How to Move Customers From Delivery Apps to Direct Ordering

The cost of staying on marketplaces

Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats take between 20% and 35% of every order. On a £25 order that's £5 to £8.75 gone before you've paid for the food. You can make a case for paying that to win a new customer. Paying it every fortnight for someone who's been ordering from you for two years is harder to defend.

Then there's the customer data. The marketplace keeps it. You can't email the customer, text them or add them to a loyalty scheme, because as far as the platform is concerned they're its customer, not yours.

So the job is to work out who your regulars are and give them a good enough reason to order from you directly.

Why regulars will switch

Your regulars already know your food. They aren't scrolling Just Eat to discover new places - they open it because ordering from you directly isn't any easier. That can be fixed.

Your own website or app has to be quicker and simpler than the marketplace, especially on a phone. If your checkout is slower or more confusing, nobody switches, whatever you offer them.

They also need a reason to try it the first time. A discount, loyalty points, something they can't get on Deliveroo. The first direct order is the hardest one to get.

And once they've ordered, you need a way to reach them again: email, push notification or SMS. This is where owning the customer starts to pay off, because every campaign you send after that costs nothing in commission.

What works

Packaging inserts

For most restaurants this gives the best return. A card in every delivery bag needs no ad spend and reaches every marketplace customer you have.

Keep the message short: scan this QR code and get £5 off your next order when you order direct. Point the QR code at your ordering website or your app download page. "£5 off" works. "Exclusive savings" doesn't.

Loyalty on your own channel

Once a customer has points building up on your app, going back to the marketplace means leaving those points behind. None of the big marketplaces share loyalty economics with the restaurant.

Loyalty is built into Flipdish's online ordering platform. Customers earn points on every direct order and spend them on later ones. There's no third-party integration to set up.

Collection customers

People collecting their order are already standing at your counter. Get staff to mention the app or website at handover and put a QR code on the receipt. A lot of collection customers switch quickly this way.

Menu items you can only get direct

If a dish or deal is only on your own website or app, the marketplace can't match it. Limited-time offers and items people really want work best.

Email and push once you have the data

A direct order gives you the customer's contact details. Use them. A win-back message to someone who hasn't ordered in a while, a birthday offer, a deal to fill a quiet Tuesday. None of it costs commission.

You can't do any of this with marketplace customers.

The numbers

Take a restaurant doing 1,000 Just Eat orders a month at an average of £22, paying 28% commission. That's about £6,160 a month in fees.

Say 30% of those orders move to direct ordering over six months. That's 300 orders a month off the marketplace, saving about £1,848 a month, or just over £22,000 a year.

That figure leaves out the email list you build along the way, which lets you run campaigns without paying for ads.

Your direct channel has to be good

A basic website with a clunky checkout won't pull anyone off Just Eat. It needs to load fast, work properly on a phone and give people something back for using it.

Flipdish builds ordering websites and branded mobile apps for restaurants and takeaways in the UK and Ireland. Direct orders land in the same POS system as counter orders, so the kitchen works from one queue wherever the order came from. The customer marketing tools let you split your customers into segments and send campaigns aimed at the ones still ordering through marketplaces.

How long it takes

Run a packaging insert campaign and a first-order discount and you should see direct orders climb within the first month. Moving a big share of your orders takes longer, usually six to eighteen months.

Where you land in that range comes down to how good your direct ordering is, how strong the incentive is, whether your loyalty scheme gives people anything worth having, and how consistently staff, packaging and receipts keep pointing customers to it.

Treat it as a six-month project. A one-off campaign won't get you there.

Learn more about Flipdish online ordering at flipdish.com