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How to reduce delivery app commission without losing customers

Updated 19 October 2026 · Arslan Munir

Marketplace apps are how a lot of new customers find a takeaway. They are an expensive way to serve someone who already knows the door. The useful aim is not to delete Just Eat, Uber Eats or Deliveroo on a Monday and hope Friday still happens. It is to stop paying commission on the regulars, and to leave the apps in place for people who have never heard of you.

This guide is about that split. It uses Uber Eats’ published UK rates and the Just Eat figures reported on their partner sign-up page. It does not use a restaurant’s private contract, and it does not promise a saving. If you want a number, put your own orders into the commission calculator. The result is a projection from those rates. It is not a case study.

Read the invoice, not the headline percentage

The percentage on a sales sheet is not always the whole bill. Pull last month’s marketplace invoices and write down four lines before you decide anything.

Commission on the food. This is the cut on the order. It is often different when the platform’s rider delivers and when you deliver or the customer collects.
VAT on the fee. Just Eat’s reported commission is plus VAT. Uber’s published service fee is excluding VAT. A percentage that ignores VAT understates the invoice.
Anything that is not commission. Ads, subscription add-ons, activation fees and customer service charges sit on some invoices and not others. Uber publishes a £650 activation fee for new restaurants. The calculator on this site leaves that fee out of the percentage sum and says so.
Refunds and cancelled orders. A refunded order can still have cost you the food. Do not tidy it out of the picture if it is a normal Friday.

Just Eat’s UK partner sign-up page is reported to show 14% when you use your own drivers and 30% when they deliver, plus VAT on the fee. A direct fetch of just-eat.co.uk was blocked on 19 October 2026, so those two figures are reported, not re-read from the live page. Uber Eats UK publishes 13% for self-delivery or collection and 30% when Uber delivers (33% for Uber One), excluding VAT. Deliveroo does not publish a standard rate. Use the percentage on your statement. The longer breakdown is Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats commission. Your contract can differ. Check it.

Separate discovery orders from repeat orders

An order from someone who found you in the app is not the same cost as an order from someone who has your menu on the fridge. The first one may be worth the commission, because you would not have had the customer. The second one is you paying a toll on a relationship you already have. You will not get a perfect split from the invoice. You can get a rough one by asking, for a week, how many delivery orders are names and addresses you recognise.

You do not need that week to be scientific. If the same streets and the same phone numbers keep appearing, those are the orders a direct link can take. New postcodes and new names are the orders the app is still earning. Leaving the app is a later decision, after the direct page has taken real orders, not a first step.

Give a reason that you can afford

A regular will not switch because a poster says “order direct”. They switch when the direct order is simpler, and when the link is in front of them at the moment they would have opened the app.

Give them a reason that does not depend on a lower price. A shorter collection wait, or a page that is easier to find on Google, does not change the price. Just Eat’s UK restaurant terms, dated 18 December 2025, include clause 7.18, “Your Price Promise”. Unless you have agreed otherwise, the prices, discounts, offers, delivery charges and minimum orders on Just Eat must be no less favourable than on your own online channels (Just Eat UK restaurant terms). Do not advertise a direct-only discount, a lower delivery fee or a lower minimum. Deliveroo and Uber Eats contracts can have their own rules. Check those too.

Say the offer in one sentence on the page and on the bag. Turn the code off if it starts attracting orders you cannot cook. Chefzi promo codes are a switch in the dashboard, not a campaign you have to brief an agency for.

Put one link where the order already starts

Pick one ordering URL and use it everywhere. A second link back to the marketplace, placed more prominently than your own, trains people to keep paying the commission.

The Google Business Profile order link. This is the button people tap when they have already searched for your name.
Instagram and Facebook. The bio link, not a story that disappears.
The receipt and your own packaging. Do not put a direct-order code on a Just Eat bag. There is no online signup.
The window and the paper menu, if you still hand one out. A code that points at a dead page is worse than no code. Test it with your phone, not with the printer’s preview.

If the current website button is GloriaFood rather than a marketplace, that is a different deadline. GloriaFood has said its ordering product retires on 30 April 2027. The menu move is included either way. The GloriaFood alternative page and the migration checklist are the longer version.

Make the direct page as short as the app

People go back to the marketplace when your page is slow, when the extras are missing, or when they cannot tell if you deliver to their street. The menu, the basket and the pay button have to work with a thumb. Sizes and sides should be choices with prices, not a note the kitchen might miss. An item that has sold out should be marked sold out, not taken and refunded.

Delivery needs a boundary. A fee and a minimum that match the streets you actually drive are part of keeping the order profitable once the commission is gone. The guide on delivery fees and minimum orders covers that decision. A page that delivers everywhere, for nothing, can cost more than the app did.

The kitchen has to hear the order. A direct channel that emails a quiet inbox will be missed on a Friday, and the customer will decide the direct page “doesn’t work”. The tablet guide is about a sound that continues until someone accepts with a prep time or rejects with a reason. What the page itself needs is in what a restaurant website needs.

What Chefzi costs, and what this is not

Chefzi is three months free, then £19 a month for cash or no-card payments, or £29 a month with online card payments through Stripe per location, excluding VAT. There is no commission on the order and no setup fee. Card processing stays with your payment provider. That monthly fee does not replace the marketplace invoice for orders that still arrive through the marketplace. It replaces the commission on orders that arrive on your own page. The pricing page is that fee in one place. Just Eat can stay listed beside it.

Stay on the apps that still bring new customers. Move the regulars when the direct page is good enough that you would use it yourself. Book a call if you want the menu moved before you change the public link.