Every order that lands through Uber Eats, DoorDash or Menulog costs you somewhere between 15% and 35% before you’ve paid for the food, the box, or the driver. That’s not a fee — it’s a second rent you’re paying on every single sale. The good news: most of that margin is recoverable, and you don’t need to quit the marketplaces to get it back. You need a direct channel good enough that customers choose it on their own.
Why customers default to the marketplace app
It’s rarely loyalty to Uber Eats. It’s habit and friction. The app is already on their phone, their card is already saved, and your own ordering page — if it exists at all — is usually slower, uglier, or buried three taps deep on your website. Fix the friction and a meaningful slice of that volume moves on its own.
The 90-day migration, step by step
Weeks 1–2: Make direct ordering the fastest option, not just the cheapest one
A QR code on every table, every receipt, and every bag that lands customers straight into ordering — not your homepage, not an app-store download. If it takes more than two taps to see the menu, you’ve already lost the comparison against the marketplace app sitting on their home screen.
Weeks 3–4: Price the difference where customers can see it
You don’t need to publicly bash the marketplaces. A small, visible saving on direct orders — a free side, a modest discount, a loyalty stamp that marketplace orders don’t earn — gives price-sensitive customers a concrete reason to switch, not just a moral one.
Weeks 5–8: Turn every marketplace customer into a direct one
Marketplace orders come with an insert or a receipt line pointing to your own ordering page, ideally with a first-direct-order incentive. You’re not fighting to keep the marketplace customer away — you’re fighting to get their second order direct.
Weeks 9–12: Win back the ones who already switched
Once someone orders direct, you finally have their name and number — something the marketplace never gave you. A simple automated win-back message after 3–4 weeks of silence brings a meaningful share of lapsed direct customers back before they drift to whichever app is running a promo that week.
What this actually takes to run
None of this requires ripping out the marketplace apps — most venues keep them for pure discovery traffic. What it requires is a direct ordering channel that’s actually fast, a way to capture the customer’s details the moment they order direct, and one automated nudge that brings them back without anyone on your team lifting a finger. That’s the whole system — the discipline is doing all three at once, not picking one.
The number that matters most isn’t the percentage you save on any single order. It’s how many of your customers you actually own by the end of it — because a customer you can message directly is worth more than one you can only reach by paying a marketplace to show them your listing again.