How to Replace Foodhub With Your Own Direct Online Ordering Channel

Why restaurants want to leave Foodhub

Foodhub sells itself to UK takeaways on price. Its commission is lower than what Just Eat or Uber Eats charge, and for plenty of operators that was the whole reason they signed up. But a lower fee is still a fee. It comes off every order, including orders from customers who were loyal to you long before Foodhub showed up.

The fee isn't the only problem. When a customer orders through Foodhub, Foodhub owns that customer. You get a name and a delivery address, and that's about it. You can't email them about a new dish. You can't send them a voucher when they haven't ordered in a month. And when they open the app next Friday, your restaurant sits in a list next to five other places selling more or less the same thing.

You're also building on someone else's land. Foodhub can change its fees, its terms or the way it ranks restaurants whenever it wants, and you find out afterwards.

Direct online ordering fixes most of this. The customer orders on your own website or app. You keep the order, the customer details and the relationship. No commission. No competitors on the same screen.

What you get from ordering direct

The money is the obvious part. On a direct order you pay card processing, usually around 1.5-2%, and that's it. No platform commission. Look at what Foodhub took from you last month - that's roughly how much is on the table once enough of those customers move across.

Then there's the data. On a direct order you know who ordered, what they had, when they last ordered and how much they usually spend. Email marketing, loyalty schemes and win-back campaigns all run on that. Without it you're guessing.

The site is yours too. Your name, your photos, your menu, your checkout. The customer remembers ordering from you, not from an app.

And if Foodhub puts its fees up or pushes you down the listings, your direct orders carry on as normal. People tend to underrate this until it happens to them.

Step 1: Choose a direct ordering platform

At minimum you need a branded ordering website. A mobile app is worth adding once you have a decent base of regulars. Whatever you pick has to take payments and get orders to the kitchen without anyone retyping them.

Flipdish is built for restaurants moving away from marketplaces, and it covers the whole setup:

Everything lands in one place. Direct orders, walk-ins, phone orders and marketplace orders all go to the same system, so nobody is standing at the counter with three tablets beeping at them.

Whichever platform you look at, ask a few blunt questions. Is there a per-order commission on top of the monthly fee? Who owns the customer data if you leave? Do orders go straight to the kitchen, or does someone have to accept each one by hand? If the answers are vague, keep looking.

Step 2: Set up your menu

Don't just copy your Foodhub menu across item by item. This is a good chance to fix it.

  • Sort items into categories that match how people actually order: starters, mains, sides, drinks, deals. If half your orders are meal deals, put the meal deals at the top.
  • Write descriptions that say what's in the dish. A regular knows what your chicken tikka masala is like. A first-time customer wants to know how hot it is, what it comes with and whether it feeds one or two.
  • Add photos if you have good ones. A blurry phone shot under kitchen lights is worse than no photo at all.
  • Check your prices. If you marked things up on Foodhub to cover the commission, you can bring them down a bit on your own site. "Cheaper when you order direct" is an easy message to sell.
  • Add extras and upsells to each item. Extra cheese, a bigger drink, a side of chips. Small amounts, but they add up over a few hundred orders a week.

Take out anything you don't make any more. An out-of-date menu means refunds and annoyed phone calls.

Step 3: Set up delivery zones and collection

Decide where you deliver. You can usually set this by postcode or by distance from the shop. Add a minimum order and a delivery fee for each zone if you need them - for example, a lower minimum for the streets around you and a higher one for the estate across town.

If you use your own drivers, Flipdish connects with delivery management tools, so orders reach drivers without someone ringing them.

Make collection easy to find on the site. Lots of customers live ten minutes away and would happily pick up their own food, and a collection order doesn't need a driver. Collection orders usually carry a better margin than delivery for exactly that reason.

Step 4: Tell your existing customers

This is the step that matters most. People who already order from you on Foodhub like your food. They just need a reason to order a different way, and it has to be easy.

What works:

  • A card in every delivery bag saying you now take orders directly, with a QR code that goes straight to your ordering page. Every Foodhub order you send out puts one in a customer's hand.
  • A sign on the counter for walk-in customers
  • A post on your social accounts that says plainly why ordering direct is better for them - it's cheaper, it earns points, or both
  • A small thank-you on the first direct order. A free drink, 10% off, double points. You're paying for one change of habit, not a permanent discount.

Foodhub won't hand over its customer data, so you can't contact those customers directly. If you've built a list some other way - an email sign-up, an old mailing list, regulars who already message you on WhatsApp - use it.

It'll be slow at first. Some customers switch after the first card. Others need to see it a few times before they bother. Keep the cards going in the bags.

Step 5: Run a loyalty programme

Foodhub has no reason to help you keep customers. If someone drifts from you to the pizza place listed underneath, Foodhub still gets its cut. On your own channel you can reward people for coming back to you specifically.

Flipdish's loyalty tools let you run points, stamp cards or automatic rewards. A customer sitting on a stack of points is a lot less likely to try somewhere new on a marketplace.

Keep the rules simple enough to fit on the bag card. "Every 10th order free" is easy to explain. A tiered scheme with bonus multipliers isn't, and most takeaway customers won't read the small print.

Step 6: Use marketing automation to bring people back

Once you have customer data from direct orders, you can set up campaigns that run on their own:

  • Win-back messages for customers who haven't ordered in 30 or 60 days
  • Offers aimed at people who've ordered a particular dish, so the curry regulars hear about the new curry
  • Messages timed for when your customers usually order, like Friday evening or Sunday afternoon

Flipdish's AI marketing tools do this without you or your staff writing campaigns by hand. The system spots customers who look like they're drifting away and sends them a message to bring them back.

That matters because most takeaway owners don't have a spare Tuesday afternoon to write emails. If the marketing depends on someone remembering to do it, it doesn't get done.

How long does the switch take?

The website can be live within a few days of starting setup. Building up enough direct orders to cut your Foodhub reliance is slower - usually three to six months of steady promotion to existing and new customers.

Track one number while you do it: the share of your orders that come in direct each week. If it's going up, keep going. If it's flat, look at whether the bag cards are actually going out and whether the first-order offer is good enough to make anyone bother.

Start now, though. Every week you wait is another week of paying commission on orders you could have taken yourself.

Should you keep Foodhub while you build direct?

Probably, at least at the start. Plenty of restaurants run Foodhub and a direct channel side by side while they switch. As direct orders grow, you can scale back on Foodhub or push for better terms.

You don't have to get rid of marketplaces completely. For a newer restaurant, a Foodhub listing brings in people who've never heard of you, and your own website can't do that on day one. Use the marketplace for finding new customers, then use the bag card to bring them onto your own channel.

What you're trying to avoid is depending on Foodhub so heavily that a fee rise or a ranking change wrecks your week.

How Flipdish helps

Flipdish covers the whole direct ordering setup, from the ordering website to the kitchen, plus loyalty, marketing automation and AI tools. It also connects with marketplace platforms, so you can run all your ordering channels from one place while your direct orders grow.

Talk to the Flipdish team about setting up direct online ordering for your restaurant.