Delivery platforms brought you customers you would not otherwise have reached. They also take a commission on every order that, for most independent venues, is larger than the entire profit margin on the food.
This is not an argument for deleting your aggregator account. It is an argument for understanding what each order actually earns you, and for making sure the customers who already know you have a direct way to order.
What the commission actually costs
Aggregator commission for delivery typically sits somewhere in the region of a quarter to a third of the order value, with lower rates for pickup-only. Payment processing sits on top.
Run it against a realistic week. Say you take 40 delivery orders a week at an average of £18, at 30% commission:
| Per order | Per week | Per year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Order value | £18.00 | £720 | £37,440 |
| Commission at 30% | £5.40 | £216 | £11,232 |
| You receive | £12.60 | £504 | £26,208 |
Eleven thousand pounds a year. Put that next to your rent. Now note that a meaningful share of those orders come from people who already know your venue, already like your food, and are only using the app because it is the ordering method you gave them.
The distinction that matters: commission on a genuinely new customer is a marketing cost, and often a fair one. Commission on your existing regular ordering their usual is pure leakage. The goal is not to leave the platforms — it is to stop paying discovery fees on customers you already discovered.
Direct ordering, honestly assessed
Running orders yourself is not free. Be clear-eyed about the trade:
| Aggregator | Direct | |
|---|---|---|
| Commission | Roughly 14–30% | None |
| Payment fees | Included in commission | Card fees, or cash at pickup |
| New customer discovery | Real — people browse the app | None. You must drive the traffic. |
| Delivery drivers | Theirs | Yours, or pickup only |
| Customer data | Theirs | Yours |
| Support when an order goes wrong | Theirs, sometimes at your cost | Yours |
The honest summary: aggregators are a customer-acquisition channel that you rent at a very high rate. Direct ordering is a retention channel that you own. Most venues need both, weighted differently over time.
Start with pickup, not delivery
If you are setting up direct ordering for the first time, click-and-collect is where to begin. No drivers, no delivery zones, no cold food, no arguments about a missing side. The customer orders, pays or reserves, and walks in to collect.
It also solves a real operational problem: the 8am queue. Regulars who order ahead skip the line, which raises throughput at exactly the time you are capacity-constrained.
Delivery can come later, either with your own driver on the busiest evenings or not at all. Plenty of cafés are more profitable without it.
The hard part: getting people to use it
This is where most direct-ordering setups die. You build it, nobody knows, three orders trickle in, you conclude it does not work. The channel is fine — the promotion was missing.
- Put it on the QR menu. Customers scanning your QR menu at the table are one tap from ordering. This is your highest-converting placement by a wide margin.
- Print it on receipts and bags. Every takeaway order is an advert for the next one. "Order ahead next time — skip the queue" plus a QR code.
- Tell your loyalty list. If you have collected customer contacts through a digital stamp card, that list is exactly the audience for this. One message: your regulars can now order ahead.
- Have staff mention it. One sentence at the till while they wait for the card machine. Same principle as loyalty: if it needs explaining, it will not get said.
- Make direct slightly better. Not a discount war — you will lose. But an extra stamp on direct orders, or a pickup slot that is genuinely faster, is enough to shift habit.
What you need to run it
- A menu customers can order from. Ideally the same one already on your tables.
- Order alerts staff will actually notice. A sound, a printed ticket, or a screen someone is already looking at. A quiet notification on a tablet in the back office is how orders get missed.
- A clear pickup time. Under-promise. A customer who arrives to find it ready early is delighted; one who waits eight minutes is not coming back.
- A way to turn it off. Kitchen slammed at Saturday lunch? Pause ordering. Being unable to stop the flow is worse than not having it.
- Payment that fits you. Card on collection is the lowest-friction start. Online payment removes no-shows but adds fees and setup.
A realistic target
Do not expect to replace aggregator volume in a month. A sensible goal for the first quarter is shifting your regulars — the people who order weekly — to the direct channel, and leaving the platforms to do what they are genuinely good at, which is reaching people who have never heard of you.
Even a modest shift changes the maths. Moving a third of that example volume direct is roughly £3,700 a year back in the business, on orders you were already receiving.
Coffeeloc includes commission-free pickup and delivery ordering built into the same QR menu customers already scan at the table.