GloriaFood is shutting down. What restaurants should do before the deadline

If your restaurant takes online orders through a GloriaFood button on its website, that button has an expiry date. Oracle, which owns GloriaFood, has discontinued the product. New restaurants have not been able to sign up for some time, and existing accounts are being wound down.

Most coverage puts the final end of service at April 30, 2027. At least one report says notices sent to some US and UK restaurants cite March 31, 2027. We have not found a public Oracle page that settles it, so check the date in your own GloriaFood admin panel and in any emails from GloriaFood or Oracle, and plan for the earlier of the two. A spare month costs nothing. A dead order button on a Friday night costs a lot.

One more thing before the practical part. Search for “GloriaFood alternative” and nearly every result is written by a company selling one. That does not make those articles wrong, but it does mean each of them arrives at the same answer: theirs. We build ordering into restaurants’ own websites, so we have a view too, and we will say where that fits and where it does not.

What is happening, and who it affects

GloriaFood was a free online-ordering and table-reservation widget. A restaurant pasted a snippet into its website, set up a menu, and had an “Order Online” button without a monthly bill. That price is why it spread so widely among independent pizza shops and takeout counters. Some vendors put the count at more than 100,000 restaurants worldwide. The fair summary is tens of thousands at the very least, many of them small places with nobody whose job is IT.

As far as we can find, Oracle has not named an official successor or recommended partner. If a vendor tells you it is the approved replacement, ask where Oracle said so.

What stops working

When the service ends, everything that depends on GloriaFood’s servers stops at the same moment:

• the ordering button or widget on your website
• the table-reservation widget, if you use it
• the branded mobile app, if you paid for one
• the ordering tab on your Facebook page
• any order link on your Google Business Profile, your Instagram bio, or a printed QR code

The quieter loss is your data. Once the account closes, assume your menu, customer list, and order history cannot be recovered. Several reports say there is no archive or grace period after shutdown, and nothing we have seen contradicts them.

What to export now

Do this in the next few weeks. Export whatever the admin panel allows, screenshot whatever it does not, and keep it all in one folder somewhere other than the laptop at the counter.

• The full menu, with every modifier group, option, and price. “Large, extra cheese, gluten-free crust” is three modifiers, and modifiers are what take longest to rebuild.
• Menu photos, saved separately. Some reports say images do not come along with a menu export.
• Customer names, emails, and phone numbers, with a note of whether each person agreed to receive marketing. Canada’s anti-spam law cares about that consent, and a list without it may be a list you cannot email.
• Order history and sales reports, for your tax records and for knowing your busiest hours.
• Active promo codes and what each one does.
• Delivery zones, minimum order amounts, and delivery fees.
• Regular opening hours, holiday hours, and pickup or delivery cut-off times.
• Payment gateway settings: which processor, which account, and who holds the login. If you connected your own processor account, it belongs to you and should outlive GloriaFood.
• Screenshots of every settings page.
• A list of every place the ordering link appears. That means every page of your website, your Google Business Profile, Facebook, your Instagram bio, email signatures, and each QR code on printed menus, flyers, table tents, and delivery bags.

Restaurants rarely forget the website. They forget the 500 flyers in a drawer and the QR code taped to the front window.

Your four realistic options

1. Another free or low-fee hosted widget

This is the closest thing to what you have now. Several companies offer GloriaFood-style widgets, and setup is quick. The catch is that you end up in the same position you are in today, depending on a vendor whose free product can change its terms, add fees, or close. Read the pricing page for per-order fees, and find out what happens to your data if you leave.

2. Your POS system’s built-in online ordering

If you already run Square, Clover, or Toast, each offers online ordering tied to the same menu and the same reports. Orders arrive at the kitchen printer or screen without anyone re-keying them, and a menu change happens in one place. Many plans carry monthly or per-order fees, the ordering pages tend to look like everyone else’s, and you are tied more tightly to that POS. If you change POS later, your ordering has to move with it.

3. Ordering on your own website

Here your own site takes orders directly, for example through WooCommerce on WordPress. That is how we built online ordering for Peppery Pizza Poutine, a pizza shop in Nova Scotia, and the site scores 100 on Lighthouse for accessibility, best practices, and SEO. The advantage is ownership. The customer list, the order data, and the design are yours, and no platform can switch them off.

It costs more up front than pasting in a widget. Someone has to keep plugins and security updates current, and someone has to keep the menu accurate. For a shop with steady pickup and delivery volume, the trade usually makes sense. For a place doing a handful of online orders a week, it may not.

4. Delivery marketplaces

DoorDash, Uber Eats, and, in Canada, SkipTheDishes bring drivers and customers who might never have found you. They charge for both. Commonly quoted commissions run from roughly 15 to 30 percent of each order, depending on the plan, and the customer relationship belongs to the app. Making a marketplace your only replacement for GloriaFood means paying commission on orders that used to cost you nothing.

How to choose

Four questions do most of the work.

How many online orders do you take in a typical week? If it is a few dozen, a hosted widget or your POS’s ordering is probably enough. If it is hundreds, per-order fees add up fast enough to justify owning the channel.

What POS do you run, and do you plan to keep it? If it is Square, Clover, or Toast and you are staying, its ordering module is the path of least friction.

Who updates the menu? If the answer is the owner, on a phone, at 11 p.m., pick whatever has the simplest menu editor. A menu that drifts out of date costs more than any fee.

Do you want the customer list? If you plan to email regulars about a new special or holiday hours, you need their contact details and consent in a system you control. Marketplaces generally will not give you that. Your own site will.

A migration timeline that avoids the rush

The worst plan is to wait for spring, when every GloriaFood restaurant and every vendor will be scrambling at once.

1. Now: export your data and list every link and QR code.
2. Within a month: pick the replacement and build the menu. Test it with real orders, including a delivery to the edge of your zone and one order that uses every modifier you sell.
3. Pick a quiet stretch to switch. Avoid the holidays, patio season, festival weekends, and the week of a big promotion.
4. Run both systems in parallel for a week or two. Keep GloriaFood live while the new system takes real orders, so a problem is an inconvenience rather than a lost night.
5. Update every link: website, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, and email signatures. Reprint your QR codes, and this time point them at a short address on your own domain, so the next change does not need a reprint.
6. Tell your regulars with a note on receipts, a sign at the counter, a social post, and an email to customers who agreed to hear from you.
7. Switch GloriaFood off only after a full week of orders has gone through the new system cleanly.

Where AI fits

Plenty of customers still phone, usually when the kitchen is slammed. An AI phone line can pick up those calls, take a structured order, read it back, and answer “are you open?” or “do you deliver to Fall River?” from information you have approved. It does not replace an ordering system, and it needs guardrails, but for a busy counter it catches calls that would otherwise ring out. Our AI receptionist page covers how that works.

How we can help

SetKernel is a small firm of senior engineers in Halifax, working with restaurants across Canada and the US. Our GloriaFood alternative page explains how we approach the switch, and the restaurants page covers the rest of what we do for them. Send us a short written brief with your current setup, your POS, and roughly how many orders you take each week. We will reply in writing with a recommendation and a quote, and if a hosted widget is the better answer for you, we will tell you that instead.