Why should I use Hotplate?
Last updated October 15, 2025
Give me the quick pitch ⚾
Hotplate automates everything for your business — from creating your website to communicating with customers, managing inventory so you don’t oversell, processing payments, generating order tickets, calculating your prep list, and surfacing actionable insights.
Focus on the food, let Hotplate handle the rest.
The Hotplate Flywheel
Who uses Hotplate?
Thousands of chefs use Hotplate to manage and grow their businesses. Most of them fall into these categories:
- Popups
- Micro-bakers who sell at markets or porch pickups
- Home cooks
- Cottage Food Operations (CFOs) and Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations (MEHKOs)
- Chefs and bakers operating out of commissary kitchens
- Brick and mortars with a devoted fan base
All kinds of food is sold on Hotplate, including pizza, BBQ, ice cream, bagels, grilled branzino, salsa, conchas, caramel apples, challah, Vegan tacos, cold-pressed juice, croissants, and much more.
What features come with Hotplate
- 🏠 Your very own storefront
- 🙏 Inventory management that actually prevents your from over-selling
- 📋 Automated prep list and order tickets. They're printable!
- 📲 Automated text notifications
- 🎁 Customer engagement tools (loyalty points, reviews, discounts, gift cards, sold out waitlists)
- 💳 Payment processing through Stripe (a PCI-Level 1 processor)
- 📊 Insights to show you how your business is performing
- 👫 An experienced team ready to help with any issues, give you guidance to grow, and celebrate your wins.
How much is it?
There's no subscription or monthly fee for Hotplate. You only pay payment processing.
It’s completely free to create and hold an account on Hotplate. We only make money when a customer places an order.
- Hotplate chefs only pay payment processing: 2.9% of the transaction + 30 cents, which goes straight to our payment processor, Stripe.
- To cover the features we provide, we charge a fee to your customer: 5% of their subtotal + 55¢. We never charge on tip or tax. This comes out to $1.80 on a $25 order.
- If you’d like to take on more of the fees, or pass more onto your customer, you can actually customize the split. That said, 80% of Hotplate chefs keep the default as-is.
How fast is the set up or switch?
We built our product to be easy to understand and implement. Whether you’re switching over from another system or starting fresh, just create your account here to get started.