Direct Ordering vs Deliveroo: Which Is Better for Restaurants?
The short answer
Deliveroo puts you in front of a lot of people. Direct ordering lets you keep more of the money and gives you the customer's details. Most restaurants end up using both, so the real decision is how much weight to give each one.
If you want a straight answer, though: for most restaurants, direct ordering wins over time. The numbers aren't close.
What Deliveroo costs
Deliveroo takes a commission on every order that comes through the app. It doesn't publish its rates. They depend on your agreement, your volume, where you are and how hard you negotiated. UK restaurants report paying somewhere between 25% and 35% of the order value.
On a £30 order, that's £7.50 to £10.50 gone before anything else. Then there's packaging, and the staff time to cook the food.
Take a dish with a 30% food cost at 32% commission. £9 goes on ingredients, £9.60 goes to Deliveroo, and you have £11.40 left to cover packaging, labour, rent and everything else.
Commission isn't the only cost:
- Deliveroo pushes restaurants to join discount campaigns, and the discount comes out of your margin
- Better menu photos tend to sell more on Deliveroo, so you'll probably end up paying a photographer
- Some operators get a tablet supplied. Others don't.
- Deliveroo's pricing policies can limit how far you can raise prices on the app to cover the commission
What direct ordering costs
With direct online ordering, you pay your technology provider a platform fee. Not a percentage of each order.
So the more you sell, the bigger the gap gets:
| Monthly orders | Deliveroo cost (at 30%) | Direct ordering platform | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 × £25 avg. | £750 | ~£150-£200 | ~£550 |
| 300 × £25 avg. | £2,250 | ~£150-£200 | ~£2,050 |
| 1,000 × £25 avg. | £7,500 | ~£150-£200 | ~£7,300 |
Platform fees vary by provider and plan. The fee stays about the same whether you do 100 orders a month or 1,000. Deliveroo's cut grows with every order.
Who owns the customer
This is the part that matters most in the long run.
When someone orders through Deliveroo, Deliveroo keeps their data. You get the order. You don't get their email address, how often they order, what they like, or any way to contact them yourself.
When someone orders through your restaurant website or branded app, they're your customer. You can:
- bring them back with AI marketing
- give them loyalty rewards
- send them offers based on what they actually order
- take their next order without paying Deliveroo a penny
Someone who orders from you directly 20 times is worth a lot more than someone who orders 20 times on Deliveroo. At a £25 average and 30% commission, that's £150 you didn't hand over.
When Deliveroo is worth it
Deliveroo does earn its fee in a few situations.
If you've just opened and nobody knows you exist, Deliveroo's search and browse pages show you to people who'd never have found you otherwise. With no customer base yet, that's worth paying for.
Quiet nights are another. A low-margin order still beats a kitchen sitting idle.
And if you don't run your own drivers, Deliveroo delivers for you. Part of the commission is paying for that.
Using both, weighted toward direct
Most operators run Deliveroo and direct ordering side by side. Use Deliveroo to find new customers, get those customers ordering through your own app or website, then keep them there with loyalty rewards and AI marketing.
Every customer who moves over is one you stop paying commission on, for every order after that. More of your orders should come in direct each month.
How Flipdish helps
Flipdish gives you what you need to take orders directly:
- Restaurant websites built to take orders, not just list your opening hours
- Branded mobile apps - your own iOS and Android app, with no other restaurants on it
- AI marketing to turn Deliveroo customers into direct customers
- Loyalty programmes to keep them ordering from you
- POS integration, so direct and Deliveroo orders land in the same kitchen system
With Flipdish, Deliveroo becomes one channel among several instead of the one you depend on. As direct orders grow, commission takes a smaller share of what you earn.
To see how Flipdish runs direct ordering alongside Deliveroo and the other marketplaces, get in touch with Flipdish for a demo.