How to Replace Foodhub With Direct Online Ordering

Why restaurants leave Foodhub

Foodhub charges a subscription instead of taking a cut of every order. For a busy takeaway that usually works out cheaper than Deliveroo or Uber Eats, and it's the main reason a lot of owners signed up in the first place.

The catch is that it's still a marketplace. A customer opens Foodhub, finds you, and also finds every other kebab shop, chipper and pizza place within a few miles. You get the order. Foodhub gets the customer. If that person orders from someone else next Friday, you won't know, and you've no way to get in touch and ask them back.

A direct ordering channel fixes that one thing, and it's the thing that matters most. When people order through your own website or app, you know who they are, what they order and how often they come back. You can send them an offer on a quiet Tuesday without paying anyone for the privilege. A list of a few thousand regulars is worth more every year you keep it. Marketplace orders don't add up to anything like that. You get the sale, and that's the end of it.

Replacing Foodhub doesn't mean switching it off on a Monday and hoping for the best. It means building your own channel, moving your existing customers onto it, and cutting back on Foodhub as direct orders take over. Flipdish gives you the pieces to do that.

What direct ordering actually is

Direct ordering just means the customer orders from you, through your website or your branded app, instead of through a third-party marketplace. There's no platform in the middle of the transaction. You set the menu, the prices and the offers, and the customer details land in your system, not someone else's.

For a restaurant coming off Foodhub, the direct channel becomes the main way people order online. Done properly, you end up with customers who order because they know you and like your food, not because you were near the top of a search results page that evening.

What you need to set it up

Three things. A website people can order from, an app for your regulars, and a POS that pulls it all into one place so the kitchen isn't juggling screens.

An ordering website

Someone searches your restaurant's name on Google, or taps a link in your Instagram bio. Where do they end up? If the answer is your Foodhub listing, you're sending your own traffic to a marketplace that will happily show them your competitors.

They need to land on a site where they can order from you straight away. Not a brochure site with a phone number and a PDF menu. An actual ordering site that takes the payment and sends the order to the kitchen.

Flipdish's restaurant websites are built for exactly this. They carry your branding, they're designed to get people from the menu to checkout without fuss, and orders go directly to your kitchen.

A branded app

The app is for your regulars. Anyone who bothers to install your app has already decided they like you, and those are the customers who order every week.

Push notifications are the big advantage. You can tell app users about a new dish, a weekend deal or the loyalty points they're sitting on, and it costs you nothing per message. On a marketplace, reaching that same customer means paying for promoted placement.

Flipdish's branded mobile apps are white-labelled on iOS and Android. Your name and logo are in the app store, not Flipdish's. Loyalty points, order history and personalised offers come built in, so a customer can reorder their usual in a couple of taps.

A POS that connects everything

If direct orders come in on one tablet and counter orders go through a separate till, the kitchen ends up running two queues. Something gets missed on a busy Saturday. Someone has to reconcile the two at the end of the night.

A restaurant POS that connects every channel means website and app orders show up in the same kitchen queue as walk-ins. One screen. Nobody retyping orders from one system into another.

Moving your customers off Foodhub

The worry is always the same: if I leave Foodhub, will my orders drop off a cliff? They might, if you leave first and promote your own channel later. So do it the other way round. Move the customers while you're still on Foodhub, and only scale back once the direct orders are coming in.

Promote your own channel inside every Foodhub order

Every Foodhub order that leaves your kitchen is a chance to tell that customer they can order from you directly. Put your website address and a QR code for the app on a card in every bag. Print it on stickers for the boxes. Add it to receipts. It's cheap, and it reaches exactly the people who already order from you.

People who've ordered before and liked the food will often switch if you make it easy and give them a reason.

Give them a reason

Habit is strong. Most people won't download a new app just because a card asked them to. A small launch offer helps a lot: money off the first app order, free delivery for the first month, or a pile of bonus loyalty points for signing up. Make the offer specific and only available through your own channel, so the card in the bag reads something like "£3 off your first order on our app" rather than "download our app".

Give it time

People don't change how they order overnight. Someone who orders from you once a month needs a few orders to get used to a new routine, so expect the switch to take two or three ordering cycles. For monthly customers, that's six to eight weeks. Weekly customers move faster.

Keep the cards in the bags for the whole period. Don't stop after the first fortnight because the numbers look slow.

Move your marketing money

Anything you currently spend on promotion inside Foodhub can go towards your own channel once it's up and running. A Facebook or Instagram ad that links to your ordering website builds your own customer list. Once people in your area know your name, those ads tend to cost less per order than marketplace promotion, and every order they bring in adds another customer you can contact again.

What you get out of it

The customer data

Every direct order adds to a customer record: name, contact details, what they ordered, how often, when. That data belongs to you. You can see who hasn't ordered in six weeks and send them something. You can see that half your Friday orders include garlic bread and price accordingly. A marketplace dashboard won't show you any of that at customer level.

Better margins

A direct order costs you your platform fee, which is usually a fixed monthly cost rather than a percentage of each transaction. The more direct orders you take, the less each one costs. Same menu, same food, more money left over per order once volume builds.

Customers who stick around

Someone who orders through your app has a relationship with your restaurant. Someone who finds you on a marketplace is scrolling a list. App customers come back more often, they're less likely to try somewhere new on a whim, and they actually respond when you send them an offer.

Control

You decide the menu, the prices, the promotions and what gets said to customers. You're not working around a marketplace's rules, and your visibility doesn't depend on how a ranking algorithm treats you this month.

Where it goes wrong

A worse ordering experience than Foodhub's

If your website is slow, awkward on a phone or falls over on a Friday night, nobody will switch, whatever discount you offer. Customers compare you to the marketplace app they already know. Use a platform built for restaurant ordering. A generic online shop with a food menu bolted on won't cut it.

Stopping the promotion too early

One week of launch promotion doesn't move most of your customers. The restaurants that make it work keep at it for months, with cards in the bags, posts on social, emails to customers they already have and a sign by the counter. It's dull and repetitive, and that's what gets people to switch.

Running orders through separate systems

When direct orders arrive on a different device from in-house orders, the kitchen pays for it. An integrated restaurant POS sends website, app and counter orders through one system that the kitchen works from.

Ignoring loyalty

A loyalty scheme tied to your app gives customers a reason to keep coming back to you instead of opening Foodhub again. Their points only exist in your app. Foodhub can't see them and can't match them. That works in your favour every time a customer is deciding where to order from.

How Flipdish fits in

Flipdish covers the full setup for a restaurant moving off Foodhub:

Restaurant website with your branding, built to get people through checkout, and connected to the kitchen
Branded app on iOS and Android, white-labelled, with loyalty and push notifications
POS system that brings every order channel into one place
AI marketing, which runs automated campaigns to your existing customers to bring in more direct orders
Loyalty, built into the app
AI phone agent, which takes phone orders automatically, so the phone becomes another direct channel with no platform fee

Flipdish works with restaurants across the UK and Ireland, whether they've only just started taking direct orders or are close to dropping marketplaces altogether. It was built for restaurants from the start, not adapted from a general e-commerce product.

The business case

Foodhub's subscription is cheaper than commission-based marketplaces. But the deal underneath is the same. You're renting access to customers on someone else's platform, and every order you take there builds Foodhub's customer list, not yours.

Direct ordering flips that round. Every order adds to your list and makes the next marketing message more useful. Over two or three years, the difference adds up: customers who reorder, lapsed customers you can win back with a targeted offer, regulars who keep coming because they have points to spend. The same number of orders through a marketplace doesn't leave you with any of that.

It isn't free. You're paying for the technology, and you have to keep promoting the direct channel for months. The payback comes from margin on each direct order and from having customers you can actually reach, and it gets better as the direct side grows.

Where to start

Set up the direct channel before you touch your Foodhub listing. Get the website and app live, start putting cards in every Foodhub bag, and watch the split between direct and marketplace orders. Cut back on Foodhub as the direct number climbs, not before.

To see how Flipdish handles each part:

The first step is a conversation with Flipdish about how your restaurant runs now and what you'd need to move off Foodhub.