to ask you to order from your takeaway directly not via Deliveroo/Uber Eats if possible?

[roses2]

I was having a chat with my local takeaway owner last week and he said he gets a lot of orders from Deliveroo/Uber Eats and the fees are crippling and he is now selling his business.

Deliveroo and Uber Eats take 30% + vat commission which he just can't sustain. This is also contributing to the high prices and low quality.

I am lucky that all my favourite take aways are walking distance so always order direct and collect.

If you want to save your local takeaway please go direct where you can

Do businesses not have the choice to opt out of using Deliveroo etc?

I understand the thinking behind this, but it's often absolutely impossible to get a refund from a local place if done directly. If my £4 garlic bread doesn't show up with the rest of my food, I don't want to call, explain, wait an hour and have it show up cold. I want to be able to push a button and get a refund.

I also find the order tracking really useful. Maybe I've just had bad experiences with local places, but overall ordering direct seems to come with more headaches than using the apps. Often also the apps have good deals on that the local places don't have direct.

I'm not saying it's fair - it's not! But personally those are the reasons I use the apps.

My Chinese takeaway sold up and left - its been replaced with a chinese takeaway that's is so clearly geared for the uber eats market

Pretty looking dishes, super expensive, a tiny menu. Not even run or owned by chinese people, although they kept the chef i think. I haven't had Chinese food since 🥺

All our locals are deliveroo. Only other one was a call up to order but didn't deliver and closed recently. They also only accepted cash on delivery. Unfortunately I wouldn't go and collect so non delivery or cash only don't work for me. I also prefer to order via an app rather than phone.

For a couple of our regular takeaways I always go direct for this reason but if I am ordering something different it's easier to use deliveroo or just eat etc. It's always a rip off but you are paying for convenience. I think if companies get better online ordering and delivery service themselves then people would go direct but most don't or can't do it.

I think a lot of businesses hope that they can get repeat business from customers that arrive via Deliveroo and order direct in future.

We have only used Deliveroo once as I had a voucher code and the takeaway included a leaflet of the collection prices, which were significantly cheaper plus no extra delivery costs. Deliveroo et al charge high fees to the businesses and the customers, whilst also paying the delivery drivers as little as they possibly can.

We tend to order directly from our favourite takeaways.

No sorry I like being able to track when it’s coming and like how quick it is. Before Uber eats I could easily wait 2 hours for a takeaway and I’m in London 😂 now my local Chinese delivers within 10 mins (yes it was actually 10 minutes)

deliveroo is convenient but I do sometimes collect. You’ve made a good point op and I will try to collect takeaways more often. One of our favourite takeaways closed recently and it was a small business. I’d hate for my other favourites to go under.

(But pp is right, many need to improve their online ordering systems as I hate having to make a phone order)

I hate almost yelling down the phone to someone who can’t tell what I’m saying as they’re in a noisy kitchen, especially if English isn’t their first language as that makes communication even harder. If we didn’t have allergy issues I’d put up with it, but it’s so much safer to be able to write down what we need to avoid, rather than shout it three times and hope they heard and wrote it down correctly.

The local takeaway that allows online orders from its own website is great, and I always order direct.

We don't use Deliveroo etc ever. Live too rural to be of interest. We go to the shop/restaurant and pick it up ourselves. Far prefer the personal service.

I wish people would stop ordering bike deliveries at all. I'm a cyclist myself and very pro cycling, but whenever I come across a cyclist behaving crappily, it's always a delivery person. It gives us all a bad image. And a lot of restaurants have been ruined by delivery culture - cold, late food, crappy service, delivery people crowding entrances of restaurants, bikes thrown down around the pavement, because the "restaurants" are now basically tailored around the needs of delivery people and their customers.

I have lunch in a restaurant a couple of meals a week (usually weekend lunchtimes) and eat home food mostly, the rest of the time. Restaurant food is generally higher in calories and less healthy than home cooked food (yes, I know this is not invariably true, but it mostly is), so only eating restaurant food if you are actually prepared to go out to eat it is a good way of making sure you don't eat too much of it, frankly.

You can ask but it'd not going to stop me. I hate making phone calls and it'd a million times harder when they speak English as an additional language and we can't understand ea h other. I also like the ease of paying with my card, seeing exactly what time it will be, and if there's an issue I can get refund easily.

So no, I won't stop unless takeaways around here move into 2024. If it cripples them, they can opt out but I'm sure they'd lose even more

It’s a service, someone has to pay for it. Our local fish and chip shop is cheaper if you walk in than if you order through an app, the local Indian takeaway offers a ‘discount’ if you order direct, but sometimes I just want it delivered to me 🤷‍♀️

I order directly but I’m lucky that my local takeaway places are very up to the minute with website ordering and estimated delivery time. If they weren’t I can see the temptation.

See also: booking directly with hotels rather than via booking.com

Don't have takeaways but live near one.
See drivers coming and going.
Not sure I understand it really.
The takeaway is on one of the well known apps.
There's a high turnover of drivers. How does it work. Do ppl have to order through the app or can they just phone the shop and order.
Do the drivers work for deliveroo/just eat or do they work for the takeaway owner?

Refunds are always an issue.

Late deliveries are never accounted for.

Often, no one answers the phone if you call a takeaway to place an order.

Deliveries are hardly ever timely, and there is no order tracking.

Uber Eats & Deliveroo have all of the above. Takeaways are supposed to be a treat. Ordering them directly is not easy.

It's sad for the businesses affected. But people generally go for convenience and reliability.

We order on our local takeaways’ website and collect. But that’s because we don’t want food sitting on a bike for ages - it’s never as nice!

why don’t they just put a surcharge on prices if you use deliveroo? If it was 30% more expensive that would be persuasive

Some of the comments in here absolutely smack of “why is the high street boarded up and there’s no shops anymore” vibes accompanied by “I just want to press a button on an app”

There are two or three takeaways we order from who do their own delivery so we do use that service. Frankly it's cheaper so it's not out of the goodness of my heart! But if we want fish and chips the only option is Deliveroo.

And before anyone says, no we can't pick it up as we are in a semi rural place with no takeaways where we actually live so it would be cold by the time we got it home.

I'd be happy to order directly if I could do it online but most places don't have a website where you can order and the phone process is so tedious. Shouting your order over background noise, trying to hear the person reading the order back, giving your address, paying at the door. I've just become so used to the convenience of apps and browsers that save my details

It's often a choice between sucking it up or not getting the business because so many people are happy to pay the extra for convenience.

But the reality is that they're incredibly exploitative of both the restaurants by taking huge commissions and the delivery people by paying peanuts and dodging basic employment law and this is one of the reasons why I never use Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat or similar - OP YANBU. It's strange how many people on here won't use Amazon or Temu etc because they're exploitative, but the delivery platforms are just as bad and almost no-one says a word against them.

As it happens OP, a local pizza takeaway who's main business is a van at events but they also started in a unit during COVID posted the following on their social media just the other day:

^Friday saw a big shift in how our orders come in. For the first time, Uber overtook our usual orders by collections. Being on Uber is the same as having Ketty Pete hanging around outside waiting to rob me of our takings when I lock up.

That being said I completely understand people don’t like leaving the house and prefer their food being delivered. This also brings its challenges. We’ve had 4 complaints so far since joining Uber.

1. Customer not hearing the driver knocking on their door. So driver left with pizza.

1. Not enough hot honey in the sauce pot.

1. Pizza delivered with the box sideways.

1. Pizza cold. Delivery in transit 25 minutes.

Where we can, we’ll always try to rectify the issues but if it’s a fault of Uber, the matter needs to be taken up with them. They have your money and are providing the service^

They've tried to discourage people using Uber Eats by raising their prices and doing offers and discounts for collection only, so they're now really expensive for delivery, but quite cheap if you collect, which we always do - they probably make more money this way because they don't have UE taking a big cut.

I was getting a take away in recently while my sister and BIL were over. BIL was amazed at how quick it was for me to pop down to the shop and collect it myself. They live much closer to the shops than I do but always get delivery (I think partly because they used to live in the ME where anything and everything was delivered even directly to your desk at work, or to your appartment up 14 floors) and end up waiting 45 minutes - 1 hour (in London) on a Saturday night.

I know that the point of this post was direct orders rather than collection, but I think the issue is the same that people get so used to the convenience of the app that they don't realise a more basic approach might actually be quicker (and cheaper). And yes, I appreciate that it's not an option for everyone.

I always order direct, but that's because the Indians and Chinese I use have web ordering, a loyalty points system and often voucher codes. No excuse really not to have web ordering if they want to steer people away from the apps.

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Additionally my town has set up a local independent delivery app and encouraged takeaways and delivery people to join. I don't know how successful it is because we always collect because it's easier and cheaper than waiting for delivery.