Move Just Eat regulars to your own ordering site

Start with the customers who already know your name. Someone who searches for you, opens the app out of habit and orders the same thing every Friday is not a customer the platform found for you. That is the order to move first, and it is the easiest one to move, because those people already want your food specifically.

Leave the listings running while you do it. This is a plan for changing where your regulars order, not for walking away from Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats in one go.

Work out which orders are actually yours

Open your last statement and split the orders into two piles.

The platform's customers. First-time orders, people who found you while scrolling, anyone ordering once and never again. The commission on those is a finder's fee, and it is arguably fair. You would not have had the order.

Your customers. Repeat orders from the same addresses. Regulars. People who typed your name into the app. You are paying a share of every one of those for an introduction that happened months ago.

That second pile is your target. Count it, take your commission rate off it, and multiply by twelve. Our commission calculator will do it with your own figures, and it does not ask for an email first.

Your rate is on your own agreement, not in a news article. Collection is often charged differently from delivery, so check both.

Make your own ordering worth switching to

Regulars stay in the app because the app works. If your own page is a PDF menu and a phone number, they are right to stay. Before you ask anyone to move, your own ordering needs to match on the things that matter:

• The full menu with the choices people actually make: sizes, bases, toppings, spice levels, sides.
• Collection and delivery, with your own area and minimum order.
• Card payment that works properly on a phone.
• Something that tells the kitchen an order has landed without a person watching a screen. A printed docket does that better than a notification.

That is the list. If your own channel is worse than the app, no amount of asking will move anybody.

Then ask, where they already are

Nobody wakes up wanting to change how they order from you. You have to catch them at the moment they are already holding your food.

Your Google listing first. When someone searches your restaurant by name, your Google Business Profile is what they see, and it can carry an ordering link. If that link currently points at Just Eat, you are paying commission on people who were specifically looking for you. Point it at your own site. Ten minutes, free, and the highest-value thing on this page.

A card in every bag. Every delivery and every collection order. Handwritten beats printed. Say where to order and say why it helps you.

On the docket. If your receipt footer takes a line of text, put your web address there. It then goes out with every order forever without anyone remembering.

On the phone. To the regular who rings every week: "you can order that on our site next time if you like, it comes straight to us."

Give the first direct order a reason. A free side, a drink, money off. You are spending a slice of one order to stop paying a slice of every future one.

What actually happens

Some regulars move quickly. Some never move. People who want the platform's delivery drivers will stay with the platform, and that is a reason to keep the listing rather than a failure.

Expect a share of your repeats over months, not a clean switch in a fortnight. The orders that do move are the profitable ones, which is the whole point of starting with the regulars rather than announcing a dramatic exit.

Do not do these

Do not delete the listing to force people over. You lose the genuine platform customers along with the habit.

Do not price your own site higher than the app. Many operators raise marketplace prices to absorb the commission, which is understandable, but if your own channel then looks dearer you have taught your regulars that ordering direct is the worse deal.

Do not hide your phone number. A phone order costs you no commission either.

Keeping both, on purpose

Most restaurants end up running both channels and that is the sensible answer. Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats are genuinely good at putting you in front of someone who has never heard of you. They are expensive at serving the person who already has your menu memorised. Let each channel do the job it is good at.

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Tekeats gives you the ordering site and the apps, with card payments going into your own account, and takes no commission and no per-order fee on any plan. Book a demo and we will show you it running on your own menu.