WhatsApp Business app or the WhatsApp API: which does a takeaway need?

What the Business app is good at

The WhatsApp Business app is an app on your phone. It costs nothing to download, it gives your shop a business profile, and it lets you reply to customers yourself.

• You can use it on one phone and up to four linked devices, so the counter and the owner can both see the chats.^[1]
• You can send a message to many customers at once with a broadcast list, but only people who have saved your number in their phone receive it.^[2]
• Business broadcasts, the app's marketing messages, are charged per delivered message.^[3]

For a quiet shop that takes a few orders a night by message, that is often all it needs.

Where the app stops working for a takeaway

Every message waits for a person. On a busy night the person on the counter is also taking phone orders, bagging food and handing over collections, and a customer who waits ten minutes for a reply has usually ordered somewhere else.

The order is free text. "Two wings, one with garlic mayo, chips, and a can" has to be read, priced and written down, and nothing checks that the sauce that comes with it was chosen.

Payment is a separate job: cash on collection, or a bank transfer someone has to check before the food goes out.

Nothing reaches the kitchen by itself. Someone copies the order onto a ticket or into the till.

What the API changes

The WhatsApp Business Platform lets software send and receive messages on your number. That is what makes an ordering assistant possible: it can answer straight away, show a menu, ask the questions each item needs, send a payment button and pass the paid order to your kitchen.

It works under a few rules worth knowing:

• You can reply freely for 24 hours after a customer messages you. Outside that window, you can only send pre-approved templates.^[4]
• Meta charges per message. From 1 October 2026, replies inside that 24-hour window are charged too, once a number has used 1,000 of them in a month.^[4]
• The same content rules apply. Alcohol, tobacco and medicines can't be sold through it, on the app or the API.^[5]

Which one you need

If you take a few orders a night and enjoy chatting to regulars, stay on the app. If the phone is costing you orders on a Friday, it is time for the API.

How EasyOzy does it

EasyOzy runs on the official WhatsApp Business Platform. Your shop gets its own number for ordering, and we set it up with you. If you already have a WhatsApp Business account, we can connect that instead. Customers pay into your own Stripe account, and the order prints in your kitchen.