Running a restaurant means keeping a dozen things moving at once. The menu changes, a dish goes off, a new seasonal item needs to go up — and the person who has to update the website is already doing three other things. Orders come in, the kitchen needs to know, and somewhere in the middle a payment has to clear and land in the right account. When any piece of that falls over, it falls over in front of a customer.
The other pressure is quieter but just as constant: the feeling that the software you rely on costs more than it should, answers less than it promised, and gets harder to leave the longer you stay. Daviah is built around the opposite idea — you can start free, stay month to month, and walk away with your records intact whenever you choose.
No lock-in, no hidden costs, no contract
Signing up is free and asks for nothing beyond a name, an email address and a password — no card, no phone number. You can build and preview your entire site before you decide to publish it, and nothing expires while you are still deciding. When you are ready, both paid plans run month to month. Paying yearly is cheaper, but there is no contract either way.
If a payment ever fails, nothing is withheld for ten days and you receive three emails before anything stops. If you stop paying altogether, your records stay readable, your exports still work, and your site and office come straight back the moment you pay again. There is no penalty for leaving.
- Free to start — no card, no expiry
- Month to month on both paid plans, yearly option available
- Ten-day grace period if a payment fails
- Records and exports intact even when a subscription lapses
When something goes wrong, someone answers
Every organisation on any plan can report a problem or ask a question from inside the office and follow the reply there. If you prefer to pick up the phone, Daviah can be reached at (530) 377-3049 or by email at admin@daviah.io. What Daviah cannot promise is a guaranteed response time or a dedicated account manager — but there is a real way to reach someone, and it does not disappear after you sign up.
Changes to your records are written to an audit trail, so if something looks wrong you can see what changed and when.
- Report a problem from inside the office on any plan
- Phone and email support available
- Append-only audit trail of all record changes
Online ordering that pays you, not a platform
When a customer places a pickup order through your website, the payment goes straight to your own Stripe account. Daviah takes no cut of your takings — you pay Stripe's fees directly, the same as you would processing any card payment yourself. Sales tax on orders is calculated by Stripe from your own tax registrations and the customer's address.
If an order comes in and nobody on the counter accepts it, the system sends reminders to the order screens, then alerts staff phones, and finally pauses online ordering automatically so customers are not kept waiting for a response that is not coming. Ordering can also be paused manually with a message, limited to your opening hours, and switched on or off per menu. Orders can be refunded from the office.
Online ordering is available on the Website and Members plan. Delivery is not currently supported — orders are pickup only.
- Payments go to your Stripe account — Daviah takes no application fee
- Card held at order, charged only when the kitchen accepts
- Unanswered orders escalate to phone alerts, then pause ordering
- Pause, schedule and control ordering per menu
- Pickup orders only — delivery is not available
Your menu on your own website, kept up to date by your own people
Your site is created from a design the moment you sign up — restaurants start on the Plate design, built around food and ordering — with a front page and section pages ready to edit. Pages are built from a library of 42 ready-made sections that your own people add, reorder and edit without writing any code.
A menu can be published on your website on any paid plan, even if you are not using online ordering. Dishes, choices and extras are organised in your own words — Menus, Dishes, Choices to make. When a dish changes or a menu is updated, the person who looks after the site can make the change themselves without asking a developer. You can also give someone a Website Editor role that lets them update the site without giving them access to your takings or staff records.
- Restaurant site starts on the Plate design, built for food
- 42 ready-made page sections, no code required
- Menu published on any paid plan, ordering optional
- Website Editor role keeps site access separate from the back office
Staff records and who can do what
The office keeps your staff records with a dated history of changes to each one. Staff can be brought in from a spreadsheet — columns are matched automatically and duplicates are flagged before anything is saved. Roles are named in the words a restaurant already uses: Owner, General Manager, Manager, Bookkeeper, Supervisor.
Because the office is organised around staff and ordering, the tools that do not apply to a restaurant — meetings, minutes, attendance, check-in, dues, committees — are simply not there. You see what you need and nothing else.
- Staff records with a full dated change history
- Import from a spreadsheet with duplicate detection
- Roles named Owner, General Manager, Manager, Bookkeeper, Supervisor
- Meetings, minutes, dues and committees hidden — not shown to restaurants
Stay in touch with customers on your own terms
Every design includes a newsletter sign-up box in the footer on every plan. On a paid plan you can write to those subscribers directly from the office. Every newsletter carries a one-click unsubscribe link that needs no sign-in.
The office can also draft wording for an event or generate a flyer, square social image, portrait social image and email banner — nothing is saved or published until a person reads and approves it. The Website and Members plan includes 40 pieces of generated artwork a month.
- Newsletter sign-up on every page of every design
- Write to newsletter subscribers on any paid plan
- One-click unsubscribe on every newsletter
- AI-drafted event copy and flyers, approved before anything publishes
- 40 AI artwork pieces a month on Website and Members
Plans and what they cost
The Free plan lets you build and preview your whole site without a card or a deadline — it just stays private until you choose to publish. The Website plan at $29.99 a month publishes your site with its own address on the platform, contact forms, events, news and galleries. The Website and Members plan at $79.99 a month adds the full office: staff records, online ordering, messages, documents and 40 AI artwork pieces a month. A custom domain is connected for you on Website and Members — the Daviah team registers it and you add one DNS record. Paying yearly costs $300 for Website and $819.99 for Website and Members. The price is the same whatever the size of your team.
- Free: build and preview, no card, no expiry
- Website: $29.99/month or $300/year — published site, menus, contact form
- Website and Members: $79.99/month or $819.99/year — adds ordering, staff records, messages, custom domain
- Same price whatever the size of your team
Questions
Can I publish my menu without enabling online ordering?
Yes. A menu or product catalogue can be published on your website on any paid plan. Online ordering is a separate feature available only on the Website and Members plan — you do not need to use it to show your dishes and prices on the site.
Who actually receives the money when a customer pays online?
Your restaurant is the merchant. Payments go straight to your own Stripe account, and you pay Stripe's processing fees directly. Daviah takes no cut of any order.
What happens if we are busy and an order comes in that nobody sees?
The system sends reminders to the order screens, then alerts staff phones, and finally pauses online ordering automatically so no further orders are taken while nobody is available to accept them. A customer whose order is not accepted is not charged.
Can I leave without losing our records or our website content?
If you stop paying, your records stay readable and your CSV exports still work. Your site and office come back as soon as you pay again. Both paid plans are month to month with no contract, so there is nothing to break.
Can someone update the website without seeing staff records or takings?
Yes. You can give someone a Website Editor role that lets them edit the site — pages, menus, events, news — without any access to the back office, payments or staff records.
Does Daviah support delivery orders?
Not at the moment. Online ordering through Daviah is pickup only. Delivery orders and third-party delivery platform integration are not currently available.
Read next
- The website nobody has time to keep current — and what actually changes
- When the software breaks and nobody answers — what you can actually do
- Trapped by the platform you chose — and what actually changes
- The delivery platform fee that eats your margin — and a direct ordering path that does not
- Delivery failures hurt your name. Here is what you can actually control.
- The customer who keeps coming back through someone else's app
- Ordering tools that protect your counter — even when nobody is watching the screen
- When the software breaks and nobody answers — what you can actually do
- The menu that never quite matches what you are actually serving
Daviah — One place for your menus, online ordering, staff records and website — no contract, no hidden fees.
Create a free account · See pricing · Start free — no card needed · For stores · Contact Daviah