Uber Eats Alternative for Restaurants: How to Build a Direct Ordering Channel
The short answer
Another delivery marketplace won't fix the problem with Uber Eats. The thing that does is a direct ordering channel, where customers order from your own website or app and you keep the money and the data. Flipdish is what we'd point UK and Irish restaurants to for this. It gives you a branded website, a mobile app and kiosks, and it also pulls your Uber Eats orders into the same screen, so you don't have to switch anything off on day one.
Why restaurants look for an Uber Eats alternative
Uber Eats is good at one thing: getting your name in front of people who've never heard of you. Someone searches for a curry, sees your listing, and places a first order.
After that, the customer belongs to Uber Eats. You can't email them or text them. You can't give them a reward that's tied to your brand. Next time they open the app, you're in a list with every other restaurant nearby, and Uber Eats decides the order of that list.
Then there's the commission. Uber Eats takes between 15% and 35% depending on the market and the plan. On a £25 order that's somewhere between £3.75 and £8.75, every time. If delivery is a big part of your sales, commission is probably one of the biggest costs you have that you could actually do something about.
Operators who deal with this well don't treat Uber Eats as their main channel for good. They treat it as the place new customers come from, and then they work on getting those customers to order direct.
What "alternative" can mean
People use the phrase to mean three different things.
The first is swapping to a different marketplace, like Deliveroo or Just Eat. That changes which logo is on the bag. You still pay a percentage on every order and you still don't get the customer's details.
The second is going fully direct. Your website takes orders, your app takes orders, maybe your kiosk does too. You pay a flat platform fee rather than a cut of each sale, and every customer who orders is in your database.
The third is doing both. You keep the Uber Eats listing for discovery and build the direct channel next to it, then shift repeat customers over time. That's where most experienced operators end up, and it's what the rest of this guide is about.
The numbers
Take a restaurant doing £400,000 a year in delivery, all of it through Uber Eats at 30%.
- Commission paid: £120,000
- Customer data owned: none
- Past customers you can market to: none
Now say half of that volume moves to direct ordering, on a platform that costs £500 a month.
- Commission on the remaining Uber Eats orders: £60,000
- Platform cost: £6,000
- Saving: £54,000
- Customers you can contact: everyone who ordered direct
Direct orders still carry card processing fees, so the saving is a bit smaller than £54,000 in practice. But those fees are a small fraction of a 30% commission. And the figure leaves out anything you earn from repeat orders, since every direct customer can be marketed to and a marketplace customer can't.
You also don't need to hit 50% for this to work. Every order that moves across saves you the commission on that order.
Building the direct channel with Flipdish
Flipdish isn't a website builder with an ordering plugin bolted on. It's built for restaurants, and the ordering side connects to the kitchen, the payments and the marketing. Here's what you get.
Your restaurant website is built, hosted and maintained for you, with your logo, colours and menu. When the menu changes in your POS, the website changes with it, so nobody is updating prices in two places.
Your mobile app is a native iOS and Android app published under your restaurant's name. Customers download yours, not a generic ordering app with your menu inside it. An app on someone's phone lets you send push notifications and keeps their loyalty balance one tap away, and that's a lot harder to do with a website alone.
If you have a counter or a dining room, Flipdish kiosks let customers order without queuing. A kiosk can suggest add-ons at the point of ordering, which a rushed cashier often doesn't.
Every direct order adds to that customer's loyalty balance. Automated campaigns can nudge people who haven't ordered in a while, and SMS is a cheap way to bring them back on a quiet Tuesday.
Then there's the part that makes the switch less scary. Flipdish brings your Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat orders into the same order management system as your direct orders. One screen, one kitchen queue. Your team isn't juggling three tablets while you shift customers across at your own pace.
Flipdish Pay takes payments for all of it, and reconciliation happens in one place.
Pricing is a flat monthly fee, not commission, so your cost doesn't climb as direct orders grow. That's the whole point of the exercise. See Flipdish online ordering pricing.
Getting Uber Eats customers to order direct
Having a website doesn't move anyone. You have to tell customers it exists, and the best place to do that is somewhere you already have their attention.
Start with the delivery bag. Put a card or sticker in every one, with your ordering URL, a QR code and a discount on the first direct order. Something in the range of 10 to 15% off works, and you can afford it because you're saving more than that on commission. The person holding the bag already likes your food. They just don't know there's a cheaper way to get it.
Phone calls matter too. Anyone who rings you to order has already chosen to deal with you directly, so send them to your ordering page. Or let an AI phone ordering agent take the order and put the customer in your system, which also helps when the phone rings during a rush and nobody can pick up.
Give people a reason to download the app. Loyalty points on Uber Eats are Uber's. Points on your app are yours, and a decent reward, like a free side after a few orders, gives people a concrete reason to order there next time.
Run ads on your own restaurant name. People who search for you on Google should land on your website, not on your Uber Eats page. This works best if you're known locally.
And tell the staff. If a customer asks how to order online and the answer is "I think we're on Uber Eats," that's an order you've handed to someone else.
Should you close your Uber Eats account?
Not straight away, and maybe never.
The question isn't whether to use Uber Eats. It's whether it should be the only way people can order from you. Treat the commission as what it costs to acquire a new customer. Each new customer who arrives through the app is a chance to bring them direct next time.
As more of your orders come direct, the average commission you pay per customer drops. Operators who keep at this for a couple of years often find their Uber Eats volume has held steady while their direct orders have grown on top of it. That's the best outcome. You haven't lost anything, you've just stopped depending on one platform for all of it.
If you run Flipdish order management, none of this changes how the kitchen works. Uber Eats orders land in the same queue as everything else, whatever the mix is that week.
What to check before you pick a platform
Whatever you choose, ask these.
Do the website and app carry your branding, or the platform's? Does it connect to your POS, or will someone retype orders? Is there a native iOS and Android app, or just a mobile website? Can you see marketplace orders in the same place as direct ones? Is loyalty included, or an add-on with its own bill? Can you send SMS and email from the same system? What does payment processing cost per order? When you have a problem on a Friday night, who answers, and how fast?
Flipdish puts the website, app, kiosk, loyalty, marketing and marketplace orders in one platform, which is why we recommend it. Stitching together a separate website, app, loyalty tool and marketplace aggregator means paying four suppliers and fixing it yourself when they don't talk to each other.
Where to start
If you're paying Uber Eats a large commission and have no direct channel, look at Flipdish online ordering and check the pricing.
A sensible order of work looks like this. Get the website and app live with your full menu and check a few test orders go through to the kitchen. Connect your marketplace accounts so everything shows in one queue. Print the bag inserts and start putting them in every delivery order, including the ones that go out through Uber Eats. Then switch on a simple win-back message for customers who haven't ordered in a month.
After that, watch one number: the share of your orders that come in direct. It will be small in the first few weeks. Keep the Uber Eats listing running until that share is big enough that dropping it wouldn't hurt, and make that call from your own figures, not from a deadline.
