace ordering links beside yours, or in its place when yours is missing. On cut-over day, change the Order online link to the new page and set it as preferred; the click path from Google’s help pages is in our Google Business Profile ordering guide. You need manager access, so if your provider manages the profile, get access back first.

Step 6: Your app store listing

A branded app can move in two ways, and the choice decides whether your ratings come with you.

A transfer only helps if the new provider can ship its app into that listing, so ask first. With a new listing, ask the old provider to remove the old app from sale after cut-over. On Aexir’s app plans the developer account is £30 a year on Aexir’s account, or the restaurant’s own Apple and Google accounts at about £130 a year paid to Apple and Google; with your own accounts, any future transfer is yours to start.

Step 7: Run both systems for a week

Run the new system alongside the old one for about seven days before moving any public link, so every trading pattern, Friday and Saturday peaks included, is tried once. Staff, friends and family are the first customers. Test:

• Paid orders for every order type: delivery, collection, table ordering.
• A full and a partial refund.
• Kitchen order alerts during a busy hour.
• Addresses just inside and just outside your delivery area.
• Every promo code, and an order five minutes after closing.
• The first payout, into the right bank account.

Cut-over day checklist

1. Pick your quietest trading day and start before opening.
2. Final export of customers and orders from the old system, dated.
3. Last check of menu, prices, hours and delivery zones.
4. Point your domain, or your website’s order button, at the new ordering page.
5. Update Google’s Order online link and set it as preferred.
6. Update every social bio, pinned post and WhatsApp message.
7. Swap or cover QR codes that point at the old provider’s domain.
8. Close the old system to orders with a notice pointing to the new link, or keep its tablet on and watched. Never leave it taking orders nobody sees.
9. Place a real order through each new link from a phone on mobile data.
10. Send the announcement to customers you may market to.
11. Brief staff on which screen orders now arrive on.
12. Leave the old account able to refund, and watch both systems through the evening.

Over the next 30 days, tap every ordering link Google shows for you each week, reconcile the old system’s final payout, save its final reports, and give notice exactly as your contract requires, in writing.

A worked example: leaving GloriaFood with eight weeks to go

This is a worked example, not a client story: a takeaway on GloriaFood’s free plan, one location, delivery, collection and table QR codes.

Aexir’s setup page says most of its apps go live within a month of the restaurant sharing its branding. Eight weeks before 30 April 2027 is early March 2027, the month Oracle stops accepting GloriaFood renewals: treat it as the latest start, not a target. If you pay for a GloriaFood add-on, work back from its final renewal date instead. Oracle’s own example is a 30-day 3rd Party Online Payments renewal taken on 3 March 2027, which ends on 3 April 2027.

Where Aexir fits

Aexir is an online ordering system for independent restaurants and takeaways: their own branded iOS and Android ordering app, ordering website and browser till (POS on the Go), for a flat monthly fee at published prices. Aexir Digital Ltd is based in Manchester and sets up restaurants in the UK, France and worldwide.

UK plans a month ex VAT: Web £30 (ordering website and POS on the Go, no app), Starter £30 (branded app), Plus £40 (app and website), Pro £50 (app, website and POS on the Go); additional locations £1 a day each. France: Web and Starter 40 €, Plus 50 €, Pro 60 € HT. Card payments through Stripe cost 2.5% + 30p per transaction in the UK and 2,5 % + 0,35 € in France. Aexir builds the menu and publishes the app as part of setup, and runs alongside Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats without connecting to them. Full prices are on the pricing page.