How to launch your own food delivery or ordering app in the UK

To launch your own food delivery or ordering app in the UK, you set up a branded customer app and website, a vendor app for the kitchen or shop and, if you deliver yourself, a rider app and an admin panel to run it all. You then invite your regular customers to order from you directly, while your listings on the big delivery apps carry on beside it. With a ready-built platform such as DOBUY, that is a configuration job under your name and domain rather than a software build.

This guide is for restaurants, takeaways, bakeries, convenience stores and small food brands that already sell through the large aggregator apps and would like a channel they own. It covers what you are actually setting up, the decisions to make first and how to run both channels together.

Why do UK restaurants and takeaways want their own app?

The big delivery apps bring orders, but the relationship sits with the app. The customer belongs to the platform, commission comes off every order and your menu appears in a list next to every competitor nearby. A platform of your own changes what happens after the first order: customers who like you can order from your app or website, you decide the delivery zones and charges, and offers and push notifications come from your name.

Most owners do not want to lose the reach of the aggregators, and they do not have to. The sensible aim is a second channel that gradually takes the regulars, the families who order every Friday and the office that orders lunch each week, while the big apps keep finding new customers.

What does your own delivery app actually include?

The customer’s phone is the visible part: a menu, a basket and a checkout. Behind it, every order has to reach a kitchen, be prepared, be handed to someone who delivers it, be paid for and be accounted for. A complete setup has four sides:

• Customers order from the app or the website, pay online by card or choose cash on delivery, and follow the order to the door.
• Branches or kitchens get each order with an alert, accept it, mark it prepared and keep menu, prices and stock up to date in the vendor app or portal.
• Riders see new deliveries, follow the route, confirm the drop-off with a photo or signature and track the cash they collect.
• Your team watches every order and rider from the admin panel, steps in when something goes wrong and settles cash, commission and payouts.

The platform has seven connected apps: customer, vendor and rider apps on phones, and a buyer website, vendor portal, rider portal and admin panel on the web. Take only the ones you need. A single takeaway might launch with the customer app, the website and the admin panel, then add the rider app once it brings delivery in-house.

Who will deliver your orders?

This choice shapes the rest of the setup, so make it first. There are three common models:

1. Your own drivers. Orders are dispatched to an available rider and tracked by GPS from the kitchen to the door. You need the rider app and usually the rider portal for whoever manages the team.
2. Each branch’s own drivers. If every branch already has people who deliver, the branch manages its drivers from the vendor portal and you need no central fleet.
3. A mix. A central team covers the busy postcodes, while outlying branches use their own drivers.

Whichever you pick, your team can assign or re-assign a delivery by hand when something changes. The platform is technology: it does not send riders for you, so the people on the road are yours.

How should you set delivery zones and charges?

Each branch needs a clear answer to two questions: where does it deliver and what does the customer pay? Mark the area each branch covers, attach a delivery charge to each zone and set both up on the platform. Sit down with the people who know your streets before you do it. Zones drawn too wide mean orders that cost more to deliver than they earn, and zones drawn too tight mean turning away customers who live round the corner. You can adjust both after launch as you learn where orders really come from, so the first version does not need to be perfect.

If you also supply local cafés or shops, orders are matched to a motorbike, car, van or truck by weight, so a heavy trade order is not squeezed onto a scooter.

How do customers pay, and what happens to the cash?

Customers pay by card online or in cash on delivery, and both options can be offered at checkout. Online payment is simple to account for. Cash is where delivery businesses lose track of money: a driver finishes the evening with a pocket of notes and a list that may or may not match.

On the platform every cash order is recorded against the rider who delivered it. The rider sees a daily cash summary in the app, your fleet team reconciles it in the rider portal, and the admin panel keeps a ledger of cash alongside commissions and payouts. If you keep your books in Tadbir ERP, orders, stock and cash collections can sync with it, and what syncs is agreed in discovery.

How do you keep aggregator listings and still build direct orders?

Treat the two channels as having different jobs. The aggregators find new customers. Your own app turns the ones who already like you into regulars who order direct. A few habits help:

• Tell people at the point of sale. A card in the bag, a line on the menu and a word from the driver all send customers to your app.
• Use promotions and push notifications from your own app, to customers who have ordered from you, instead of competing for position in someone else’s list.
• Keep the menu and prices in sync across channels so nobody feels penalised for ordering direct.
• Let the website carry your domain, for example order.yourbrand.co.uk, so it is easy to find and share.

How does a typical launch run?

A typical DOBUY launch has four steps. It describes the usual path rather than a fixed schedule, since the pace depends mostly on how quickly menus, zones and accounts are ready.

1. Discovery. We map how you work today: branches, who delivers, how customers pay and which aggregators you use. Together we pick the apps you need.
2. Branding. Your logo, colours, app name and domain are applied across every app and the website.
3. Setup. We configure branches as vendors, enter menus and prices, draw delivery zones, set charges and payment options and create accounts for staff and drivers. Your team tests real orders end to end.
4. Go-live. The apps are published under your own App Store and Google Play accounts and we support your team through the first live orders.

What should you prepare before the first call?

You will get more from a demo if you have rough answers to a few questions:

• How many branches will take orders through the app, and in which towns or boroughs?
• Who delivers today, and who should deliver in a year?
• What share of your delivery orders is paid in cash?
• Do you want customers to order from a website as well as an app?
• Do you have Apple and Google developer accounts in your company’s name? If not, open them early.
• Which accounting or ERP system do you use?

Also gather your logo files, brand colours, app name, the menu with prices and a short description for each store listing. Responsibilities that belong to your business, such as allergen information on the menu, stay with you. The platform gives you the place to publish it, not the answers.

Not sure which setup fits? The food delivery solution page shows the apps and screens, and the London page covers how we work with businesses there. For white-label details such as your own domain and store accounts, see the white label page.