Our story
Built for the rush.
At 7:30 on a Friday night, software stops being software. It becomes part of the service. It either keeps up, or it gets in the way.
The phone’s ringing. Orders land from every direction. A driver’s late, a printer jams, someone’s waiting at the counter. The owner is holding the whole night together so one small problem doesn’t become twenty. That is the restaurant we built Next Order for. Not the quiet version. The real one.
Est. Melbourne, 2022Now serving restaurants across New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom
A restaurant looks simple from the outside. It isn’t. It’s a real-time system, and most restaurant software still doesn’t understand that.
Why we started
The best technology used to belong only to the biggest chains.
They had the teams and the budget to make ordering feel effortless. Everyone else was expected to accept less.
Order directly. Track your food. Watch the driver turn into your street. For a national brand, the whole thing felt modern and completely theirs. The independent restaurant down the road got a stack of tablets, a clunky till, drivers it couldn’t track, and a marketplace that quietly kept the customer.
It never sat right with us. A restaurant that has fed the same street for thirty years should not run on worse technology than a chain that opened last year. A kebab shop four-deep at the counter should not need three tablets and five logins to survive a Friday. A family restaurant should not have to give its regulars to a marketplace just to look modern.
We never set out to build another ordering system. The question that pulled us in was bigger: what happens when an independent restaurant finally gets the kind of technology only the giants have had?
How we built it
We didn't come from restaurants. That turned out to help.
If you assume you already understand a kitchen, you miss the strange details. And in restaurants, the strange details are the business.
A pizza place lives on half-and-half. A kebab shop runs on layers of choices most systems can’t even describe. An Indian restaurant needs deals and delivery zones; a sushi counter needs speed. Some kitchens want a screen on the wall. Some still want paper tickets, because that is how their team works best.
There is no such thing as “the restaurant workflow.” There are thousands of them. So we built the only way that made sense: when ten out of thirty restaurants asked for the same thing, we built it. When an owner showed us why it had to work a certain way, we changed it.
Many of the first people to believe in Next Order were restaurant owners themselves, customers and backers at once, because they wanted it in their own stores. Next Order was never built in a boardroom and sold to restaurants. It was pulled into existence by them.
What came next
Delivery should belong to the restaurant, not the platform.
Online ordering was the first thing we built. Delivery was the next.
The big apps had taught customers to expect live tracking, and most independents running their own drivers were flying blind the moment the car left the kerb. No live view of where they were. No easy way to batch a run. No way to show a customer the food was nearly there. These restaurants already had the customer, the food and the driver. What they lacked was the technology.
So we built driver tracking into the platform: your own drivers, tracked live, runs planned, the customer following the driver all the way to the door. One of the clearest signs it worked was small. Customers started waiting on the step, because they could finally see the driver arriving. Fewer “where is my food” calls. Faster handovers. Hotter food. And the customer stays the restaurant’s, not the platform’s.
The turning point
We refused to become one more tablet on the counter.
We had the ordering and the delivery. The real problem was still sitting inside the restaurant.
If the order prints on its own, it is another docket. If it lands on another tablet, it is another thing to watch. If it doesn’t reach the till, someone keys it in again. If delivery is separate, the customer is left in the dark. If loyalty is separate, the customer record is half empty.
Every tool owned one slice of the night and ignored the rest. The only thing holding them together was the owner. We could have shipped one more app for the pile. Instead we built the point of sale too, so the whole night finally had a single place to come together.
The decision that shaped everything
An order is an order.
Whether it starts on a website, at the counter, over the phone or through a QR code, it belongs to the same restaurant. So we built one system beneath all of it.
That single decision is why the rest feels simple. Manage the menu in one place. Mark an item sold out once and it goes everywhere it should. Earn loyalty online and redeem it in store. A delivery order connects to a driver; a marketplace order flows into the same view as the rest. The owner sees the whole business without stitching five reports together.
The complexity is still there. We just try not to make the restaurant carry it. That is the whole point of good software.
What we underestimated
Menus taught us humility.
A menu looks like a list of food. It is really the operating logic of the restaurant.
A pizza has sizes, halves, removals, extras priced differently by size, and offers that only apply in certain combinations. A pasta comes in entrée and main, each with its own options and prices. A delivery order needs an address check, suburb pricing, a public-holiday surcharge, a driver. A half-and-half is its own little universe.
From the outside, these look like edge cases. Inside a restaurant, they are the business. We underestimated all of it at the start, and that was probably useful. If we had known how far down it went, we might have been more careful. Instead we kept listening, kept building, and folded each hard case into the same foundation.
Simple doesn’t mean basic. It means the hard parts have been handled.
What simple means
A takeaway isn't basic. Its software can't be either.
The trick isn't to avoid the hard parts. It's to make them feel obvious.
There was an early moment that made this clear. We had just switched a restaurant over. A young staff member came in for a shift with no training on the new system. The phone rang. They looked at the screen, found the pickup button, entered their code, picked the items out by their photos, and took the order. First try, with the customer live on the line.
That is what simple means to us. Not fewer features. Less confusion. Design isn’t how something looks; it is whether a person can use it correctly while the phone is ringing, the kitchen is full and a customer is waiting. The rush is the test.
The other half of the job
When something breaks mid-service, a ticket number isn't support.
A great product is only half of it. The other half is what happens at 7:30 on a Friday, when something goes wrong and the night can't wait.
In a kitchen, a small problem becomes a big one fast. One missed print becomes ten missed orders, becomes a room of angry customers, becomes a ruined night. So we decided support could not sit outside the product. It had to be part of it.
We watch for the trouble and reach out first. If an order hasn’t been accepted within fifteen minutes, we call the store and sort it before the night unravels. Reactive support waits for the restaurant to call. Proactive care asks “is everything okay?” before the night falls apart.
We ended up building the company with the same care as the product. Help is free, around the clock, in every country we serve, and because we build the whole platform ourselves, the answer is never “that is another company’s problem.” One number to call. We own the fix.
Who it's for
We don't build every feature we're asked for.
We answer to the whole community we serve, not the loudest account in the room.
Next Order is built for takeaway, quick service and growing hospitality brands. That is where we have gone deepest, so that is where we are strongest. We are not here to become a custom project for one large chain, or to let a single customer drag the product somewhere that makes it worse for everyone else.
If a change helps thousands of restaurants, we care about it deeply. If it serves one and complicates the rest, we say no. A product gets worse as it turns into a pile of exceptions. It gets better when every addition strengthens the whole.
What we stand for
The beliefs every decision still runs through.
The people doing the work should shape the tools
Next Order has always been built through close feedback from restaurants. The details matter because the details are where restaurants live.
Powerful should feel simple
Independent restaurants don’t need a watered-down version of real software. They need the real thing, made simple, with the complexity carried by the system and not the owner.
One restaurant, one system
A restaurant works as one business. Orders, menus, customers, loyalty, delivery and reporting should work together, not live in separate worlds with no one to call.
The customer belongs to the restaurant
Direct ordering, loyalty, delivery updates and customer data should strengthen the restaurant’s own brand. Technology should make a restaurant more independent, not more dependent.
Support should be proactive
A restaurant shouldn’t have to discover every problem on its own. We believe in seeing issues early, taking responsibility, and helping before a small one becomes a bad night.
How trust travels
They don’t care how big we are, or who funds us. They care that the busiest shop on their street is running Next Order.
Where we are going
We started in Australia. The problem turned out to be the same everywhere.
Different countries, the same problem: a restaurant stretched across too many tools, customers who expect more every year, and teams who need software that holds up during service.
Next Order grew the slow way across New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom, store by store, recommendation by recommendation. That kind of trust can’t be bought with marketing. It is earned one service at a time. Slower than hype, and far harder to take away.
We are honest that the work is not done. The product isn’t finished, the service isn’t finished, the company isn’t finished, and that is the right state to be in. Restaurants keep changing, and we intend to keep building with them.
We are here for the restaurants that built their name one order at a time. The ones who know their regulars by name, and don’t get to pause when something goes wrong. They deserve the tools, the care and the control that used to be out of reach for anyone but the biggest chains. That is the company we aspire to be.
About Next Order
What operators ask us before they sign.
When was Next Order founded and how did it start?
We started in Melbourne in 2022, building alongside the restaurants who used us, before expanding to the United Kingdom and New Zealand. It began as one online ordering page and grew, one operator request at a time, into a single connected system for the whole shift. Roadmaps still come from weekly conversations with managers and owners.
Is Next Order founder-led?
Yes. Next Order is still founder-led, with early backers and board members deeply connected to restaurants. That keeps us close to the people using the product, and focused on the whole restaurant community we serve rather than one big account.
Who is Next Order built for?
Takeaway, quick service and growing hospitality brands: pizza, burgers, kebabs, Indian, Thai, sushi, chicken, and the multi-store groups that have outgrown a basic till. That is where we have gone deepest, so that is where we are strongest. We are not built to be a custom project for a single large chain.
Where is Next Order based?
Melbourne is our headquarters, with customers across Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. We keep regional teams for sales, success and support so time zones and local detail match how restaurants actually operate.
Are you hiring?
Yes, we hire product, engineering, success, sales and marketing people who respect hospitality labour. Openings shift through the year; reach out through our contact page with your background and time zone, and we will tell you what is live or coming.
Working with us
If you build restaurants or want to help build Next Order, here is where to start.
Join the team
We hire people who respect hospitality work
Across product, engineering, success, sales and marketing. Tell us your discipline and we will point you to the right person.
Partner with us
For agencies, integrators and consultants
We work with people who already help restaurants run better. If that is you, there is a programme for it.
See it for yourself.
Bring us your Friday night. We'll open the POS, your branded site and the dispatch screen, and show you the cleaner version of your own service. If it's not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call.