How to Replace Foodhub With Direct Online Ordering
Can you replace Foodhub with your own online ordering?
Yes. Takeaways and restaurants across the UK and Ireland have dropped Foodhub, and often other marketplaces along with it, in favour of their own online ordering with no commission on each order. It doesn't happen in a weekend. You have to set things up properly and then put real effort into moving customers over. But every order that comes through your own channel instead of a marketplace leaves more money with you.
Why restaurants leave Foodhub
Foodhub takes a commission on orders. Depending on your deal, there may be a subscription fee on top of that. On a quiet Tuesday it barely registers. On a takeaway doing a few hundred orders a week it becomes one of the bigger costs in the business, and it grows every time you get busier.
Cost is only half of it. The other half is that you're running part of your business inside someone else's.
- Foodhub owns the customer relationship. As far as the customer is concerned, they ordered "on Foodhub".
- You get limited access to customer data, so you can't easily get in touch with someone who used to order every Friday and stopped.
- Your menu sits inside Foodhub's branding, not yours.
- Foodhub can change its fees, its ranking, or its terms whenever it wants, and you find out when it happens.
If most of your online orders come through one platform, a decision made at that platform lands straight on your margins. You don't get a vote.
How direct ordering works
Direct ordering means customers order through something you own. That's usually your website, your own branded app, or a self-service kiosk if you have counter or dine-in trade.
You pay a flat monthly fee to a platform like Flipdish instead of handing over a cut of each order. The order goes to your kitchen. The customer's details stay with you.
To get started you need a branded ordering website or app, a link to your POS so orders land in the kitchen straight away, and a way of telling existing and new customers that it exists. That last part is the one people tend to underestimate.
Step 1: Set up your direct ordering channel
Start with a restaurant website that has ordering built in. Not a marketplace listing with your logo on it. A site that's yours, with your branding, your menu, your prices and your customers.
Flipdish builds these for restaurants. If you use Flipdish's POS, orders go straight into it. If you're on a different system, the ordering can run alongside it in some setups, so check how it works with your particular till before you commit.
Prices are your call. If you've been charging more on Foodhub to cover the commission, your direct menu can go back to your normal prices. That alone gives customers a reason to switch, and it's an easy thing to put on a flyer.
Before you go live, check the boring stuff. Delivery radius. Minimum order value. Opening hours, including bank holidays. Modifiers like extra cheese, spice level, no onions. If someone's first direct order goes wrong because a modifier was missing, they'll go straight back to the app they trust. If you already use your own drivers for Foodhub orders, nothing changes on the delivery side.
Then there's the app. A branded mobile app gets customers ordering more often, because reordering takes seconds. They open it, tap their usual, pay. No searching for your website, no scrolling past competitors. Push notifications let you send offers straight to people who have it installed. Flipdish publishes the app under your restaurant's name, so customers download your app from the App Store or Google Play, not something with Flipdish on the icon.
You don't need the app on day one. The website gets you started. The app earns its keep once you have a base of regulars who order every week.
Step 2: Move your customers across
This is the hard bit. People order on Foodhub because it's already on their phone and it works. They won't move just because you've launched a website. They need a reason, and they need to be told where to go, more than once.
Start at the counter. When customers collect, hand them a card or a sticker with your direct ordering link or a QR code for the app. Put an offer on it, something like 10% off their next direct order. A card with no offer mostly ends up in the bin.
Use your packaging. Print the link on bags, boxes and napkins. Customers see it while they're eating your food, which is about the best moment you'll get to suggest they order from you again.
Post about it on social media, and give people an actual reason. Some customers already know marketplaces take a big cut and will happily switch if you ask them straight: order direct, and more of what you pay goes to the place that cooked it.
Fix your Google Business Profile. Add your direct ordering link, and check what ordering links currently show up on your listing. Someone searching your restaurant's name should be able to order from you without being sent to Foodhub first.
Tie loyalty to direct orders only. Points, stamps, a free portion of chips on the tenth order, whatever suits you. If rewards only come through your own channel, regulars have a reason to move that doesn't depend on a one-off discount.
None of this works if you do it for one week and stop. The leaflet in the bag needs to be in every bag.
Step 3: Use AI marketing to bring customers back
Once you have a direct channel and some customer data, AI marketing tools can do the work of chasing people who haven't ordered in a while.
Flipdish AI Marketing picks out customers who look likely to lapse and sends them an offer at a time they're likely to respond to. It doesn't blast the same discount to everyone, so you're not giving money off to the person who was going to order on Friday anyway. The discount budget goes on the customers worth winning back.
Foodhub can't do this for you. You don't have the data for customers who ordered through Foodhub, so you have no way of reaching them once they drift off.
What happens to your Foodhub orders during the transition?
You don't have to leave Foodhub straight away. Plenty of restaurants run direct ordering and marketplace listings side by side for a while.
The aim is to shift order volume from Foodhub to your own channel bit by bit. Keep an eye on the split each week. When direct orders make up a good share and your regulars have moved, you can cut back on Foodhub or come off it completely. Check your Foodhub agreement for notice periods before you set a date.
Some restaurants keep Foodhub running on reduced hours. New customers still find them there, and the card in the bag moves those customers to direct ordering over time. Treated that way, the marketplace stops being where your regulars live and becomes a place to pick up new ones.
The economics: why direct ordering pays off
The exact numbers depend on your restaurant, so do the sum with your own figures.
Say you take 300 orders a week through Foodhub at an average of £20. That's £6,000 a week going through the platform. Every single percentage point of commission on that is £60 a week, or about £3,100 a year. Take the commission rate off your Foodhub invoice and multiply. With a double-digit rate, the yearly figure gets large quickly.
On a direct channel you pay a flat monthly fee. It doesn't go up when you have a busy month, so the more orders you move across, the better the margin on each one.
There's also how often people come back. Customers who order direct tend to order more often. Partly that's loyalty schemes working better when you hold the data, and partly it's that reordering through your own app is faster than anything else on their phone.
Phone orders
If your takeaway takes a lot of orders by phone, Flipdish's AI Phone Agent can answer those calls for you. It picks up, takes the order and sends it to the kitchen, without anyone on your team having to stop what they're doing.
At 7pm on a Saturday, when the phone won't stop ringing and the person on the till is also bagging orders, calls get missed. Each missed call is an order that probably went to Foodhub or a competitor. The AI Phone Agent answers all of them.
Choosing the right direct ordering platform
Whatever you replace Foodhub with needs to cover these:
| Requirement | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Your branding | Customers should see your restaurant, not the platform |
| No per-order commission | Swapping one commission for another doesn't fix much |
| POS integration | Orders should reach the kitchen the same way whichever channel they came from |
| You own the customer data | Without it you can't run marketing or loyalty |
| A mobile app | App customers order more often and cost less to bring back |
| Marketing tools | Customers won't move across on their own |
Flipdish covers all of them. Restaurants across the UK and Ireland use it to cut back on marketplaces or drop them altogether.
Where to start
Most restaurants can leave Foodhub. Get the website live first and connect it to your POS. Then put the link everywhere a customer touches: the counter, the bag, Google, your social accounts. Add the app and AI marketing once you have regulars ordering direct, and reduce your Foodhub hours as the numbers shift.
Flipdish does all of this from one platform. If you want to see what the switch would look like for your restaurant, Flipdish's online ordering team can talk you through it.