A takeaway website with its own online ordering replaces a commission on every order with costs you mostly fix in advance: the build, card fees, hosting, a few plugin licences and maintenance. Whether that beats Just Eat or Deliveroo depends on how many of your orders come from regulars who would order direct anyway. I do not publish fixed prices, because an ordering site is priced by its rules rather than its pages, but I can show you what drives the cost. My example throughout is Whitfield Service Station in Dover, a WooCommerce ordering store I built in 2025.
What are you paying the delivery apps for?
Three things: customers who might never have found you, riders to deliver, and the ordering software. You pay for all three through a commission on each order. The rate depends on your agreement and on whether their riders deliver. I am not quoting rates here, because neither Just Eat nor Deliveroo publishes a standard UK rate card. Deliveroo's partner terms name a fee of 35% plus VAT for Marketplace+ orders its own riders deliver, but most rates are set in each restaurant's agreement. Your partner statement shows exactly what you pay.
Add up what commission cost you last month. That is the number your own site has to beat.
The catch is that commission is charged on regulars too. A customer who has ordered from you twenty times still costs you commission on the twenty-first order, even though the app did nothing to win them.
What are the three ways to take orders online?
| Option | How you pay | Who owns the customer | Delivery | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery apps | Commission on each order | Largely the app | App riders or your own drivers | Reaching new customers |
| Monthly ordering platform | A subscription, sometimes plus a fee per order | Depends on the platform's terms | Your own drivers | A quick start without a build |
| Your own WooCommerce site | A build, then card fees, hosting, licences and maintenance | You | Your own drivers | Takeaways with regulars and specific rules |
A monthly ordering platform is a hosted service that gives you a branded ordering page or app. It is quicker to start, but you work within its features and keep paying for as long as you use it. Owning a WooCommerce site costs more up front, and you can shape every rule to how your kitchen works.
What does a takeaway ordering site need to do?
More than show a menu. Whitfield is a forecourt running a Budgens store, a Fireaway pizza outlet and a doner and gyros kitchen, and all three sell through one WooCommerce checkout. To make that work day to day it needed:
- A delivery radius. My Delivery Restriction Checker plugin geocodes the customer's address with the Google Maps API, hides delivery beyond 10 miles and falls back to pickup or dine-in. I explain the build in how to limit WooCommerce delivery to a radius in miles.
- Fees by distance. The plugin charged a distance-based fee at launch. The owner later moved to a flat fee, and cash on delivery was disabled.
- Kitchen printing. Orders print automatically on an Epson receipt printer through PrintNode, with alerts in the WooCommerce mobile app. The setup is in how to print WooCommerce orders automatically in a kitchen.
- Opening hours. The owner can close the store or set hours from the admin, and a popup tells customers when ordering is open.
- Add-ons. WooCommerce Product Add-Ons for toppings and variations.
- Fast payment. A multi-step Fluid Checkout with Stripe, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- A menu staff can edit. A CSV import template with tutorial videos.
The printer was the feature that decided whether the system got used. A kitchen will not watch a screen during service.
What does it cost to hire a developer in India?
| What you get | India range in ₹ | Approx £ | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant online ordering site | Roughly ₹25,000–₹2,00,000 | Roughly £200–£1,550 | dhirajweb.dev, digitalproductsolutions.in |
| WordPress maintenance retainer, business site | ₹5,000–₹10,000 a month (freelancers ₹3,000–₹8,000) | £40–£80 a month | upgrowth.in, pegasusdigital.co.in |
These are typical market ranges Indian freelancers and small agencies publish, converted at October 2026 exchange rates (£1 = ₹127.2). The ordering site row is rough. Few sources publish it, and none is specific to WooCommerce. My own quote comes from a written scope, and the Project Scope Generator gives you one to compare quotes against.
What drives the cost of building it?
| Cost driver | Why it moves the price | On Whitfield |
|---|---|---|
| Brands and menus | Each menu needs its own categories and products | Three brands, one checkout |
| Delivery rules | Radius, fee model and fallbacks need logic and testing | Custom plugin, 10 mile limit, pickup or dine-in fallback |
| Menu complexity | Toppings, combos and variations take setup time | Product Add-Ons and combos |
| Kitchen integration | Printing has to be set up and tested on a real shift | PrintNode, an Epson printer and mobile alerts |
| Payments | Express wallets and a checkout built for phones | Stripe, Apple Pay and Google Pay |
| Compliance | Age checks and legal pages | An 18+ confirmation for alcohol and vapes, hygiene ratings, GDPR and terms pages |
| Handover | Staff have to run it without a developer | CSV template, tutorial videos and staff documentation |
A single-menu pizza shop with collection only is a much smaller build than three brands with delivery rules. That is why a quote without a scope means very little. The free Project Scope Generator turns a two-line description of your takeaway into a feature list you can send to several developers and compare like for like.
What does it cost to run each month?
Owning the site does not mean it is free to run. Expect these:
- Card processing. Stripe's UK pricing is 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards and 2.8% + 20p for premium UK cards. This is the one cost that grows with every order.
- Hosting. A fast host matters at the dinner rush.
- Plugin licences. Paid plugins renew, usually yearly.
- Printing. PrintNode has a free Lite tier for 50 prints a month and paid monthly plans above that.
- Maps. Address lookups for a delivery radius run on Google's paid Maps API, billed on usage.
- Maintenance. Updates, backups and small changes. In India a retainer for a business WordPress site typically runs ₹5,000–₹10,000 a month, about £40–£80, with sources in the table above. My post on what a WordPress maintenance retainer covers explains what that includes.
Then there are the two things the apps were doing for you: delivery drivers and marketing. Your own site will not bring new customers by itself. Its job is to stop paying commission on the customers you already have.
When should you stay on the apps?
Be honest about where your orders come from. If you are new, have few regulars or have no drivers, the apps are doing real work for their commission. Leaving them would cost more than it saves.
For most established takeaways the answer is both. Keep the apps for discovery and give regulars a reason to order direct, such as a card in every bag with your web address. On Whitfield I audited the Fireaway and doner catalogues against their Just Eat menus, so the two channels matched.
What did Whitfield prove, and what was not measured?
The platform is live at whitfieldservicestation.co.uk. The three outlets take orders through one checkout, and staff manage the menu and the printer without a developer. Phase one closed in August 2025 with a W3C validation and performance report and staff documentation covering price changes, reports, reprinting receipts, cancelling orders and hours.
What I do not have is a figure for how many orders moved from the apps to the site, or how much commission that saved. It was not measured, so I will not guess.
How do you get a quote you can compare?
Write down your menus, your delivery radius, your fee model, your opening hours and how the kitchen should receive orders. Run it through the Project Scope Generator, then send the same scope to every developer you ask.
I build takeaway and forecourt ordering stores, delivery rules and kitchen printing included, through my WooCommerce stores and online ordering service. If you want to talk it through, book a call and tell me how your kitchen takes orders today.
