Takeaways and grills.
Your orders, your kitchen, your customers.

Most of what we build is for food. A takeaway system lives or dies on three things: whether the menu can be expressed properly, whether the ticket reaches the kitchen on its own, and whether the customer can finish on a phone in under a minute.

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What a takeaway system has to get right

These are the things that come up on every single build, in the order they cause trouble.

The menu, exactly as it is printed

We work from your real printed or photographed menu, not from aggregator prices, because the prices on the apps are usually inflated to cover commission and copying them across means your own site is more expensive than your counter. Unpriced specials stay unpriced. Option groups are editable afterwards without ringing us.

Accept or reject, then print

Nothing prints automatically. The kitchen accepts or rejects first, because a printer that prints on payment will print an order the kitchen cannot make. After accept, the ticket prints line by line with prices, extras, the ready-for time, the shop name and the order number.

A chime that does not give up

New orders ring, loudly, and keep ringing until somebody accepts or rejects. Every takeaway we have built has ended up wanting this, and the ones that started with a polite single beep asked for it within a fortnight.

The ready time is the customer’s choice, not the kitchen’s

If somebody orders at five for seven o’clock, the ticket appears when it needs cooking and the promise on the website is the one the kitchen is working to.

Sold out in one tap

An 86 toggle per item, showing true values, reachable from the kitchen screen. The alternative is a phone call to every customer who ordered the thing you ran out of.

A Z-report that prints itself

Ten minutes after close, so the day is reconciled without anybody remembering to do it.

What the owner asks for after launch, every time

We now build these in from the start, because they were requested on every previous build.

An owner console separate from the staff screens

Weekly orders week by week, control of the staff passcode, and their own password behind a re-authentication step. Staff see the kitchen; the owner sees the business.

Scheduled orders

The Friday family order placed at lunchtime, the office delivery for one o’clock. On the one live platform where we can measure it, scheduled orders are a meaningful share of the total.

Collection and dine-in before delivery

Collection is the highest-margin order there is. We add delivery when the shop actually delivers, postcode-gated with a free-over threshold, rather than assuming it.

Allergen notes per item

Held with the menu rather than in a PDF nobody updates. UK rules require the information to be available before the order is placed.

What we would tell you before you spend anything

Keep the apps

They are good at reaching somebody who has never heard of you. They are an expensive way to serve the regulars who already have your number.

The build is the easy half

Inserts in every app bag, the URL on the signage and the receipts, and an offer that exists only on your own site. Without that, a perfect ordering site is a quiet one.

Work out what the apps cost you first

Before any conversation about building anything, put your own orders and your own contract rate into the calculator. It usually settles the question faster than we can.

The commission calculator →

The numbers and the rules that actually bind a takeaway

Every figure here is published by the body named beside it and was checked on the date below, because the alternative - a number from a vendor deck - is how owners end up budgeting for the wrong thing.

Commission is published by one aggregator only. Uber Eats lists 30% excluding VAT when its riders deliver, 13% for self-delivery and pickup, and a £650 activation fee excluding VAT. Just Eat and Deliveroo publish no UK rate at all: theirs are negotiated per restaurant, so the only figure that applies to you is on your own contract.
Collection is the cheapest order you can take. On the one published rate card the gap between delivery and pickup is 30% against 13%, before VAT. On your own site it is nothing per order, which is the whole commercial case for an ordering platform.
Most hot takeaway food is not PPDS. Prepacked for direct sale labelling has applied since 1 October 2021, and it turns on when the packaging happens. Food packed after the customer orders - which is most of a takeaway menu - falls outside it. The wrapped items sitting on your counter do not.
Allergen information is required either way. Fourteen allergens are regulated, and a customer has to be able to get that information before they order. That is why it belongs per item in the menu data rather than in a PDF uploaded once.
Online card payments need authentication. The FCA moved the UK e-commerce Strong Customer Authentication deadline to 14 March 2022 and expected full compliance from then. In practice that is the bank-app step at checkout, and a checkout that handles the return from that app badly loses the order at the last tap.

Sources, checked 26 October 2026

Uber Eats, Pricing for UK merchants: 30% for Uber delivery, 13% for self-delivery and pickup, excluding VAT
Food Standards Agency, Labelling guidance for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food products
Food Standards Agency, Allergen guidance for food businesses: providing allergen information and handling allergens
Financial Conduct Authority, Deadline extension for Strong Customer Authentication: e-commerce deadline moved to 14 March 2022

Questions

Before you ask.

Can we keep Just Eat and Deliveroo?

Yes, and most of our clients do. The sensible shape is a listing for discovery and your own site for the regulars. Where the platforms allow it, their orders can be pulled into the same kitchen queue so staff work from one screen.

How do orders reach the kitchen?

A cloud-connected thermal printer over the network, an order screen, or both. Nothing prints until the kitchen accepts, and the on-screen queue is the backup when the paper runs out.

Can it handle our menu? It is complicated.

Sizes, bases, halves, swaps, spice levels, meal deals where the drink changes the price. If a system cannot hold your menu, your staff fix orders by phone, which is why we model the menu before anything else gets designed.

What about delivery areas and minimums?

Flat rates, postcode zones, road-distance bands, minimum order by area, free delivery over a threshold, or collection only. Whatever you already do at the counter.

Do you build the till and the kiosk as well?

Yes, and that is the main reason to have them from one place: online, counter and kiosk orders sharing one menu, one stock count and one end-of-day report.

Ready to get started?

Tell us what you need. We will scope it, price it and build it.

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Takeaways and grills.Your orders, your kitchen, your customers.