How to stop paying app commission on your regulars

Give your regulars your own ordering website, then tell them about it every time they are holding your food. That is how you stop paying app commission on repeat orders, and your marketplace listing can stay for new customers.

Deleting the listing does not do it, and it is not the goal, because the two kinds of order are not worth the same to you. A stranger who finds you while scrolling an app is a customer the app found. A regular who searches your name, opens the app out of habit, and orders the same thing they ordered last Friday is a customer you already have. You are paying the app a share of that second order for nothing.

Work out what the regulars are costing you

Before changing anything, get the number. You need three figures, all from your own paperwork:

• The orders a month you think would come direct instead. Regulars, not first-timers.
• Your average order value.
• Your commission rate, from your own agreement. It is often different from the figure quoted in news articles, and collection orders are frequently charged differently from delivery.

Multiply the first two, take your rate off the result, and that is the monthly figure. Multiply by twelve for the one that tends to change people's minds. Our commission calculator does the arithmetic and shows its working, and it does not ask for an email address first.

One honest adjustment before you treat that number as a saving. Marketplace commission usually has card processing baked into it. If you take payments directly, your own card provider bills you at the rates you agreed with them, and your ordering system has its own charges too. Subtract both.

Give people somewhere to order

The reason regulars keep using the app is that it is the only thing that works. If your own ordering page is a PDF menu and a phone number, the app wins on convenience every time, and it deserves to.

What it has to match is short:

• Your whole menu, with the choices people actually make. Sizes, bases, toppings, spice levels, sides.
• Collection and delivery, with your own delivery area and minimum order.
• Card payment that works on a phone, taken by your own payment provider so the money arrives in your account rather than being held and paid out later.
• Something that tells the kitchen an order has arrived without anyone watching a screen. A printed docket does this better than a notification.

That is the whole list. Everything else is decoration.

Then tell people it exists, at the moment they are thinking about you

This is the part most restaurants skip, and it is the part that decides whether any of this works. Nobody wakes up wanting to change how they order from you. You have to catch them when they are already holding your food.

Things that work, roughly in order of how well they work:

Put it in the bag. A card in every delivery and every collection order. Handwritten works better than printed. Say where to order and why it is better for you. People do read this.

Put it on the receipt. If your docket footer can carry a line of text, it can carry your web address. This costs nothing and it goes out with every single order.

Answer the phone with it. "You can order that on our website next time if you like, it comes straight to us." Said once, politely, to a regular who calls every week.

Fix your Google listing. When someone searches your name, your Google Business Profile is what they see. The ordering link on it should point at your site. This is the single highest-value ten minutes in this guide, and most restaurants have never touched it.

Ask on social. Not once. Every few weeks, casually, with a photo of the food.

Make the offer worth taking. If you want to accelerate it, give people a reason to order direct: a free side, a discount on their first direct order, a better deal than the app shows. You are giving away a slice of one order to stop handing the app a slice of every future order.

What to expect

Not all of them will move. Some people genuinely prefer the app, some want the app's delivery drivers, and some will not change a habit for anybody. A realistic first target is a share of your regulars, not all your orders, and that share grows slowly for months.

The orders that do move are the profitable ones. That is the point of doing it in this order: you are not trying to replace the marketplace, you are trying to stop renting back the customers you already earned.

Do you keep the listing?

Most restaurants do, and it is the sensible answer rather than a contradiction. The apps are genuinely good at putting you in front of people who have never heard of you. They are expensive at serving the person who already has your menu memorised. Let the app do the thing it is good at, and take the repeat business back.

A note on negotiating

You can ask for a lower rate, and restaurants with volume sometimes get one. It is worth a phone call. But a slightly lower rate is still the app's rate on every order, your regulars included, and it does not change who owns the customer or who holds their details. Treat it as a way to reduce the bill while you build the direct channel, not as the answer.

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Tekeats gives you the ordering website and apps, and your own payment account so card payments land with you rather than passing through us. We charge a monthly fee per site plus 2.5% of the items on completed card orders, added to your monthly invoice. Delivery fees, charges and tips are not counted, and cash orders cost nothing extra. If you want to see what that looks like with your own menu on the screen, book a demo.