Ask a takeaway owner how many customers they have and you'll usually get a shrug and a guess. Ask them how many orders they did last month and they'll tell you to the unit, because it's on a dashboard.

That gap is the most expensive thing about the delivery apps, and it isn't the commission.

What you actually get from a marketplace order

You get the money, minus their cut. You get the order. You get, in most cases, a first name and a delivery address that exists only inside their system.

You do not get an email address you can use. You do not get a phone number you can call. You cannot tell that this is the eleventh time this person has ordered from you, or that they always want extra curry sauce, or that they stopped coming three months ago.

The relationship is with the app. You are the kitchen.

Why that matters more than the percentage

Commission is a cost you can at least see and calculate. Customer ownership is a cost you can't, because it shows up as things that don't happen.

You can't win anyone back. A regular who's gone quiet is invisible. On your own system that's a list you can look at — twelve people who used to order weekly and haven't in a month — and one email that says "we've missed you, here's £3 off". You cannot do that with data you don't have.

You can't reward loyalty. The person who orders every Friday is worth vastly more than a one-off, and on a marketplace they're indistinguishable. No loyalty scheme, no "your usual?", no birthday offer. Every order starts from zero.

You can't tell them anything. New menu. Christmas opening hours. You're closed Tuesday for a boiler repair. A shop with a customer list sends one message. A shop without one hopes people notice the sign.

You can't build anything you'd sell. If you ever came to sell the business, "we do 400 orders a month, mostly through Deliveroo" is a much weaker sentence than "we do 400 orders a month and we have 1,800 customers who order direct". One is a revenue stream that belongs to somebody else.

The bit that stings

The apps use your customer list to sell your customers to other restaurants.

That's not an accusation, it's just how a marketplace works and it's perfectly legal. Someone orders from you, and next week the app suggests the new place down the road, because it knows they like Thai food and it has a promotion running. Your customer, acquired with your food and your consistency, gets marketed to on behalf of your competitor.

You paid roughly 30% for that order — 28–35% on Deliveroo specifically, depending on your agreement. The list it generated is an asset — it's just not your asset.

What owning it actually looks like

None of this requires anything clever. On a direct ordering system you have, as a matter of course:

Every customer's email and phone, with the consent to use them
Full order history per customer — what, when, how often, how much
Who's lapsed, who's new, who's your top fifty
The ability to export the lot to a spreadsheet and take it with you

That last one matters and it's worth being blunt about it: the list is yours whether or not you keep using us. If you leave, you take it. A platform that holds your customer list hostage has a reason not to be very good, and we'd rather not build that in.

"But I don't want to be a marketer"

Fair. Most people who run a takeaway want to run a takeaway.

You don't have to do much. The three things that pay for themselves take about twenty minutes to set up once, and then run on their own:

An order confirmation that isn't just an order confirmation. It's the most-opened email you'll ever send. A line at the bottom saying "order direct next time and it's the same price without the app's service fee" costs nothing.
One "we've missed you" message, sent automatically to anyone who hasn't ordered in eight weeks. This is the single highest-returning thing most food businesses can do, and almost nobody does it.
A reorder link. Repeat customers order the same thing. One tap to reorder last Friday's is worth more than any discount code.

That's it. That's the whole marketing strategy for a takeaway with a customer list. The apps do a much more elaborate version of this, on your behalf, to sell your customers other people's food.

The honest counterweight

Owning the relationship only helps if the relationship exists.

If you're a new shop, or you've just moved, or you're in a spot with no passing trade, the marketplace's ability to find you customers is genuinely worth the fee. You can't build a list out of people who don't know you exist. We've argued the case for keeping the apps in more detail, and we mean it.

But once someone has ordered from you three or four times, they're not being discovered any more. They're being intermediated. And the cost of that intermediation is about £3.70 on a £25 delivery — nearer £5.30 if they collect — forever, plus a customer record you'll never see.

Where to start

Don't try to move everyone. Start with the people who already like you:

Put a card in every bag — including the marketplace ones — with your ordering address and a first-order discount.
Put a QR code on the counter for collection customers.
When someone rings up, tell them the website is cheaper for them too. It is: there's no service fee.

You'll move the regulars first, which is exactly the right order to do it in, because they're the ones the commission is costing you most.

Porkenpence Ltd builds direct ordering systems for restaurants and takeaways. Have a look at what it costs, or try the demo — the whole thing, all four roles, no signup.