A startup called Bites wants to cut out Uber Eats and DoorDash by letting diners order food through a conversation with an AI — with no commissions, no markups, and no middleman.
A San Francisco startup is taking aim at the delivery marketplace model that has long squeezed restaurant margins, by enabling diners to discover and order food directly through ChatGPT — with no commissions, no price markups, and no third-party platform taking a cut.
Bites, which describes itself as the first AI-native food ordering platform, announced Tuesday that its ordering experience is now live inside ChatGPT. Diners can ask for something as simple as “pizza near me” or “breakfast in San Jose” and move from discovery to checkout within a single conversational interface, without being redirected to a separate app or website.
The pitch to restaurants is straightforward: keep more of what you earn. Platforms such as DoorDash and Uber Eats typically charge commissions of up to 30 percent on online orders — a fee structure that has drawn sustained criticism from restaurant owners, particularly smaller independent operators with thin margins. Bites routes orders directly from the customer to the restaurant using the same pricing displayed on in-store menus, pulling live data through integrations with point-of-sale systems.
Also Read: What Two CEO Exits Tell Us About Leading Through AI
“AI is fundamentally changing how consumers interact with local businesses,” said Bala Subramaniam, the company’s founder and chief executive. “We’re removing the need for a third-party marketplace layer. Restaurants keep more of what they earn, and customers get the convenience and selection they expect without hidden costs.”
The point-of-sale partnership model is central to how Bites is building its network. Rather than negotiating directly with individual restaurant brands, the company integrates with POS providers — the software systems already running inside restaurants — giving it the ability to scale quickly across national, regional, and local chains without requiring restaurants to overhaul their existing operations. Bites says it will reveal its first group of POS partners at the Restaurant Leadership Conference later this month.
The launch positions Bites squarely in an emerging category of what the industry is beginning to call agentic commerce — transactions initiated and completed through AI assistants rather than traditional apps or search engines. As consumers grow more comfortable interacting with tools like ChatGPT for everyday tasks, food ordering represents one of the more immediate and practical test cases for whether AI can displace the app-based platforms that have dominated the space for a decade.
Also Read: Your AI Chatbot Is Making Decisions. Do You Know Which Ones?
For restaurants, the appeal extends beyond commission savings. Unlike third-party marketplaces, which own the customer relationship and the data that comes with it, Bites says its model allows restaurants to retain guest data and maintain direct relationships with diners — an increasingly important competitive advantage as personalization becomes a larger factor in customer loyalty.
