How takeaways are cutting their Just Eat bills in half in 30 days

It seems every takeaway we speak to readily acknowledges that Just Eat is good for bringing in new customers.  However, problems arise when regular customers – who perhaps previously called in orders by phone – start using Just Eat instead.  What was a commission-free order becomes 12-13% per order.  The true cost quickly adds up and, alarmingly, many restaurants are finding themselves on the receiving end of a huge and fast-growing monthly bill.  Worst of all, questioning the survival of any business, costs are rising far faster than overall revenues.

Yet the new world of online orders is here to stay and, not surprisingly, takeaways are beginning the fight-back.  While you can’t just switch off Just Eat, there are ways to take the pain away.  The strategy with the widest appeal is keeping Just Eat for new customers but incentivising loyal customers to order direct.  The technology for direct online orders is available today, inexpensive, easy-to-set-up and easy-to-use and proving to be well worth the effort.

Preoday provides such a solution and, as you’d expect, we’ve been very busy these days helping a great many restaurants.  We provide them with their own branded ordering platform for app, website and payments – a flat, low-cost monthly fee and no commission charges.  It takes an hour at most to go live.  

We are particularly proud of the savings our customers are making and think it is time to share some of their more interesting statistics with you.  We’re speaking mainly about takeaways who found that their Just Eat bill had sky-rocketed passed £1,000 per month.  Typically, just 30 days after going live our takeaways experience the following outcomes:

• Just Eat’s bill at outset: £1,387 per month

• Just Eat’s bill after 30 days: £666 per month

• Savings: £721 per month

• Number of users migrated to restaurant’s own app and website: 178

• Number of commission-free orders received: 248

• Number of orders per user: 1.4

• Average order size:  £24.05

• Online revenue from restaurant’s own app and website after 30 days: £5,964 (52% of users)

• Online revenue from Just Eat’s platform after 30 days:  £5,548 (48% of users)

We are as surprised and pleased as our restaurants are about how quick customer perceptions seem to be changing.  What’s clear is that given the proper tools customers prefer to order direct.  Our takeaways are delighted that they now have total control to adjust their menu, brand and opening hours themselves.  They’re especially pleased, too, to be able to keep all the data on who their customers are and order histories. 

If you feel your Just Eat bill is over-sized and want to launch your own app and online ordering platform and win back commission-free customers, then get in touch here.  For a flat fee of £99 per month and unlimited support, you too can have your own quality app and web orders platform.

 Find out why Preoday clients are choosing the platform over Just Eat in this case study from our client Red Naga.