ChowNow: Local Food Ordering

Review by eFreeware

ChowNow builds its whole pitch around doing neither: it's billed as takeout that's fair for all, with no high commissions for independent restaurants and no marked-up menu prices. That single idea is the reason to pay attention to it, because everything else about the app follows from it.

The app is free, carries no ads and has no in-app purchases, so there's nothing to buy inside it beyond your food. It has been downloaded more than 500,000 times and holds a 4.6 average from 8,152 ratings, which suggests a fair number of people keep it around after the first order.

This one is for anyone who orders takeout or delivery regularly and would rather send the money to a neighborhood kitchen than to a middleman. If your habits run toward national chains and the deepest possible discount codes, the appeal here is different: you're paying menu price and supporting the restaurant directly.

Finding something nearby and ordering it

The core loop is familiar. You search by cuisine, by restaurant name or by deals, and the catalog the developer describes runs from Italian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Mexican, Thai, Greek, Chinese, French, Mediterranean and Indian through to the pizza, pasta, burritos, barbecue, sushi, salads, burgers and fries end of things. Vegetarian and vegan options are part of that spread, along with desserts, coffee and smoothies.

Where it differs from a plain search box is the map. You can see which places are open right now, and which are running a promotion, before you commit to a cuisine. That's a small thing that saves a lot of dead ends when you're hungry and indecisive, and it's the feature I'd expect to use most.

From there, menu items can be customized the way you want them, and delivery comes with real-time tracking updates so you can follow the order rather than guess at it. Takeout and curbside pickup sit alongside delivery as the ways to collect your food, so the app isn't only useful when you want someone else to bring it.

Repeat orders and paying

The second job the app handles is the one you do over and over: ordering the same thing from the same place. Quick reordering is built in, so a favorite from last week is a couple of taps away rather than a fresh hunt through the menu. For anyone with a standing Friday order, that's the part that decides whether an app stays installed.

Checkout is set up to be quick. You can enable Google Pay or save your card details, and both are aimed at getting you through payment without retyping anything. The developer frames this as fast checkout, and for a task you might repeat several times a week, the difference between two taps and ten is the whole experience.

There's also a human backstop. Support is available around the clock by chat, SMS, phone or email, which matters more here than in most apps: when an order goes sideways, you want a person, not a form. The line about being there for assistance, or just to chat about food, is marketing, but the four contact channels are a concrete commitment.

What you need before your first order

Everything else — browsing, the map, customizing items — is the ordinary business of picking food.

The real prerequisite is location. The developer says the app covers most U.S. locations and names Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Atlanta, Denver, Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Dallas, Austin, Orange County, San Diego, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Charlotte among the cities where it helps you find restaurants.

The app was released in April 2020 and the most recent update, in October 2026, brought bug fixes and improvements to the ordering experience rather than new features. That's a maintenance release, and it tells you the team is still tending the thing.

The diner this suits

ChowNow fits people who treat takeout as a regular part of the week and care where the money lands. If you have a handful of independent places you'd hate to lose, ordering through an app that doesn't take a heavy commission from them and doesn't inflate their prices is a straightforward alignment of your habits and your preferences. The absence of ads and in-app purchases reinforces that: the app isn't trying to sell you anything on the side.

It also suits the indecisive. The combination of cuisine search, a map filtered to what's open and what's on promotion, and saved payment makes the gap between deciding and eating noticeably shorter. People who order the same meal from the same kitchen every week get the reordering shortcut on top of that.

What it isn't is a national delivery network with the widest possible reach. It's built around independent local restaurants in a specific set of U.S. cities, and its selling point is the economics of those relationships rather than the size of the catalog. That focus is the product, not a shortcoming, and it's the reason the rest of the pitch holds together.

A fair-priced option for local takeout

I'd install ChowNow if you order from independent restaurants more than occasionally and you'd rather not pay a marked-up menu price for the privilege. It's free, it's ad-free, there's nothing to purchase inside it, and the developer's central promise — fair terms for the restaurants, normal prices for you — is the kind of thing you can judge for yourself the first time you compare a bill.

The 4.6 average across 8,152 ratings suggests the experience holds up for most people who try it, and the 24/7 support by chat, SMS, phone or email gives you a route out when an order goes wrong. The map view and quick reordering are the two features I'd expect to keep me coming back.

The caveat is coverage. The app works across most U.S. locations, but if your area isn't served, there's nothing to order. Check that first. If you're inside the footprint and you like the idea of your takeout money staying in the neighborhood, this is an easy one to try.

What's new in version 1.70.0

Our latest update features bug fixes and enhancements to improve your ordering experience.