JUST EAT VS UBER EATS

[Emma S]

Are there any food businesses on here who use Uber Eats or Just Eat to reach a wider target audience than footfall alone?

I run two cafes. We currently don't offer a delivery option and I do feel this limits our customer base somewhat. Thinking of signing up to Uber or Just Eat but am wary of ending up tied into something potentially costly or a nightmare to get out of!

I would really appreciate any insights into

A. Worth it?
B. Any issues to be aware of
C. Which is the better option of the two platforms? And why?

TIA

 

[fisicx]

Cafe I was in on Saturday used deliveroo. The cafe down the road has their own son whizzing round town on his bike.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Whether it's worth it largely depends on your capacity & margins - which may be different from others'

Also,look to see which is prevalent local to you.

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

I had a food business that went on Uber Eats.... it was a lifeline for us (although still not enough to keep us afloat, but that's another story). From a standing start we were quickly doing anywhere between £1200-£1500 a week across Monday - Saturday. The majority of this was on breakfast items (which wasn't really our core business to be honest) as I think we were lucky that not many places are open and online at that time except perhaps McDonalds and Greggs. I don;t think we'd have got the same level of business if we were a pizza shop competing with 100 other takeaways in the evening.

Note the fees are HIGH - 30%-35% ish of takings. However, there seems to be an acceptance with consumers that they are paying through the nose for convenience and so we loaded some (not all) onto the item cost. I assure you we are not in a wealthy area, and would get shop regulars who would quibble if we increased something by 10p. But then we regularly had ordered for, say, a sausage bacon & egg barm (sandwich/cob/roll...delete based on your region!) that might have been £3.80 in the shop. It was a fiver on UberEats, plus probably £3.50 - £4.00 delivery. People paid it all day long!

The very, VERY odd person questioned why it was more expensive on Uber than in the shop and then when we explained the fees it was just like "fair enough".

We never spent a penny on marketing with them (there are options to, but they weren't overly pushy with it) and they will give you free marketing, e.g. at numerous times they would fund a "buy one get one free" offer on items. Customer would get the BOGOF, but we'd get paid in full for 2 items. I always found it intriguing that there was no limit to the value or quantity on this. We did it with Full English Breakfasts that were £9.95 each.... I did debate getting my mate to order and pay for 1000 breakfasts (that we never made or delivered) and see if Uber paid us out on the other 1000, but decided I didn't want to get kicked off the platform

From what I remember there was very little, if any, cost to sign up. Nor do I think there was a minimum term or a minimum monthly fee if it didn't work. I'd recommend giving it a go, particularly for the breakfast trade when you have little competition. Saturday mornings when people were hungover were always good (in fact we debated having someone in the shop on Sunday mornings when we were closed PURELY to cook stuff to order for Uber Eats, as I reckon we could have taken £250 on a Sunday morning just delivering hangover cures!

 

[SpriteScenes]

The cafe down the road has their own son whizzing round town on his bike.

I would use a local service before one of those big commercial companies any day of the week. And with the comical image you placed in my head of a young local lad working hard, I wouldn't mind paying a little extra.

 

[Ozzy]

I would use a local service before one of those big commercial companies any day of the week.

In principle, I completely and wholeheartedly agree with this statement, but in practice, sadly, the likes of Uber and Just Eats have the market penetration. So if you're looking for or need volume, they are more likely to be able to deliver it—but at a significant cost, as @BusterBloodvessel highlighted above.

 

[DontAsk]

I would use a local service

But will it have the same reach as Ubereateroo? How do you get your menu in peoples faces.

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

Ah, yes I can add to that. We used to deliver on Fridays only, which did reasonably OK but mainly with offices ordering for all the team "fat Friday" etc. We had to mess with 1 or 2 drivers ,pay them even if we were quiet, but generally it was fine. So much so that we tried delivering daily... it was a disaster. Paying drivers to stand around, people phoning up to order but then not bothering when we told them it was £10 minimum, but just generally no custom at all.

Went on to Uber and it wiped the floor with us doing it ourselves. As mentioned above, these sites have got it sewn up.... people don't always know exactly what they want, nor do they want to pay cash, or use a separate app etc. Go on Uber Eats, spot something they fancy, double click for Apple Pay and then watch a little dot get closer and closer to them until their food arrives. You just can't compete with it.

 

[SpriteScenes]

Sorry, I should have explained better. By local service, I was thinking about the family-run cafe, not an outsourced delivery service. Some years ago, my wife and I used a chippie run by Vietnamese people who provided a call/pickup or call/delivery service. The call/pickup was free. We used both depending on whether we were going out into the town or not.

 

[fisicx]

our chippie does the same. Call on the phone to place an order, turn up, pay and collect whilst being glared at by all the luddites having to queue up.

 

[DontAsk]

Sorry, I should have explained better. By local service, I was thinking about the family-run cafe,

No, that's exactly what this thread is about. Using a local delivery service for the cafe, or doing it themselves, will simply not have the reach of Ubereateroo, as shown by BusterBloodvessel.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Do the 2 venues have the same name?

Consider focusing on on unit and create a unique name for the delivery service (even 'x powered by y'). This will separate your core business and reduce that 'why are you more expensive when you deliver?'.

 

[Talktime]

This was more than twenty-eight years ago. I had a friend who owned a struggling takeaway business and asked me to come on board with ideas to improve its bottom line. The business was well located, with customer parking directly outside and serving a catchment area of only around eight thousand properties. I devised an unusual plan to boost profitability and engaged a small team of leaflet distributors, paying them ten pounds per thousand leaflets delivered. Each distributor was allocated a unique telephone number printed on an A4 bi-fold menu leaflet so that any orders generated could be traced back to their work, enabling me to calculate both their earnings and their commission. This was in the days when cash was king, and paying casual workers in cash was straightforward. Over a six-month period, approximately thirty thousand leaflets were distributed. Sales rose dramatically, and my friend was so impressed that he wanted me to continue the campaign indefinitely.

About a year later, in 1998, word of my leaflet exploits reached the owner of a local minicab company. He wanted a sales boost for the Christmas period, so I dusted off my trusty formula and got to work. This time I designed an A6 card, far grander than the standard business card every other cab firm seemed glued to, dressed up in full festive cheer. Starting in September, we sent thirty thousand of them out in waves right through to Christmas. The result? The company’s bottom line did not just improve, it exploded to five times its usual size. Even the cab drivers, a group not easily impressed, treated it like some sort of marketing magic they had never witnessed before.

If you are going to venture into the takeaway business, keep your strategy close to your chest and use local delivery riders with their own bikes. Never provide the bikes yourself, because as I have seen first-hand, they will be run into the ground within six months and you will end up having to throw them away.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

I would use a local service before one of those big commercial companies any day of the week. And with the comical image you placed in my head of a young local lad working hard, I wouldn't mind paying a little extra.

There are no local services that offer these low end deliveries . Only when the business uses its own people for deliveries

 

[SpriteScenes]

There are no local services that offer these low end deliveries . Only when the business uses its own people for deliveries

Yes, that's what I was talking about. I was coming from the perspective of a customer using fisicx's family-run cafe that has its whiz kid delivery boy. I was not talking from the perspective of a take-away owner.

What I meant to say is that I would, as a customer, use the local family-run cafe before a big commercial company, and I wouldn't mind paying a little extra to support them.

Sorry, I didn't explain it very well.

 

[mugatea]

I did an online takeaway for the local indian here. Wordpress and woocommerce based, small transaction fees and connected orders to a thermal printer in the restaurant so orders get printed as soon as they are made, the printer only cost £100 and no monthly fees either. They offer a 10% discount for online orders for pickup or delivery. They do great business, but they have to sort out the delivery drivers themselves but he has family who have indian takeaways in Glasgow and I think Just Eat and Co take about a grand a week from them from about 5 grand in orders, if I remember correctly.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

I did an online takeaway for the local indian here

I helped someone do something similar.

I think this could be a great business for someone to create local versions of delivery services, where a pool of drivers work with 10/20/30 businesses, so the cost is spread.

From what I understand, many drivers are signed up to multiple services to increase their workload so this would fit in easily.

 

[fantheflames]

From what I’ve seen, Deliveroo tends to be the stronger option overall. I'm pretty sure they have partnered with Amazon Prime so users can get a year of Deliveroo membership for free so I'm sure the userbase is growing. That said, whichever platform you choose, it’s worth running the numbers carefully to see what you can absorb or pass on, so it actually adds to your bottom line rather than eating into it. I think overall Just Eat is the largest one of the three but definitely do some digging into the fees and customer experience, and what other businesses and locals are using in your area.

 

[Bobbo]

From a customer perspective: I haven't used Just Eat in years, almost always Uber Eats and occasionally Deliveroo. Apart from their occasional adverts I kinda forgot Just Eat even still existed.