800website builds ordering sites and apps for F&B in Dubai. This comes up in every restaurant conversation, and the answer is rarely one or the other.
Should restaurants use Deliveroo and Talabat or their own site?
Both — aggregators for discovery, your own site for repeat orders. They do different jobs and treating them as alternatives costs you either volume or margin.
Aggregators are genuinely good at one thing: putting you in front of people who do not know you exist and want food now. That reach is real and hard to replicate. What you pay for it is a commission on every order and, more importantly, the customer relationship — you do not learn who your regulars are, you cannot contact them, and you cannot bring them back without paying again.
Your own ordering site costs a fixed amount once and keeps both the margin and the data. What it does not do is find new customers on its own.
What does the economics look like?
An ordering site with payments is around AED 6,000 one-time — AED 3,500 for the build plus AED 2,500 for payment integration — with hosting at AED 2,400 a year after.
Against a commission per order on an aggregator, the site pays for itself once a modest share of your repeat customers order direct. The maths depends on your volume and commission rate, but the direction is consistent: discovery is worth paying commission for, repeat business is not.
The practical strategy most successful restaurants use: stay on the aggregators, and give every delivered order a reason to come direct next time — a card in the bag, a discount code that only works on your own site, a QR code on the packaging.
How do I move customers to my own site?
- Put something physical in every aggregator order — a card with a direct-order discount.
- Make direct cheaper, explicitly. Customers understand commission and will act on the saving.
- Use WhatsApp. In this market it is often the highest-converting ordering channel, and it costs nothing.
- Collect phone numbers on direct orders and use them properly for genuine offers.
- QR codes in-store on tables, packaging and receipts.
None of this requires an app. A mobile ordering site plus WhatsApp covers most of it.
When is aggregator-only the right call?
If you are a new cloud kitchen with no brand recognition and no marketing budget, aggregator-only is a reasonable start — you are buying discovery you cannot generate. The mistake is staying there indefinitely, because you never build an asset and your margin never improves.
Set a threshold: once you have consistent repeat volume, build the direct channel. That is usually sooner than restaurant owners expect.
See restaurant website design in Dubai, online ordering and e-commerce, or talk to us.
Talk to us
800website is a Dubai web design and development agency with published fixed prices. Send the details and you get a fixed scope and a fixed price back — no hourly billing. Contact us, message us on WhatsApp, or call +971 58 578 5380.
