Uber Eats Alternative: How to Take Online Orders Without Marketplace Commission
The problem with Uber Eats commission
Uber Eats takes between 15% and 30% of every order. If you're doing £10,000 a month through the app, up to £3,000 of that goes to Uber before you've paid for food, packaging or staff.
You don't need to stop taking online orders. You need to take more of them directly.
What Uber Eats actually costs
At 30%, a £25 order costs you £7.50 in commission. Do 1,000 of those a month and that's £7,500. Over a year, £90,000.
Most operators haven't sat down and worked this out. When they do, the number usually surprises them. And it leaves out the other cost: Uber Eats has your customers' details, and you don't.
Here's the same sum at 28% commission on a £25 average order:
| Monthly orders | Monthly commission | Annual commission |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | £3,500 | £42,000 |
| 1,000 | £7,000 | £84,000 |
| 2,000 | £14,000 | £168,000 |
Why restaurants look for an Uber Eats alternative
The commission is the obvious one. It comes off every order, including orders from regulars who'd happily have ordered from you directly.
Then there's the customer data. Uber Eats keeps it. You can't email those customers, can't send them an offer, and can't run a loyalty scheme for people who only know you as a tile in an app - a tile sitting next to three other places selling similar food at similar prices.
Uber can also change its fees, terms or ranking whenever it likes.
For a new restaurant with no customers yet, the exposure can be worth paying for. For an established place with a regular crowd, the maths rarely works.
The best Uber Eats alternatives for restaurants
1. Flipdish: direct online ordering with no commission
Flipdish gives you your own branded ordering channels - website, app and kiosk - for a flat monthly fee instead of a cut of each order. Orders go straight to your kitchen, and the customer is yours.
It includes:
- an ordering website on your own domain
- branded mobile apps for iOS and Android
- AI marketing tools that bring lapsed customers back
- Flipdish POS, so online and in-person orders land in the same queue
- AI phone ordering if a lot of your orders still come in by phone
Options 2 to 4 below are all part of Flipdish too. It covers every one of them in a single subscription, which is why it's first on this list for restaurants in the UK and Ireland.
2. Your own website with ordering built in
A website that takes orders costs far less per year than marketplace commission. Flipdish does the site and the ordering together, so you're not stitching a website builder onto a separate ordering system.
3. A branded mobile app
A branded app puts you on the customer's home screen. You can send push notifications, run a loyalty programme and make reordering quick. The data from every order belongs to you, not Uber.
4. AI phone ordering
Plenty of restaurants still get a good share of their delivery orders by phone. An AI phone agent answers every call, takes the order and sends it to the kitchen. No commission, and it costs a fraction of what extra staff would.
Should you leave Uber Eats completely?
Not straight away, for most restaurants.
Uber Eats does find you new customers - people who'd never have come across you otherwise. The real question is whether you should keep paying 30% on those customers once they already know your name.
What tends to work:
- Set up a direct ordering channel. Flipdish is the quickest to get live.
- Keep Uber Eats running alongside it.
- Give customers a reason to order direct: a small discount, loyalty points, or just a quicker checkout.
- Watch how the split between direct and Uber Eats changes.
- Cut back your marketplace listings once direct orders are steady.
Once direct orders are more than half your delivery volume, it gets hard to justify paying for several marketplace listings.
What moving half your orders to direct looks like
Take 1,000 orders a month at £25, all through Uber Eats at 28%. That's £25,000 gross and £18,000 after commission.
Now move 500 of them to direct. Those 500 bring in £12,500 with no commission. The 500 still on Uber Eats bring in £12,500 minus £3,500 commission, so £9,000. Total: £21,500.
That's £3,500 a month more, or £42,000 a year, from the same number of orders. Your Flipdish subscription comes out of that, but it's a flat fee, not a percentage.
Getting started with direct ordering
Flipdish can get a branded ordering website live and connected to your kitchen quickly. If you already have a POS, Flipdish integrates with it. If you're starting from scratch, you can get the whole platform - POS, online ordering, app and marketing - on one subscription.