Delivery apps take a cut of every order and keep your customers for themselves. Here's why UK restaurants should also run their own online ordering.
Most restaurants in the UK signed up to Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats for a simple reason. The orders were already there. You add your menu, the app sends you customers, and you start taking orders online without building anything yourself.
That part works. The problem is what it costs you, and what you quietly give up in return.
For a lot of the restaurant owners we work with around Horsham and Crawley, the delivery apps are not the problem on their own. Relying on them as the only way customers can order from you online is.
The commission adds up faster than you think
Delivery platforms do not charge a flat fee. They take a percentage of every single order, and that percentage is rarely small.
Depending on the platform and whether they handle the delivery for you, commission in the UK often sits somewhere between 14% and 30% per order. Picture a normal £25 order at 25%. That is more than £6 gone before you have paid for the ingredients, the staff or the rent. Now run that across a busy Friday night and a full week of orders, and you start to see the real number.
Here is the part that stings. The customer placing that order might live ten minutes from your door. They may have eaten with you before. They might order from you every week. And you are still paying a cut to a third party to reach someone who already knows you.
You are renting customers you could own
When someone orders through a delivery app, they are the app's customer, not yours.
You usually do not get their email, their phone number, or permission to contact them. You cannot message them when you launch a new menu. You cannot offer them a reason to come back. The platform keeps that relationship, because the relationship is the thing they are actually selling.
Over time this matters more than the commission. A customer you can reach again is worth far more than a single order. Repeat business is cheaper than paying to find new people every week, and the apps are built so that finding new people stays their job, not yours.
On the app, you are one tile among forty
Open any delivery app and look at how your restaurant shows up. You are a small thumbnail in a long list, sitting next to every competitor in your area, sorted by whatever the app has decided matters that day.
To stand out, you get pushed towards discounts and paid promoted listings, which cost you more on top of the commission. Your branding, your story, the reason people love your food, none of it really comes through. You end up competing on price and delivery time inside someone else's shop.
Your own ordering page is the opposite. It is your name, your photos, your menu, your prices. There is no other restaurant's logo on the screen.
What your own ordering system actually gives you
Running your own online ordering is not about ego. It changes the maths.
You keep the margin. Instead of handing over a quarter of each order, you pay a predictable and much smaller cost to run the system, and the rest stays in your business.
You keep the data. Names, emails, order history. That is the beginning of a mailing list, a loyalty offer, a reason for people to order from you directly next time.
You control the experience. You decide the menu layout, the upsells, the collection and delivery options, the opening hours. If you want to push your Sunday roast or a quiet midweek offer, you just do it, without asking a platform for permission.
And it connects to where people already look for you. You can add an "Order Online" button straight onto your Google Business Profile that points to your own page. So when someone in Horsham searches for your restaurant, or for the kind of food you serve nearby, they can order from you on Google Maps with no commission sitting in the middle.
You do not have to drop the apps overnight
This is where a lot of owners hesitate, and fairly so. The delivery apps do bring in new faces, and there is real value in being found by people who have never heard of you.
So treat them as what they are. They are a marketing channel you rent, not your whole business. Let the apps introduce new customers to you. Then give those customers every reason to order directly the next time, through your own page, where it costs you less and you actually keep their details.
The goal over time is simple. Move your regulars onto your own system, and let the apps keep doing the introductions.
How to start without a huge project
You do not need to rebuild everything to get going. A setup that works usually needs a few things: an ordering page that behaves properly on a phone, clear collection and delivery options, a payment system customers trust, and a link to it from your Google Business Profile and your social media.
This is the gap we built MenuDock to fill. It is an online ordering system made for UK restaurants, with flat monthly pricing instead of per-order commission, so a busy month never turns into a bigger bill. You get your own branded ordering page, card payments, and a setup that sends your Google and social traffic straight to orders you keep the full value of.
Whether you go with MenuDock or another route, the principle is the same. The apps are fine as one door into your restaurant. They should not be the only one.
A simple way to think about it
If every online order you take runs through a platform that charges commission and keeps your customers, you are building someone else's business as much as your own.
Your own ordering system flips that around. The margin is yours, the customers are yours, and your next order does not depend on where you happen to land in an app's list that day.
For most UK restaurants the smartest setup is both. Stay on the apps if they earn their keep, but always give customers a way to order directly. That one change can be the difference between a busy kitchen and a profitable one.
Ready to own your online ordering?
At The ZNZ, we help restaurants across West Sussex set up online ordering they actually own, through MenuDock and a website built to turn local searches into direct orders.
If you are tired of watching commission eat into every order, get in touch with The ZNZ today and we will help you build a system that works for you.