The delivery apps or your own site: the pros and cons

Most takeaway owners feel two things about Deliveroo and Uber Eats at once. The apps bring orders that would never have come otherwise. And the apps take a cut of every one of those orders that stings when the statement lands. Both feelings are right. Here is the trade laid out, so you can decide where each order is better off, instead of being told to pick a side.

What the apps are good at

Give the apps their due, because they earn it. They put your food in front of people who have never heard of your shop. They run the riders, so you do not need a driver sitting on their hands through a quiet Tuesday. And when an order goes wrong, they deal with the refund. For a lot of kitchens that is worth real money even on low numbers.

Bharti Radix runs Bloomsyard, eight sites across London. On the Delivery Prophets podcast, episode 40, she put it plainly: "even five orders a day would be better than zero." She's right. Someone who finds you on an app might stick around: "maybe one time they'll be like, oh, let's just try someone else. And then they might be my customer forever." That is the apps doing the one job they are built for, which is getting you found by people who were never going to walk past your door.

What the apps cost

The cost is the commission. The apps take a slice of every order, and when they handle the delivery that can be up to around 30 percent. A big chain can negotiate it down. One shop on its own usually can't.

Bharti again, same episode: "we're not a big business that can negotiate the lower commission. And I've tried many times. So, you know, we're either paying like 30 or 35 percent. So then I've got to put the prices up." That last line is the quiet cost. To cover the commission most shops charge more on the app than at the counter, and a regular who orders both ways sees it: "how does that look against what we charge in our shops? So if the customer is a customer at both, it doesn't look great."

There's one more thing the apps keep, and that's the customer. Maurice Abboudi, who ran K10 in the City of London, said on the Delivery Prophets podcast, episode 15: "When I, when I first started my own delivery business, we had our database, our customer database. We could look at which customers ordered when, frequency, spend, all of that kind of stuff. We don't have access to that." When an order comes through an app, the name, the address and the order history sit with the app, not with you.

Your own site: the other side

On your own site the maths works differently. You set your own prices, so a dish costs what it costs at the counter. The customer's name and order land with you. And there's no commission on the order. What you pay instead is a flat monthly fee and the card cost, which on Rowbo is just Stripe's card fee of 1.5 percent plus 20p, paid into your own Stripe account in your business name.

There is a catch. The apps bring you people who were hungry and found you. Your own site doesn't do that on its own. You have to point people to it: on the bag, at the counter, on your Google listing, in the message you send a regular. The apps get you found. Your own site is where the people who already know your number can order without a platform taking a third of the bill.

The sum

Put real numbers on it. Say a shop takes £8,000 of app-delivered orders in a month. At 30 percent, that's £2,400 going to the apps that month. Now take one regular's £25 order on your own site. The card cost is about 58p, and Rowbo is a flat £50 a month however much you sell.

That gap isn't a saving we're promising you. It's the number to weigh when you decide which orders belong where. For the orders the apps bring you, the commission is the price of being found, and five a day beats none. For the regular who already knows your number, there's no reason that order needs to cost you a third of its value.

Run both on one screen

So you don't have to choose. Keep selling on Deliveroo and Uber Eats for the people they find you. Take your regulars' orders on your own site at your own prices. The apps find new people, your site looks after the ones you already have.

With Rowbo, your own orders arrive on one screen that rings, worked from one menu you change once. Your app orders join them on that same screen, which is what we're connecting now, founding shops first. See how ordering works, or give us your business name and we'll show you your own menu on it.