Introducing Cobble

The delivery marketplaces solved a real problem. They made ordering online easy. But they did it by standing between a shop and the people who love it, and they charge for the spot: commissions of 20 to 30% on every order. For a neighborhood business working on thin margins, that's often the profit on the order, and then some.

The money isn't the only cost. On a marketplace the customer belongs to the app. The shop doesn't get to know who ordered, can't easily thank them, and can't tell them when the new seasonal menu starts. The relationship that makes a local business work, the one built across the counter over years, gets handed to someone else.

And every shop gets flattened into the same list. The café with hand-painted tiles and the chain down the highway end up in the same grid, with the same buttons, sorted by an algorithm. Everything that makes a place special disappears at exactly the moment someone is deciding where to spend their money.

Cobble gives a local business its own ordering site: its name, its menu, its prices and its customers. It isn't a marketplace, and it doesn't sit between a shop and the people who order from it. It stays in the background, and the shop is the one customers see.

It runs at the counter the shop already has. On Square, the menu, prices and photos come straight from Square, every online order lands in Square next to the walk-ins, and the money settles where it always has. On Cobble POS, the menu lives in Cobble and runs online and at the counter from one place. Either way, nothing changes for the team behind the counter. The counter stays the heart of the business, and Cobble is the front door.

It costs the business nothing: no monthly fee, no setup fee, no contract. Customers pay a small order fee of 3% when they order online, which typically works out to between 20¢ and 99¢, shown at checkout as its own line, and that's how Cobble is paid. A shop that would rather cover it, or split it, can. Card processing is the processor's usual rate, Square's or Cobble payments', as it is at the counter. For delivery, Cobble books an Uber Direct courier, and the customer pays the delivery fee, like on any marketplace. Menu prices stay the same as in the shop.

I build each storefront myself. A shop on Square claims its spot by signing in with Square, about three taps; a shop on Cobble POS signs up with an email and a password. Either way, I put the site together. Until it's ready, the address shows a coming-soon page. I review every page, then reveal it, and the owner switches ordering on when they're ready.

Cobble started with Nella's Nutri-Bar in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. It's an owner-operated spot that makes smoothies, açaí bowls, salads and wraps to order, with rope swings at the table and a sign on the wall that reads “Welcome to our place.” It's exactly the kind of business Cobble is for.

Nella's went live in May 2026. Since then it has taken hundreds of online orders on its own storefront, with no commission taken from any of them. Her regulars keep coming back and now place 70% of all orders. About as many customers tip as before, but each tip has nearly tripled, to about 15% of the order from about 5%, and the average order is up 15%. Customers love ordering from the shop itself: it makes them feel more connected to a local business they care about.

Those numbers matter to me less as numbers than as proof of something I believed going in: when a shop owns its ordering, its regulars show up for it. Everything in Cobble since then, from the Square connection to Uber Direct delivery to the ordering flow itself, was tested first behind a counter with swings.

Online ordering is where Cobble starts. Today it covers pickup with scheduled times, delivery with a live map, multiple locations, catering, group orders and pre-order drops for bakers. Where it's headed is software that helps an independent business run day to day, as polished as anything the biggest companies use. Two things are next:

If you run a shop like Nella's, I'd love to build yours. You won't be filling in a ticket or talking to a bot. When you have a question, you text me, and it comes straight to my phone.

Thank you for reading, and for caring about the places on your street. I'm a text away.