Kovo vs ezCater: Which Fits Your Restaurant?
ezCater brings catering demand and takes commission per order. Kovo answers the takeout line for $99 and declines the big orders. Pick by which call you lose.
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Forty boxed lunches, Thursday, two vegetarian, one delivery address, and a name and number for the invoice. Read that back to yourself and price it: at $16 a head it is $640, which is sixteen $40 pickup tickets in one phone call.
That is why the catering marketplace exists. ezCater brings demand for scheduled, high-value orders and takes commission per order rather than a monthly subscription, which is a different business model from a phone line priced at $99 a month.
The two products answer different halves of that order. ezCater sells demand for it; Kovo sells the answered line at $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, and the ticket lands in the POS.
TL;DR
- Kovo is a phone line for one store: $99 for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, with the ticket written to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a receipt printer.
- The order limit belongs to the shop, defaulting to 10 items in total and 8 of one item, and an owner can raise either or add an order-value limit.
- The card the shop already holds is charged while the caller is still on the line; a first-time caller gets a link with the line held open until they pay it.
- ezCater is a catering marketplace: it brings scheduled, large-order demand and takes commission per order rather than a subscription (model as published, October 2026).
- ezCater wins the row nobody else can contest: catering demand, where the buyer is already looking for a restaurant that delivers 40 lunches.
What Kovo is
Kovo answers one store's phone. It takes the order the way the caller says it and reads the order back before placing it. The finished ticket goes to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, an Epson Server Direct Print printer, or a Star CloudPRNT printer. One subscription covers one store, and a second location is a second number, a second menu, and a second bill.
A menu source is one per shop, a POS catalog or a menu page, refreshed daily in the background, with a three-way merge so an owner's price edit survives the next pull; the Toast ticket walkthrough shows what the far end looks like. The order limit belongs to the shop: defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item. An owner can change either, add an optional value limit, and set any of them to zero to remove it. Above a limit the call rings your handset when large-party routing is on; otherwise the agent says the order is too large to send through and keeps taking what fits.
Payment runs three ways. Pay at the counter when the order is collected, a repeat caller's vaulted card is charged on the line while they are still talking, or a first-time caller gets a Stripe link with the line held open. No card number reaches the call, the recording, or the transcript. It also books tables in its own book, availability derived from the shop's hours and holiday exceptions, one seat written per slot, with a confirmation text, and the same engine answers a website chat.
What ezCater is
ezCater is a catering marketplace and order management product. Restaurants list, buyers order, and the platform takes commission per order instead of a monthly fee. ezCater's public pages describe the demand side and the workflow around large orders; no per-order rate is published as of October 2026, so the rate is a conversation, not a comparison.
The value is demand you cannot generate from the counter. Nobody hunting for 60 boxed lunches on a Thursday opens a restaurant's website first; they open a marketplace, because it shows who can deliver and what it costs. A restaurant that joins is buying placement in front of buyers who are already shopping.
What a marketplace does not give you is the customer, or not automatically. On this model the ordering contact, the order history, and the follow-up are usually the platform's, which is why the first question below is who owns the buyer. Ask it before signing anything, because a listing is not a mailing list.
The second thing it does not give you is the phone. A caller who wants two pizzas on a Tuesday is not a catering lead, and a catering platform is not built to answer that call, take the order, read it back, and put it on the rail.
The 30-second table
Cells were read in October 2026. "Not publicly documented" is the answer there, and a rate should be re-confirmed before anyone signs.
| Kovo | ezCater | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo, 750 connected minutes; $299 for 5,000 | Commission per order; no published rate |
| What a call ends with | Order read back, ticket released | A listing or a scheduled catering order, per the marketplace |
| Where the ticket lands | Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, Epson, Star | Its own order workflow; confirm how it reaches your POS |
| Card handling | A card the shop already holds, charged on the line; link for a first-time caller | Handled by the marketplace; confirm the payout schedule |
| Large orders | The shop's limit: defaults of 10 items in total and 8 of one item, editable | The product's reason to exist |
| Reservations | Kovo's own book; no OpenTable or Resy write-back | Not a reservation product — confirm what a buyer books |
| Setup | Self-serve: menu import, test call, live the same day | Listing and menu work; confirm the timeline and who maintains prices |
| Demand generation | None; callers already know you | Catering buyers already shopping the marketplace |
Two rows carry the decision: the large-order row, which ezCater wins, and the phone row, which the marketplace does not contest.
The money: a $640 lunch against a $40 ticket
Start with the order the marketplace brings. Forty lunches at $16 is $640. On a commission model each percentage point of that order is $6.40, so 15% costs $96 and 25% costs $160. Nobody published those rates, so treat them as arithmetic to run in a sales conversation rather than a forecast:
- $640 order, 15% commission = $96 to the platform.
- $640 order at 25% = $160.
- Four such orders a month at 25% = $640 in commission, against Kovo's $99 to $299 subscription.
That is not an argument against the marketplace, because the commission buys orders the line never sees. It is an argument for knowing which number you are paying for: demand, or answering.
Now the takeout line. A QSR Magazine analysis puts the average U.S. restaurant at roughly 150 missed calls a month, priced by industry estimates at $35 to $85 each. At 150 calls and $40 a ticket, the middle of your own week is $6,000 that never reached a kitchen, and no marketplace sees it because it never got that far. The missed-call arithmetic runs the sum with your own numbers.
Where each one fits
Three situations, three answers.
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Catering is a real line of business: offices, schools, scheduled drop-offs, and someone chasing those buyers | ezCater | Demand for scheduled large orders is the product, and no phone agent generates it |
| A takeout counter where the line rings through service and the big orders are rare | Kovo | $99 or $299 covers the calls that actually come in, with the ticket in the POS and no per-order commission |
| Both: some catering, mostly takeout, one phone | ezCater for the scheduled orders, Kovo for the line | Kovo turns away the $640 order on its default limit, and the marketplace never answers a caller who wants two pizzas |
The trap is buying the marketplace to fix the phone. A catering listing does nothing for the call that rings out on a Tuesday, and a shop that cannot answer that call loses it before either product is relevant. The comparison hub covers the neighbouring pages.
The two questions that sort it
"Who owns the customer after the order?" Ask it about ezCater, and ask for the answer in writing. If the buyer relationship, the contact details, and the re-order belong to the platform, then the commission buys demand and not a customer list, and the price should be judged that way.
"A caller asks for 30 sandwiches tomorrow. What does the product do?" Ask it about Kovo, and expect a straight answer. 30 items is past the default total of 10, so the call rings your handset if large-party routing is on. Otherwise the agent says the order is too large and keeps taking what fits. Raise the cap and the same call goes through as today's order; a scheduled drop-off is a person's call.
Who should pick ezCater
Pick ezCater if catering is a line of business rather than an occasional favor, with office lunches, school accounts, and scheduled drop-offs whose buyers are already shopping a marketplace.
Who should pick Kovo
Pick Kovo if the ticket that goes missing is an ordinary one: two pizzas, a platter, a pickup at the counter, a menu question at the wrong moment. The phone rings during service, the ticket lands in the POS, and $99 a month does not move with ticket size.
The commitment is small: 14 days free, no card at signup, and the plans page shows the minute arithmetic at four-minute calls as well as two.
FAQ
Can Kovo take a catering order?
Not by default, and the demo will say so. The order limit belongs to the shop: a shop that never opened the card gets 10 items in total and 8 of one item, an owner can raise either, and zero turns a limit off. A forty-lunch drop-off is 40 items, so it is refused out loud unless the owner changed the cap. Even raised, Kovo takes the order on the call; it does not schedule a future drop-off or route catering to a manager.
How much does ezCater charge a restaurant?
The published model is commission per order rather than a monthly subscription, and no per-order rate is listed publicly as of October 2026, so the number comes from a conversation. Here is the arithmetic to bring to it: on a $640 catering order, each percentage point of commission is $6.40, so 15% costs $96. Ask what the rate is on a $300 order as well as a $2,000 one.
Is Kovo cheaper than ezCater?
They are not the same kind of bill. Kovo is $99 a month for 750 connected minutes or $299 for 5,000, with no overage and no per-order fee. ezCater sells a demand channel on commission, so its cost scales with order value while Kovo's does not move with ticket size. Compare a month of each against your own catering volume, not against the other's headline.
Do the two work together?
Yes, and that is the usual arrangement: ezCater for the large scheduled orders and Kovo for the takeout line that rings during service. Kovo answers 24/7, takes the order the caller says, reads it back, and writes the ticket to Toast, Square, Clover, Olo, or a receipt printer. Keep the catering calendar in a person's hands, because neither product should be improvising a 200-lunch drop-off.
What happens to payment on each?
ezCater runs the catering transaction on its own side of the marketplace, so confirm the payout schedule before signing instead of assuming a card settles when the order does. Kovo charges the card the shop already holds off-session while the caller is on the line; a first-time caller gets a Stripe link with the line held open, and paying it vaults the card for next time. No card number is spoken to the agent, and with cards off the caller simply pays when they collect.
Final Thoughts
These two products are not competing for the same dollar. Kovo answers the line for the customer who wants one pizza and will call somewhere else if nobody picks up; ezCater sells access to buyers who already want 40 lunches, and it earns commission when they order. Buy the phone line if answering is the leak; buy the marketplace if catering is the business.
Before either purchase, count the calls your counter let ring last week. If the number is over 100, Kovo is $99 for 750 connected minutes with 14 days free, long enough to hear your own menu read back. Take a test call with your own menu.