How to Get Customers to Order Direct, Not Uber Eats

To get customers to order direct instead of Uber Eats, beat the app on convenience and total price at checkout, not on menu price. That means four things: make your own link the preferred ordering option on Google, put a coupon that works only on your website into every app bag, check that a direct order actually costs the customer less once delivery and service fees are added, and run the direct channel on a checkout that remembers people. A flyer that says "order direct and save" on its own mostly fails.

The owner who started a 200-comment r/smallbusiness thread had tried exactly that. After three months of QR flyers in every Uber Eats bag: "Almost zero people actually make the switch." The replies, many of them from the customers the flyers were aimed at, explain why. They are the most useful part of this post, and they line up with the platforms' own pricing pages.

The money is worth the effort. On a $35 order, Uber Eats Plus keeps $8.75. The same order through a commission-free ordering page costs you about $1.32. If you have not totalled what the apps keep across a whole month, the restaurant profit leak audit shows where to look.

Why customers stay on Uber Eats even when you are cheaper

Customers stay because the app removes every bit of friction, and a slightly lower menu price does not make up for losing that. The top customer reply in the thread, with 187 upvotes, put it plainly: "All my info is saved, delivery instructions, payments, easy re-order for custom items... I can track the delivery driver location, and if there is an issue uber refunds it pretty much 0 questions asked."

The rest of the reasons, in the customers' own words:

• Their membership. Uber sells Uber One at $9.99 a month with a "$0 Delivery Fee" and "up to 10% off orders" over the minimum subtotal. One commenter pointed out that some credit cards give away Uber Eats or DoorDash memberships, so the customer has already paid for delivery.
• Your website feels risky or slow. One customer said a local pizza order online "could take me 10-15 minutes," with page timeouts that cleared their details. Another would "pay an extra 10% or whatever" to avoid "giving another questionable site my credit card."
• They do not know your site exists. The 109-upvote comment asked whether the website is listed as the "preferred method" on Google Maps, because "if the direct site is listed as preferred, I always go there."
• Your direct delivery is worse. Customers mentioned no delivery option, no live tracking, or a delivery radius smaller than the app's.

The uncomfortable one is the customer who wrote that when they have tried ordering direct after getting a card in the bag, "the final price with delivery is always higher on the direct site than Uber Eats," because of delivery and service fees. The only time it came out cheaper was pickup. If that is true of your site, no flyer will fix it.

What each order costs you: app vs direct

The saving from moving one delivery customer is about $7 to $9 per $35 order, and about $1 per pickup order. These figures come from each vendor's current US pricing page, on a $35 subtotal:

Sources: Uber Eats merchant pricing, DoorDash merchant pricing and DoorDash's Online Ordering guide, which states "a standard payment processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per order."

Two details on the Uber Eats page matter for this problem. On Plus, you join Uber One "by paying an additional 5% for Uber One orders," so the most locked-in customers are also the most expensive ones to serve. And Lite merchants "are not eligible to participate in the Uber One program," which is part of why Lite is cheaper.

The table uses plan rates, and your real take is higher. Marketing fees, promotions you fund, and refunds and error charges all come out of the payout. That is why the DoorDash markup maths starts from your all-in take, not the plan rate, and why refunds you never agreed to are worth disputing on Uber Eats.

Run the checkout-total test first

Before you change anything, order the same meal through Uber Eats and through your own site, to the same address, and compare the final total. This takes ten minutes, and it answers the question most flyers skip: is ordering direct actually cheaper for this customer?

Do it three ways:

1. As a regular Uber Eats customer. Note subtotal, delivery fee, service fee and total.
2. As an Uber One member, or ask a friend who is one. Uber says members get a $0 Delivery Fee on eligible orders over the minimum and up to 10% off. That is the customer you are competing for.
3. On your own site, from a phone, logged out, as a first-time customer. Time how long it takes and count the fields you fill in.

If your total is higher than the member's total, your menu discount is not doing its job. You have three levers: a lower delivery fee, a bigger first-order coupon, or pushing pickup. If your checkout took more than two minutes, fix that before anything else. The same slow-form problem that loses service businesses their leads, covered in our website conversion rate guide, loses restaurants their direct orders.

7 ways to get customers to order direct

The fixes that work make ordering direct easier and cheaper at the exact moment a customer is deciding. In rough order of effort:

1. Make your own link the preferred option on Google

This is the cheapest fix and most owners have never touched it. Google's help page on managing online ordering says "you can mark third-party order options and links as preferred," with separate switches for Preferred for pickup and Preferred for delivery. In your Business Profile, open Food ordering, pick your own link and choose Set as preferred.

While you are there, check what else is listed. Delivery apps add their own links through their integrations, and a customer who searches for you and taps Order online may be sent straight to Uber Eats. As one commenter put it: "I try very hard to not order from Uber eats so I always go to Google. And sometimes that link goes to Uber eats." DoorDash's help centre also suggests putting your ordering URL in the Website and Menu link fields, not just the order-ahead links.

2. Put a coupon, not a flyer, in every app bag

The 462-upvote answer: "Throw a coupon in with carryout orders. Make the coupon only valid for orders placed on your website." A specific dollar amount with a code gives the customer a reason to try one new checkout. "Save X by ordering direct" asks them to do sums.

Aim it at the orders that cost you most: app delivery orders. A customer who already walks in and pays at the counter costs you only your card rate, so sending them to your website saves nothing.

3. Test the coupon before you print 500 of them

The reply to that top answer, with 148 upvotes: "they gave me a $10 coupon if I order on the website next time. I tried using the coupon a few days later and it never worked haha." Place a real order with the code on a phone before it goes in a single bag, and again every time you change your ordering system.

4. Accept the coupon by phone too

One commenter added: "Make sure it's accepted for phone orders too, which also would be 0 fee to the business." Some of your best regulars will never download anything, and a phone order still takes them off the app.

5. Give them a reason to come back after the first order

The switch that sticks is the second order. In the thread, a customer described how their favourite Italian place moved them: "a free $10 off no minimum coupon if I ordered through the app. But on the app I learned they track points and do free meals as a rewards thing, so now I order everything through their app." The coupon got the first order; points kept them. If your direct system can send a reorder reminder, that is one of the few things worth automating for a small restaurant.

6. Use the platforms' own commission-free ordering

Both big apps now sell a direct channel. DoorDash's Online Ordering says "Direct orders are commission-free. You cover standard payment processing... Customers cover delivery," and it syncs with your DoorDash Marketplace menu. Uber Eats lists Webshop, "a commission-free online ordering site that you control," at 2.5% plus $0.29 per order.

The catch is customer data. DoorDash says that for orders placed on Google, "You won't receive customer email addresses or phone numbers," and customer information "may only be used for order fulfillment." If you want a list you can market to, send people to an ordering page on your own website and check what the provider actually gives you.

7. Tell people, in person and on the receipt

An owner in r/restaurantowners reported app prices "30% higher than when dining in or ordering direct." Plenty of customers would switch if they knew. A sticker on the bag, a line on the receipt or a word at the counter costs nothing: one commenter liked a sticker that said "this food is always heaps cheaper if you just call us."

Which coupon pays back

On a $35 delivery order where the customer pays delivery, a coupon up to about $7.43 still costs you less than Uber Eats Plus on the first order. Every direct order after that saves the full gap. Figures use Uber Eats Plus at 25% ($8.75) and DoorDash Online Ordering processing at 2.9% plus $0.30 ($1.32):

Two cases change the maths.

Pickup customers. If the app order was a pickup, Uber Eats kept 7% ($2.45 with validated in-store pricing). Moving it direct saves only about $1.13 per order, so a $10 coupon takes roughly nine orders to pay back. Keep pickup offers small.

Free delivery on your own site. Uber's pricing page lists Uber Direct, delivery for orders from "your own website, app, or phone," starting at $7.99 per delivery. If you pay all of it plus a 2.9% plus $0.30 card fee, you spend $9.31 on a $35 order, more than the $8.75 Uber Eats Plus would have kept. The break-even subtotal is about $37.50 against Plus and about $30.60 against Premium. Offer free delivery above a minimum order, or split the fee with the customer.

What not to do

Do not switch the apps off before your direct channel is as easy as theirs. In an r/restaurateur thread, an owner doing about $350k a month, roughly 30% from apps, asked whether to turn them off. The practical advice was to turn delivery off on the apps "for a day and see how that impacts your volumes," then repeat on a different day. Another owner in the same thread was blunt about the pace: "Every year its only a couple percent that we have been able to convert."

Other traps:

• Promising in-house delivery you cannot insure. A pizza owner of more than a decade in r/restaurantowners said insurance for in-house drivers is "either non existent or crazy expensive," and they could not find another insurer.
• Marking up pickup on the apps. Uber Eats charges 10% instead of 7% on pickup unless you prove pickup prices match in-store, and DoorDash's 6% pickup rate requires matching prices too. Mark up delivery only.
• Mixing up the sales tax. Direct orders and marketplace orders are often taxed through different hands, so your sales tax report has to split them. If you have been paying tax on app sales the marketplace may already have remitted, check for double-paid sales tax.

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, most of it takes an afternoon. Setting Google's preferred option, adding your link to the website and menu fields, printing a tested coupon and switching on a commission-free ordering page cost nothing beyond the processing fee. Start with the Google change and the checkout-total test, because they show you whether the rest is worth doing.

Where it stops being worth your time is the maths across three apps. Each platform reports fees, promotions, adjustments and refunds differently, so the real take per order is buried. If you already reconcile card fees, the Toast processing fees breakdown shows the same problem for your POS, and our restaurant money recovery hub collects the rest. For a wider look at what your business pays for without noticing, start with where you are losing money.

How to tell if it is working

Track three numbers every month, from your own systems rather than a vendor dashboard:

• Coupon redemptions, by code, so you know which bag inserts came back.
• Direct orders from repeat customers, meaning a second order within 60 days of the first. That is the switch that saves money.
• App share of off-premise sales. If direct orders rise but the app share does not fall, you are adding new customers, not moving old ones. That is fine, but it is a different result.

Also watch for error charges and refunds on the apps while you do this. If the app keeps a bigger share than its plan rate, DoorDash error charges are often why, and every dollar you get back makes the remaining app orders worth keeping.