How to Replace Foodhub With Direct Online Ordering

The problem with staying on Foodhub

Foodhub charges restaurants a commission on orders placed through its platform. For a restaurant doing meaningful order volume, this creates a permanent cost attached to each transaction — regardless of whether Foodhub did anything to acquire that particular customer.

More importantly, Foodhub owns the customer relationship. The customer who orders through Foodhub is Foodhub's customer, not yours. Their contact details, order history and future ordering behaviour stay with the platform. You cannot remarket to them, build loyalty with them, or convert them to higher-margin direct orders without starting the acquisition process from scratch.

Replacing Foodhub with direct online ordering addresses both of these problems at once.

What direct ordering actually means

Direct ordering means a customer places an order through your own branded channel — your website or your app — and the order comes to you without a marketplace taking a commission.

You own the customer's data. You can email them, send push notifications through your app, reward them with loyalty points and target them with personalised offers. Every order they place directly costs you less and gives you more information about their preferences.

The infrastructure to do this is more accessible than most restaurant operators realise. Platforms like Flipdish provide branded ordering websites and apps, integrated with your POS and payments, within weeks — without you building anything yourself.

What you lose when you leave Foodhub

It is worth being direct about this: Foodhub provides order volume. Restaurants appear in its search results. Customers who do not know your brand can discover you through the platform.

When you reduce your presence on Foodhub, you lose some of that discovery benefit. Customers who find you only through Foodhub may stop ordering, at least initially.

This is the real cost of marketplace dependency: the discovery value is genuine, but it comes with commission on every order — including orders from customers who would have found you anyway and have been loyal customers for years.

The economics improve significantly once you shift your loyal returning customers to direct ordering. Those customers already know you. They do not need a marketplace to find you. They are paying marketplace commission unnecessarily on every single order.

Step 1: Set up a direct ordering website

The first step is having somewhere for customers to order directly. A branded online ordering website lets customers place orders through your own domain without any marketplace involved.

This is not your main restaurant website with a menu displayed. It is a purpose-built ordering flow — menu, customisation, checkout, payment — branded with your identity.

The ordering website should:

  • Load quickly on mobile (the majority of orders are placed on phones)
  • Present your menu clearly with modifiers and extras
  • Handle payment seamlessly
  • Confirm the order with an accurate wait time
  • Connect directly to your POS or kitchen without a manual step

Flipdish sets this up as part of the product package. You do not need to manage hosting, payment integrations or order routing separately.

Step 2: Build a branded app

A branded app gives you something Foodhub never will: a direct line to your customers' phones.

Push notifications from a branded app convert at significantly higher rates than email. When you launch a promotion, add a new menu item or run a limited-time offer, you can reach your entire customer base within seconds — no marketplace acting as a middleman.

App users typically have higher order frequency and higher average order value than web-only customers. The investment in an app pays back quickly for restaurants with meaningful repeat customer volume.

Flipdish's branded app product provides a fully customised iOS and Android app under your brand, published to both app stores, integrated with your ordering system. The app looks like your restaurant built it. Customers see your brand, not Flipdish.

Step 3: Migrate your existing Foodhub customers

Having a direct ordering channel is only valuable if your customers use it. This is the part most restaurants underestimate.

In-box marketing. Every order you fulfil — including Foodhub orders — is an opportunity to promote direct ordering. A card in the bag with a QR code, a first-order discount code and a clear message about ordering directly. Make the incentive obvious.

Counter and driver messaging. Train staff to mention direct ordering. "Next time, order directly from our website or app and get a discount" costs nothing and works. Drivers at the door have a brief moment to make this point.

Social media. Announce your direct ordering channel to your existing followers. A first-order offer and a pinned post drive initial registrations from people who already follow you because they like your food.

QR codes everywhere. On tables, at the counter, on packaging, on receipts and in your windows. A QR code linked directly to your ordering site or app download page removes friction from the conversion process.

Loyalty incentives. A loyalty programme attached to direct orders gives customers a compelling reason to change their habit. Foodhub offers no equivalent incentive for ordering directly with you. Points, stamps or a simple cashback scheme make the choice obvious.

Step 4: Handle the commercial transition carefully

If you currently take significant volume through Foodhub, reducing that volume too quickly creates a cash flow problem. The transition needs to be managed.

A practical approach:

  1. Launch direct ordering while continuing to accept Foodhub orders
  2. Run a three-to-six month period of active customer migration
  3. Monitor direct order volume growing and Foodhub volume declining in parallel
  4. Once direct orders represent the majority of your online volume, reduce or discontinue Foodhub

This approach minimises revenue disruption while the customer base migrates. It also gives you time to confirm that your direct ordering experience is good enough to retain customers before cutting off the marketplace safety net.

The financial case for switching

Here is a simple illustration of the economics.

Assume:

  • 300 online orders per month through Foodhub
  • Average order value: £28
  • Foodhub commission: approximately 10–13%

At 12% commission, that is approximately £1,008 per month in marketplace fees.

If you shift 200 of those 300 orders to direct ordering over six months, you recover around £672 per month in commission savings. Over a full year, that is approximately £8,064 staying in your business.

The direct ordering platform costs money to run. But for most restaurants with meaningful order volume, the payback period is short — and every customer you convert to direct ordering builds a more valuable long-term relationship.

AI phone ordering as part of your direct channel

Many customers, particularly older customers and those with complex orders, prefer to order by phone. Phone orders are often high-value but labour-intensive to handle during busy service.

The Flipdish AI Phone Agent answers inbound calls and takes orders automatically, routing them to your kitchen the same way a web or app order would. For takeaways and delivery-focused restaurants where phone volume is significant, this makes phone ordering scalable without requiring dedicated staff on the line throughout service.

Foodhub cannot offer this. It is a genuinely useful capability that adds to the case for building your own direct channel.

What Flipdish provides for the transition

Flipdish is built specifically to help restaurants build and grow a direct ordering channel. The platform provides:

For pricing relevant to your volume and configuration, contact Flipdish directly.

When to stay on Foodhub

Marketplaces including Foodhub do one thing well: they put your restaurant in front of customers who do not know you yet. If a significant proportion of your orders come from first-time customers discovering you through Foodhub, removing yourself from the platform entirely risks losing that discovery benefit.

The smarter approach for most restaurants is not to leave Foodhub entirely, but to stop subsidising your loyal returning customers with commission. Build direct ordering for your repeat base; use the marketplace for discovery only.

Over time, as your direct channel grows and your brand becomes better known locally, the discovery dependency on Foodhub naturally diminishes. Many restaurants that have done this successfully find they do not miss it when they eventually leave.

The verdict

Replacing Foodhub entirely is rarely the right first move. But building a direct ordering channel as quickly as possible — and actively migrating existing loyal customers onto it — is the right commercial strategy for almost any restaurant with meaningful online order volume.

Every order your loyal customers place through Foodhub is a commission payment you did not need to make. Every customer you migrate to direct ordering is a relationship you now own.

Flipdish provides the platform to make this transition. The restaurants that have made the move consistently report lower effective commission rates, stronger customer retention and higher lifetime customer value.

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