Uber Eats Alternative for Restaurants: How to Build a Direct Ordering Channel
The short answer
Build your own direct ordering channel. Customers order from your website or your branded app, you pay no per-order commission, and you keep their details. If you're a restaurant in the UK or Ireland, Flipdish is the platform to build it on.
That doesn't mean dropping Uber Eats. Most restaurants should stay on it to get found, then work on getting those customers to reorder direct.
What Uber Eats costs you
Uber Eats sends real volume. It also takes 20% to 35% commission on every order, depending on your contract tier. On £10,000 a month of Uber Eats sales, that's £2,000 to £3,500 that never reaches your kitchen.
The fee is the part everyone sees. The rest is easier to miss.
You don't get the customer. Uber Eats keeps the data, so you can't email someone who ordered last Friday, send a birthday offer or give a loyalty reward for a second visit. A person who orders from you five times through the app is still not your customer in any way you can use.
You're also one tile in a grid. People browse by distance, rating and price, with every other kitchen in the area sitting right next to you. Your brand barely registers. Uber Eats decides how your menu is shown and where you rank, so an algorithm change can cut your visibility with no warning.
Then there are promotions. Platform discounts are often paid for by the restaurant, which means the discount comes out of your margin on top of the commission.
What a direct ordering channel looks like
Customers can order from you through:
- your own website, with ordering built in
- an app under your restaurant's name
- QR codes at tables, on packaging or on receipts
- a phone number answered by an AI ordering agent
On a direct order you get the full order value minus a payment processing fee, usually around 2%. You also get the customer's details, so you can market to them.
What Flipdish gives you
Flipdish covers each of those channels on one system.
The restaurant website has ordering built in and is styled to your brand. There are no other restaurants listed beside yours and no commission per order.
The restaurant app goes on the App Store and Google Play under your own name. Push notifications reach people who chose to download it, so you're talking to your most engaged customers. Use them for a new menu item, a promotion or a loyalty reward.
Flipdish kiosks let walk-in customers order for themselves. Staff are free to do other things, and the automated upsell prompts push the basket size up.
Every direct order adds to your customer data, and the Flipdish marketing tools use it to run campaigns without anyone setting them up by hand: first-order discounts, win-backs for lapsed customers, birthday offers. If someone hasn't ordered in 30 days, a message goes out. If they're close to a loyalty reward, they get a reminder.
The AI Phone Agent answers calls, takes orders and processes payments. If you've been losing orders to a phone nobody can get to during the rush, this fixes it without another hire.
All of it feeds the Flipdish POS. The kitchen works from one order queue whether the order came from the app, the website or a phone call. No separate tablet, no retyping.
Use Uber Eats to get found, your own channels to keep customers
Someone who has never heard of your restaurant will probably find you on a marketplace first. That's worth keeping. The job is turning them into a direct customer after that first order, and a few small things do most of it:
- Put a note in the bag: "Order direct at yoursite.com and save."
- Offer a first-time discount on direct orders, either a flat amount or a percentage.
- Run loyalty points that only build up on direct orders.
- Print a QR code on every receipt and delivery bag that goes to your ordering page.
- Send missed calls to your ordering page, not to voicemail.
Over time your order mix moves away from the platform. Commission costs fall and you still pick up new customers from the marketplace.
The economics of going direct
Take a restaurant doing £15,000 a month in delivery orders, with £10,500 of that going through Uber Eats at 30%.
| Channel | Monthly orders | Commission | Net received |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uber Eats (current) | £10,500 | 30% = £3,150 | £7,350 |
| Direct (target) | £10,500 | ~2% payment processing | £10,290 |
| Difference | - | - | +£2,940/month |
Moving that £10,500 to direct saves about £2,940 a month, or £35,280 a year, on commission alone. You'd never move all of it, so treat that as the ceiling. Every 10% of the volume you shift is roughly £294 a month back in your pocket.
Your contract tier changes the numbers, so here's the same £10,500 at the ends of the range:
| Uber Eats commission | Commission paid | Direct cost at ~2% | Saved per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | £2,100 | £210 | £1,890 |
| 30% | £3,150 | £210 | £2,940 |
| 35% | £3,675 | £210 | £3,465 |
A smaller restaurant sees the same effect on a smaller scale. Say you take £4,000 a month through Uber Eats at 25%. Get 30% of those orders to come direct and you move £1,200. That's £300 in commission avoided, minus about £24 in processing fees, so £276 a month. Not life-changing on its own, but it's money that was going to someone else, and it grows as more customers reorder direct.
Those figures leave out the bigger gain. Customers you can contact are worth more than customers you can't, because you can bring them back.
Running Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo without three tablets
If you stay on the marketplaces, and for finding new customers most restaurants should, you don't need a tablet for each one.
Flipdish order management brings third-party delivery orders onto the same POS screen as your direct orders. Menu updates push automatically to the connected marketplace channels. One screen, every channel.
It matters most when you're busy. A counter with three tablets chirping at once is where orders get missed.
Who to move first
Don't try to convert everyone. Start with the customers most likely to say yes.
Regulars are the obvious group. If the same name keeps turning up on your marketplace orders, that person already likes your food and doesn't need convincing about the restaurant, only about the ordering route. A note in the bag and a decent first-order discount is often enough.
People who phone are the second group. They've already skipped the marketplace once. If your phone goes unanswered at peak times, the AI Phone Agent catches those orders, and the customer ends up in your system.
Walk-in and dine-in customers come third. They're already in your restaurant, so a QR code on the table or a kiosk by the door costs you nothing in commission and gets them used to ordering from you.
New customers from the marketplace come last. They don't know you yet. Get the first order, make it good, and let the bag insert do the rest.
How to set it up
Get the direct side live first. Set up your Flipdish website and app before you tell anyone about them. A half-finished ordering page loses the customers you've worked to redirect.
Make it as easy as Uber Eats. Customers expect real-time tracking, accurate wait times and easy reordering. If your page is clunkier than the app, they'll go back to the app.
Give people a reason to switch. A discount works, so do loyalty points, and so does a quicker estimated delivery time on direct orders.
Use every marketplace order as a chance to capture a direct customer: a note in the bag, a follow-up email if you have the address, a QR code on the packaging.
Check the split by channel every week. Pick a target and write it down. Going from 70% marketplace to 50% over six months is a reasonable one.
And don't cut your marketplace presence until direct volume is established. The platforms still reach people who haven't heard of you.
Questions to settle before you launch
A few decisions are easier to make before customers start ordering than after.
Who delivers direct orders, and how far? If you already run your own drivers or a set delivery radius, say so clearly on the ordering page. If you only offer collection at first, that's fine, as long as the page says it.
What's the incentive, and how long does it last? A first-order discount that never ends teaches people to wait for it. Pick something with an end date, then move to loyalty points for repeat orders.
Who answers when a direct customer has a problem? On a marketplace, the platform handles some of that. Direct, it's you. Decide who checks the inbox and how quickly they reply.
How will you tell customers? The bag insert and the QR code are the cheapest options. Your Instagram and your Google Business profile should point to the ordering page too.
Start building your direct channel
Flipdish gives UK and Irish restaurants one system for taking direct orders online, in an app, at a kiosk and by phone, without commission. The more of your repeat customers order that way, the less you depend on the marketplace and the easier it is to predict your revenue.