How to Replace Foodhub With Direct Online Ordering

Why restaurants look to replace Foodhub

Foodhub is a UK takeaway marketplace that sells itself as the cheaper option next to Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Lower commission is the pitch, and for a lot of independent takeaways that pitch works. But a cheaper marketplace is still a marketplace. The restaurant doesn't own the customer.

When someone orders through Foodhub, Foodhub holds their account, their order history and their contact details. The restaurant gets an order and, eventually, the money for it. If that customer stops ordering, the restaurant has no way of getting in touch with them. If Foodhub raises its fees or changes how it ranks restaurants in the app, the restaurant just has to live with it.

So the question a growing number of UK operators are asking has changed. It used to be "which marketplace is cheapest?" Now it's "how do I get my regulars ordering from me?"

What you give up by leaving Foodhub

Be honest about this part before you change anything.

Foodhub brings you people who have never heard of you. Someone new to the area opens the app, searches for pizza, and finds you. If you're in a town where Foodhub is popular and there are six other takeaways within a mile, that discovery is worth something.

The real question is whether it's worth what you're paying for it. You're paying commission on every order, including orders from customers who've been coming to you for years and would happily order direct if you gave them a decent way to do it. You're also handing over the customer data and accepting whatever changes Foodhub decides to make.

For an established restaurant with a solid base of regulars, the numbers usually favour building your own channel. For a brand-new takeaway with no customers yet, Foodhub may be doing more of the heavy lifting, and it makes sense to stay on it longer.

What direct online ordering gives you

When customers order through your own website or app, the order and the customer are yours. In practice that means a few things.

You know who ordered, what they had and how often they come back. You can tell when a regular who ordered every Friday hasn't been seen for six weeks.

You can contact customers directly by email, SMS or push notification, without asking a marketplace for permission or paying to promote yourself inside someone else's app.

You can run your own loyalty scheme on your own terms.

You keep the margin. Direct ordering platforms charge fees too, but you aren't handing over a percentage of every basket to the same degree a marketplace takes.

And the customer sees your name and your menu, not a list of competitors sitting right next to you.

Here's the rough maths. Take a takeaway doing 200 orders a week with an average basket of £25. That's £5,000 a week in orders. At 10% commission, £500 of that goes to the marketplace every week, or £26,000 a year. Your actual rate may be higher or lower, so plug in your own numbers. Then compare that figure with what a direct ordering platform costs you. For most restaurants doing steady volume, the gap is large.

The 10% example also understates the problem a bit. A lot of those 200 orders are probably from people who'd order from you anyway. Paying commission to acquire a new customer is one thing. Paying it every single time the same family orders their Saturday curry is another.

Step 1: Choose a direct ordering platform

This is the decision everything else depends on, so take your time with it. At minimum you want:

a branded website and a mobile app, both with your name on them
a link to your POS, so orders don't have to be typed in by hand
secure card payments, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay
built-in marketing and loyalty tools
room to add more locations later, if that's on the cards

The POS link matters more than people expect. If orders from your website land on a tablet and someone has to re-enter them into the till, you've just added a job to a busy Friday night. Mistakes follow.

Flipdish is used by restaurants and takeaways across the UK and Ireland to make exactly this switch. It gives you a branded website, a mobile app and a POS that all share one customer database. Orders from your website, app, kiosk and phone go to the same kitchen display, and the customer details go straight into Flipdish's marketing tools without anyone exporting a spreadsheet.

Ask any platform you're considering how long setup takes, who builds the menu, what support looks like on a Saturday night, and what the full monthly cost is once card processing is included. Get the answers in writing.

Step 2: Build your menu and online presence

A direct ordering site only gets used if it's at least as easy as the marketplace app your customers already know. If it's slower, clunkier or harder to find, they'll go back to Foodhub.

Start with the menu. Copy it across carefully, but don't just copy it blindly. Group items the way people actually order them: starters, mains, sides, drinks, meal deals. Write short descriptions that say what's in the dish. Get prices right. Use real photos of your own food, ideally taken in daylight, rather than stock images that look nothing like what turns up in the box.

Modifiers are where a lot of menus fall apart. If a customer can choose a base, a size, extra toppings and a dip, set those up properly so the order prints in a way the kitchen can read at a glance.

Set honest delivery and collection times. Promising 30 minutes and arriving in 55 is a fast way to get a one-star review and a customer who goes back to the marketplace.

Most direct orders come from phones. Test the whole thing on your own phone before launch: find the site from Google, build a basket, pay, check the confirmation. Then get a friend who's never seen it to do the same and watch where they get stuck.

While you're at it, update your Google Business Profile so the order link points at your own site. A lot of people search for the restaurant by name, and that's an easy win.

Step 3: Tell your existing customers

Your regulars are where direct orders will come from first. They already like your food. They just need to know there's another way to order and a reason to use it.

The places to tell them are the ones you already have:

a sign by the counter with a QR code that goes straight to your ordering page
a flyer in every bag that leaves the shop, explaining what they get for ordering direct (points, a better price, whatever it is)
posts on your Instagram and Facebook with the link
an email or text, if you already have contact details for any customers

The bag insert is worth doing properly. Every Foodhub order you deliver ends up in the hands of someone who has just eaten your food. That's a good moment to ask them to order direct next time. Keep the message short and put a QR code on it.

A launch offer helps too. Plenty of restaurants run a discount or a free side on the first direct order to get people over the hump of downloading a new app or using a new site. Keep it simple and put an end date on it.

Phone orders count here as well. If people still ring in, staff can mention the website or app at the end of the call. It takes about five seconds.

Step 4: Give people a reason to keep ordering direct

A one-off promotion gets someone to try ordering direct once. It won't change their habits on its own. A loyalty scheme does a better job of that.

Flipdish includes a loyalty and rewards system that you can set up to reward customers for every direct order. Someone who's building points each time they order has a reason to come to you rather than open a marketplace app, and that reason stays in place week after week.

Push notifications through the Flipdish branded app let you contact customers directly about offers, new dishes and seasonal specials. A marketplace won't let you do that with its customers. On your own app, they're your customers.

Don't overdo it. One or two well-timed messages a week will get a better response than a daily stream of discounts, which mostly teaches people to wait for the next one.

Pricing is worth thinking about here too. Many restaurants put their prices up on marketplaces to cover commission. If your direct prices are lower, say so. Customers notice when the same order is a few pounds cheaper on your own site.

Step 5: Scale back Foodhub gradually

You don't have to leave Foodhub on day one. Most restaurants are better off running both for a few months and watching what share of orders comes through direct channels.

Track it weekly. Total orders, direct orders, marketplace orders, and what you paid in commission. A simple spreadsheet is fine. You want to see the direct share climbing and get a clear sense of how many Foodhub orders are from new customers versus regulars.

As direct orders grow, Foodhub matters less to the business. Once the commission you're paying is clearly more than the new customers it brings in are worth, you can cut back your listing or end it.

There's no single right answer for where to land. Some restaurants keep a small marketplace presence purely for discovery and push every repeat customer towards their own channel. Others leave marketplaces completely once direct volume is high enough to stand on its own. It depends on your area, your competition and how much of your trade is regulars.

If you do leave, check your Foodhub contract for notice periods before you announce anything, and make sure your direct channel can handle the extra volume before you switch off the other one.

What to expect

Don't expect your direct share to jump overnight. In the first few weeks, a small slice of regulars will switch, usually the most loyal ones. After that it depends on what you do.

The things that make the most difference:

how hard you push the direct channel to the customers you already have
whether you have an app as well as a website, since customers who download an app tend to reorder more than those using a mobile site
how good the ordering experience is, from finding the menu to paying
whether there's a loyalty reward for ordering direct

Restaurants that do all four tend to see far more direct orders than those that put up a website and wait. A site nobody knows about won't get used. Treat the launch like opening a second branch, not like ticking a box.

Picking the right platform

Direct ordering platforms are not all the same. A general website builder with a payment form bolted on is a very different thing from an ordering platform built for restaurants, with marketing, loyalty and POS integration included. The cheap option often costs more once you count the hours staff spend re-keying orders and the customers lost to a clumsy checkout.

Flipdish is built for restaurants moving orders away from marketplaces. It handles payments, menus and integrations, and gives your team the marketing tools to grow the share of orders that come direct.

If you want to cut your reliance on Foodhub and start building a customer list you actually own, Flipdish is a sensible place to begin.

Find out how Flipdish supports direct ordering for UK restaurants