What planning our roadmap taught us about pricing

As we get closer to fully launching Easy Eatery, I’ve started spending more time thinking about what comes next.

Not just the next few features, but who the platform can serve and how it should be priced in a way that remains fair as it grows.

At this stage Easy Eatery has just one plan: the Early-Bird plan. It gives early customers access to everything at a single, lifetime discounted price.

That was a very deliberate choice. Early on, the priority was learning.

We needed to prove the core idea behind Easy Eatery, validate which features mattered the most to our target audience, and work out the right approach to building a SaaS product in hospitality.

Having just one plan has helped keep onboarding simple and focus on building and refining the product with real users rather than second-guessing pricing boundaries.

The Early-Bird plan was always intended to be a temporary offer.

As we get closer to our initial launch, I’ve started thinking about what should replace it.

I took a proper look at the features that exist today, those planned for later this year - and beyond - and thought carefully about who these features are actually for and how they might fit into a sustainable pricing model.

Easy Eatery is aimed at cafés, pubs, and restaurants, but it quickly became clear that many of the features on the roadmap will also be useful for B&Bs and hotels. When I tried to imagine how all of this would fit into a traditional tiered pricing model, the cracks started to show.

To cover everyone fairly, we would need far too many pricing plans.

I realised that a tiered approach would introduce choice paralysis as more plans were added and force customers into paying for features they did not need.

Neither felt like a good outcome.

Where tiered pricing starts to break down

The problem becomes clearer when you try to map real customer needs to fixed tiers.

• A small café might want table reservations and loyalty tools.
• While a pub might want table reservations and gift vouchers.
• But a restaurant could need reservations, pre-orders, and customer feedback tools.

There’s overlap, sure, but it’ll never be consistent.

When I tried to make this work in practice, the same issues kept coming up.

• A feature that clearly belongs in a higher tier for one type of business is essential for another.
• Some tiers feel ideal for one venue but bloated for another.
• Adding new features would mean reshuffling tiers or introducing yet more plans.

Over time, the tiered approach leads to more complexity and more confusion.

That is precisely what I wanted to avoid.

Not everything belongs in a tier.

The turning point came when I stopped thinking in terms of plans and started thinking about how Easy Eatery actually works.

The website is essential. Every public-facing part of Easy Eatery lives there. Bookings, gift vouchers, and customer interactions all rely on it.

Beyond that, almost every feature is valuable, but to varying degrees depending on the type of business.

There is a lot of overlap between cafés, pubs, restaurants, B&Bs, and hotels, but it is never perfect.

What one venue considers vital, another may never use at all. Fixed tiers struggle with that.

Why we chose a build-your-own approach

Tiered pricing is often used to achieve two things: simplifying choice and rewarding customers who commit to more of the product.

We didn’t want to lose either of those benefits, but we also didn’t want to force customers to pay for a plan that includes features they don’t need, just to get one feature they do need.

Once the Early-Bird plan ends, Easy Eatery will switch to a build-your-own pricing model.

In practical terms, this means that:

• Every plan includes the website, because all of Easy Eatery’s public-facing features live there.
• Customers only need to pay for the features that make sense for their business.
• Pricing is transparent and updated as features are selected.

Allowing low-cost onboarding

The website itself can be used on its own, without any additional features. That’s intentional.

This allows venues to start with a cost-effective, solid online presence and build from there.

The principal value of Easy Eatery however, is in the tools that sit on top of the website.

Bookings, gift vouchers, and customer interactions are designed to work together, and over time, those tools will become increasingly complementary.

While it is possible to use Easy Eatery solely as a basic website, we don’t expect many to do so long-term.

Keeping pricing fair

One of the reasons Easy Eatery exists is to help venues save money.

If customers can add more features over time, the pricing model needs to remain competitive while still reflecting the value those features provide.

To achieve this, Easy Eatery will apply automatic discounts in place of fixed tiers:

• Selecting three or more features unlocks a 10% bundle discount.
• Selecting six or more features unlocks a 15% bundle discount.
• Paying annually will reduce the renewal price by an additional 10%

The result is a pricing model that is flexible as the platform grows, offers excellent value for money and provides additional savings to customers who use more features, or pay annually.

The pricing model is also easy to understand, with clear breakdowns of cost per day and what it means in practical terms, such as the amount of business that Easy Eatery needs to bring in to justify the spend.

And importantly, Easy Eatery remains, and will always be, completely commission-free.

Easy Eatery will never charge any per-booking fees, take no percentage from ticket sales, and cut no cut of gift vouchers. The only cost will be your renewal, either monthly or yearly, plus card processing fees.

Why this works better long-term:

Because this approach allows customers to:

• Pay only for the features they actually use
• Start small and add functionality as their business grows.
• Be confident in understanding the cost of Easy Eatery.

It also allows Easy Eatery to:

• Add new features without constantly reworking pricing tiers.
• Support different types of businesses.
• Keep pricing fair as the platform grows.

Looking ahead

If you’ve read this far, you’ll probably have a good sense of how Easy Eatery is shaping up, and why we’ve put so much thought into getting pricing right ahead of launch.

We are still offering the Early-Bird plan to a few more venues. It provides access to all features, both current and future, for a locked-in price of £49 per month, for life.

There are:

• No commissions
• No per-booking fees
• No percentage taken from sales
• No future price increases, ever.

Once the Early-Bird plan ends, this offer price will never be available again.

If you’d like to see how Easy Eatery works in practice, you’re welcome to request a demo.

We don’t do the hard sell. Demos are simply an opportunity to chat about Easy Eatery with you, walk you through our platform, answer any questions you have, to see whether it feels like a good fit for your business.

I always appreciate the chance to show what's being built, and there are still a few Early-Bird spaces available for those who decide it makes sense for them.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and for following along as Easy Eatery takes shape.