How to Replace Foodhub With Direct Online Ordering

Should restaurants replace Foodhub with direct ordering?

For most restaurants, yes. Foodhub takes less commission than Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats, usually around 6-7%, but that's still a cut of every single order. And the customer still belongs to Foodhub. With a direct ordering platform you pay a fixed monthly fee, and the person who orders a lamb bhuna every Friday night becomes your customer, with a name and an order history you can actually see.

You don't have to give up delivery to do this. What changes is who owns the channel the orders come through.

What is Foodhub?

Foodhub is a UK food delivery marketplace. It came in as the cheaper option next to Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats, with no customer service fee and lower commission for restaurants. If you were fed up with what the big platforms charged, the numbers looked better.

They are better. They're just not that different. A third party still runs the ordering channel, and you still pay to reach customers on someone else's platform. Foodhub is a cheaper landlord, but it's still a landlord.

Here's what that means day to day:

Commission comes off every order, usually 6-7%
Foodhub keeps the customer data
You can't market to those customers directly
Your menu sits in a list next to every other takeaway in the area
Foodhub's interface decides how your brand looks
Nothing ties a Foodhub customer's loyalty to your restaurant in particular

Put some numbers on it. A restaurant doing £12,000 a month through Foodhub pays roughly £720-£840 a month in commission. Over a year that's £8,640-£10,080. At the end of that year you have no customer list, no contact details and no way to reach any of those people unless they go back into Foodhub and find you again.

What does direct online ordering look like?

Direct ordering means the customer orders through something your restaurant owns. Your own website, your own branded app, or QR codes on your tables.

With Flipdish, you get:

A branded ordering website on your restaurant's own domain
A branded mobile app on iOS and Android, with your name and logo on it
Orders going straight into your POS system with walk-in and kiosk orders, so the kitchen works from one queue
Customer data: names, order history, how often people order, spend per head
Loyalty schemes and marketing campaigns you can run to those customers
A fixed monthly platform fee instead of commission on each order

Take the same £12,000 a month. If it comes through your own channel on a fixed fee, the £720-£840 that would have gone to Foodhub stays with you. That's before you count anything you get out of the customer data.

The customer data is the bigger loss

Commission is the cost people notice, because it's on the statement every week. Losing the customer data is easier to miss, and over time it costs more.

Every customer who orders through Foodhub is a Foodhub customer. Foodhub has their name, email address, order history and payment details. You get an order ticket. You might see "Sarah, 2x lamb bhuna, pilau rice" a dozen times a year and never once be able to send Sarah a message.

When Sarah orders through your Flipdish app or website instead, she's in your database. You can see:

who she is
what she orders and how often
when she last ordered
how much she spends each time
whether she's stopped ordering

That last one is where the money is. Flipdish's AI marketing platform uses this data to send automatic re-engagement campaigns when a customer goes quiet, then tracks how much revenue those campaigns bring back.

In practice that might be a message with an offer to someone who used to order every week and hasn't ordered in a month. You decide the offer. You can see whether it worked.

A marketplace has no reason to do that for you. If Sarah stops ordering from you and starts ordering from the takeaway down the road, Foodhub still gets paid.

How to replace Foodhub step by step

Step 1: Set up a direct ordering website

Start with a Flipdish direct ordering website. It gives customers somewhere to order that isn't Foodhub, straight away. You can import the menu from your existing POS or build it in Flipdish, and the ordering pages are designed for phones.

Step 2: Get a branded app

The website gets you going. The branded mobile app is what keeps regulars ordering direct over the long run. App customers usually order more often, and spend more per order, than marketplace customers.

The app sits on the customer's phone with your logo on it, and you can send push notifications. The Foodhub app sits on their phone too, with every other takeaway in town inside it.

Step 3: Move your regulars across

This step decides whether the whole thing works. The people who order from you on Foodhub every week already like your food. They're the easiest customers you'll ever move to direct ordering, as long as you give them a reason to.

What works:

A discount on the first direct order. Pay for it out of the commission you're no longer handing to Foodhub.
Your website and app details on packaging, receipts and signs in the shop
Social media posts pointing people to the app and website
Telling regulars about it whenever you talk to them, at the counter or on the phone

A flyer in the bag costs pennies, and it lands in the hands of exactly the people you want. Make the offer specific. "10% off your first order on our app" with a QR code does more than a vague "order direct and save". People need to know what they get and where to tap.

Ask staff to mention it too. A regular who hears it from the person who takes their order on the phone every week is more likely to try it than one who just sees a sticker.

Once someone has downloaded your app and ordered through it once, they usually keep ordering that way. Most of the effort is up front, and you only have to do it once per customer.

Step 4: Set up loyalty

Flipdish includes a loyalty programme, which gives customers a reason to keep ordering direct once the first-order discount is used up. Whatever a marketplace does to keep customers coming back, it's keeping them coming back to the marketplace, not to you. Rewards earned in your own app only work with your restaurant.

Step 5: Cut back or close your Foodhub listing

When direct orders are growing, look at whether Foodhub is still worth having. A lot of restaurants keep the listing but treat it as secondary. It stays up for new customers who find you while browsing, and regulars get pushed towards ordering direct. Others close the Foodhub account altogether once direct volume is high enough.

Check your own orders before you decide. If the same names keep turning up on Foodhub tickets, those aren't new customers Foodhub is finding for you. They're regulars you haven't moved yet.

What does Flipdish cost compared to Foodhub?

Flipdish doesn't publish its prices. You get a quote based on how many locations you have and how you want things set up. Foodhub commission is usually 6-7% per order.

A rough example. If you take £10,000 a month through Foodhub, you pay £600-£700 a month in commission. A Flipdish platform fee for a single location would usually come in under that, and it stays the same whether you take 200 orders that month or 2,000.

That gap gets wider as you get busier. Commission goes up every time your sales do. A fixed fee doesn't. At £20,000 a month through Foodhub you'd be paying £1,200-£1,400 in commission. On a fixed fee you'd pay the same as you did at £10,000.

For current figures, see Flipdish online ordering pricing or ask the Flipdish team for a quote for your restaurant.

Common concerns about moving off Foodhub

"We'll lose orders during the transition."

Maybe, for a while. The aim is to move those customers, not lose them. Restaurants that handle the switch well usually get their order volume back within a few weeks and often go past it, because direct customers order more often.

You also don't need to switch Foodhub off on day one. Get the direct channel running and promoted first, and only scale back the listing once the direct numbers are there.

"Our customers use Foodhub, they won't change."

Customers use whatever's easiest. If your app and website are easy to order from, and there's a discount on the first order, most of them will switch.

The ones who stay on Foodhub no matter what tend to be price shoppers comparing every restaurant on the same screen. They weren't your most loyal customers anyway.

"We don't have the time to manage another channel."

It's less work than it sounds. Flipdish puts direct ordering through the same POS and kitchen setup as your other channels. There's no extra tablet on the counter and no separate system to log into. Once it's set up, there's very little extra to manage.

Why Flipdish for this move

Flipdish has helped hundreds of restaurants in the UK and Ireland set up direct ordering and rely less on marketplaces. That's what the platform was built for: giving restaurants the tech to own their customer relationships instead of renting access to customers through a marketplace.

If you're a takeaway or delivery-led restaurant that went to Foodhub because it was the cheaper marketplace, Flipdish takes that a step further. Direct orders carry no per-order commission at all, the customer data is yours, and the marketing tools use that data to bring people back.

If you want to start moving customers off Foodhub, talk to the Flipdish team about what the setup would look like for your restaurant.