If you run a restaurant in Leicester and you’ve tried to compare your delivery options, you know the problem: nobody publishes their pricing.

Uber Eats quotes you a rate on a sales call. Deliveroo runs a two-week “special offer” then bumps you to standard rates. Just Eat has three tiers and you have to email to find out which one you’re on.

We think that’s nonsense. Here are the real numbers — both for the big apps, and for a commission-free partner — so Leicester restaurant owners can make an actual decision.

What the apps charge Leicester restaurants in 2026

The numbers below come from active Leicester restaurant contracts in Q1–Q2 2026. Actual rates vary by negotiation, volume, and category — but this is the typical range.

Uber Eats

• Commission: 25–30% on orders using Uber Eats delivery
• Commission (self-delivery): 10–15%
• Monthly marketing fees: often 5–15% on top, for promoted placement
• Customer-facing delivery fee: £1.99–£3.99 (charged to customer, not restaurant)
• Payout terms: weekly, 1–2 week lag

Deliveroo

• Commission: 25–34% on “Delivered by Deliveroo” orders
• Commission (marketplace/self-delivery): 12–14%
• Plus subscription/service fees for analytics + support tools
• Customer-facing delivery fee: £2.49–£3.99
• Payout terms: weekly

Just Eat

• Commission: 14% on orders (classic marketplace model)
• Delivery service fee (if using Just Eat couriers): additional 11–14% on top
• One-off setup fee: £295 (often waived)
• Payout terms: weekly

Net effect for most Leicester restaurants: 30–35% of order value goes to the platform on a “full-service” (they-deliver) contract. On a £25 order, that’s £7.50–£8.75 disappearing before you’ve bought a single onion.

What commission-free delivery actually costs in Leicester

Commission-free partners like MealShift charge a flat per-delivery fee instead of a percentage. In Leicester specifically, our 2026 pricing sits in this range:

• Standard delivery (0–3 km): £3.50
• Standard delivery (3–6 km): £4.50
• Extended delivery (6–10 km): £5.50
• Volume discount: up to 20% off at 30+ deliveries/day
• Zero setup fee, zero monthly minimum, zero commission

Leicester’s compact geography means 80%+ of orders fall inside the 3–6 km tier. Average delivery cost: around £4.20.

Side-by-side: same restaurant, same order

Let’s take a real example — a £30 Leicester order, delivered 4 km away.

On this one order, switching from Deliveroo to MealShift saves £6.00 — which goes straight to your margin, not to a platform.

Scale that up to a typical Leicester takeaway doing 40 orders/day, and the math gets dramatic:

• Monthly commission paid to Deliveroo at 30%: ~£10,800
• Monthly MealShift delivery cost at £4.20 avg: ~£5,040
• Net monthly saving: ~£5,760
• Annual saving: ~£69,000

The catch (being honest)

The apps aren’t only charging commission for nothing. You’re paying for:

1. Discovery — the apps put your restaurant in front of new customers
2. Branding — some customers genuinely trust “Deliveroo” more than a restaurant’s own site
3. Payment handling — they take card risk, chargebacks, refund disputes

A commission-free delivery partner doesn’t replace those three things. What it replaces is the commission bill on orders you already earned — your regulars, your repeat customers, your WhatsApp list, anyone who already knows your name.

That’s usually 50–70% of a Leicester restaurant’s order volume. It’s also where nearly all the unnecessary commission spend hides.

What we recommend for Leicester restaurants

Don’t rip out Uber Eats on day one. Do this instead:

1. Add a “Order Direct” link on your website and inside every bag you send out.
2. Sign up with MealShift (or another commission-free partner) for direct-order deliveries.
3. Give direct customers a 10% discount — funded by the commission you’re now not paying.
4. Keep the apps for discovery of new customers only.

Within 90 days, most restaurants see 40–60% of orders moving direct. That’s where the savings compound.

Book a pricing call

Want the exact Leicester numbers for your postcode, order value, and volume? We’ll run the calculation on a 15-minute call — no pitch, just the numbers.

👉 Book a free 15-min call →

[email protected] · 020 7149 8996

FAQ

Is MealShift cheaper than Just Eat’s marketplace (14%) model? On most order values above £25, yes. Below £15 the margins are tighter — we’ll model it on a call.

What if I have a quiet week? You pay nothing if you have no deliveries. There’s no monthly minimum, no standing fee.

How do orders get to MealShift from my website? We integrate directly with most ordering platforms. Orders flow automatically — no manual copy-paste.

New guide: What a real food delivery partner actually does — the 2026 guide for UK restaurants. Covers commission maths, marketplace self-delivery tiers, and how to pick a partner that doesn’t own your customers.

Ask any independent florist what the hardest part of the job is, and it won’t be the arrangements. It’ll be getting them to the customer intact, on time, on the right day.

Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, funerals that happened that morning — these aren’t “delivery convenience” situations. They’re high-emotion, time-critical, can’t-go-wrong moments. And most national delivery apps are built for cold pizza, not fresh flowers.

Here’s why the big-app model doesn’t work for florists in 2026, and what small flower businesses in London, Leicester and across the UK are doing instead.

The generic delivery apps are built for restaurants

When you hand a bouquet to an Uber, Deliveroo or Stuart rider who just finished a KFC run, a few things go wrong:

1. Bag-only delivery. Riders typically use insulated food bags. A £60 hand-tied bouquet does not fit, and does not survive, a 20-litre thermal pouch.
2. No vertical transport. Arrangements in water need to stay upright. A rider on a moped doesn’t have a flat, stable surface.
3. No card or wrap protection. A handwritten card taped to the wrap gets crumpled or lost.
4. Generic “delivered” photo. For a funeral or anniversary, you need proof-of-delivery that looks professional.
5. App branding everywhere. The customer’s “moment” arrives with an Uber Eats receipt notification. It breaks the whole experience.

And on top of all of that, you’re paying 25–30% commission for a service that wasn’t designed for your product.

What a proper florist-delivery partner looks like

A dedicated local courier partner — the model we run at MealShift for our florist clients in London and Leicester — is built on four principles:

1. Purpose-fit vehicles. Bouquets travel upright in secured boots or cargo bikes, not in pizza bags. Larger arrangements (hospital flowers, funeral tributes, corporate events) go in vans.

2. Per-delivery pricing. You pay a flat fee per drop — typically £5–£9 in London, £4–£6 in Leicester — not a percentage of the bouquet value. A £120 wedding bouquet costs the same to deliver as a £30 birthday hand-tie. Your margin on high-value arrangements stays intact.

3. Brand-neutral handover. Customer gets a delivery confirmation that says the florist’s name, not “MealShift” and not “Uber”. The flowers arrive in your packaging, with your card, looking like they came directly from your shop.

4. Proper proof-of-delivery. Photo of the arrangement in-situ, GPS timestamp, signature on request. The kind of documentation you need when you’re delivering to a hospital ward, a funeral home, or an office reception.

The commission math — why this matters for florists specifically

Florists operate on tighter margins than most food businesses because:

• Flower stock is perishable (typical shrinkage: 10–15%)
• Labour per arrangement is high (skilled hands, not just an assembly line)
• Average order value is higher — which means higher absolute commission losses

A florist doing 20 arrangements a day at £45 average order value has £900/day in revenue.

• On Deliveroo/Uber Eats at 30% commission: £270/day gone. That’s £8,100/month.
• On a per-delivery partner at £6/drop: £120/day, £3,600/month.
• Monthly saving: £4,500. That’s a full-time junior florist salary, every single month.

What our florist clients tell us

Our flower-shop clients — from small independents to specialist event florists — consistently report three things:

1. Fewer damaged deliveries. Because drivers are handling arrangements, not burgers.
2. Higher-value orders going through. Customers trust that a £100+ bouquet will actually arrive in the state they paid for.
3. Repeat corporate business. Offices, hospitals, hotels — these buyers care more about reliability than novelty. A per-delivery partner with a clean record wins those contracts.

What doesn’t change

We’re not pretending commission-free delivery solves everything. You still need:

• A good ordering page (your own website, a Floom store, or a simple Shopify)
• Clear cut-off times for same-day delivery
• A realistic geographic catchment

But the cost structure changes completely — and that’s where most independent florists need help first.

Is MealShift right for your flower shop?

We work with florists across London (Zones 1–4), Harrow, Edgware, Leicester, and select other UK cities. Our florist setup includes:

• Per-delivery pricing (no commission, no monthly minimum)
• Dedicated same-day slots (morning, afternoon, evening)
• Vertical-transport-equipped drivers
• Full photo proof-of-delivery
• Your branding on every confirmation

If you’re running a flower shop and bleeding commission to the big apps — or still doing deliveries in your own car — there’s probably a better setup for you.

Book a 15-minute call

👉 Book a free consultation with Said, MealShift’s founder →

[email protected] · 020 7149 8996

FAQ

Do you cover Valentine’s Day / Mother’s Day surge? Yes. We book extra driver capacity for major flower holidays — but we cap new client signups 3 weeks before to guarantee service.

Can you deliver to hospitals and care homes? Yes, with proof-of-delivery to reception.

What’s the minimum weekly order volume? No minimum. We work with florists doing 5 deliveries a week and florists doing 500.

Do you provide vehicles for large installations (weddings, events)? Yes — case-by-case, usually vans for installations above 20 arrangements.

New guide: What a real food delivery partner actually does — the 2026 guide for UK restaurants. Covers commission maths, marketplace self-delivery tiers, and how to pick a partner that doesn’t own your customers.

If you run a takeaway in Harrow — anywhere from South Harrow up to Kenton — you’ve had the sales call. “No setup fee. No monthly fee. Just commission on what we deliver.”

It sounds free. It isn’t.

There are three hidden costs the Uber Eats and Deliveroo sales pitch doesn’t mention, and they’re bigger than the visible 30% line.

Hidden cost #1: You don’t own the customer

When a customer orders from your takeaway on Deliveroo, here’s what you receive:

• First name. Sometimes.
• A dropped pin for the delivery address.
• The order contents.

Here’s what you don’t receive:

• Email address
• Phone number
• Full address
• Order history
• Permission to contact them

In 2026, that’s not just an inconvenience — it’s a structural business problem. You can’t:

• Email a customer about your new menu
• Send a WhatsApp to your best regulars when you’ve got a weekend special
• Invite a returning customer to a loyalty programme
• Tell a repeat customer when your opening hours change
• Win them back after a quiet month

Every relationship-building move a local business normally relies on is locked behind a platform you’re paying 30% to use.

Harrow is a tight community. A good takeaway on Kenton Road or Pinner High Street lives on repeat trade and word-of-mouth. If you can’t contact your own customers, you can’t run that playbook.

Hidden cost #2: The “price ceiling” trap

The delivery apps force you to publish your menu prices inside their app. Customers don’t distinguish between “Uber Eats price” and “your actual price” — so whatever you put in the app becomes your effective price in the customer’s head.

Most takeaways respond by either:

• Eating the commission (common in Harrow — we see 25–30% margin erosion on app orders)
• Inflating app prices by 15–20% to cover it (which makes the app listing less competitive and tanks visibility)

Both options are bad. The third option — having your own direct-order page with honest prices, lower than the app — is what’s quietly working in Harrow right now.

On your own page: £10 chicken shish. On Uber Eats: £11.99 chicken shish. Customer who finds you direct: pays less, and you keep the extra margin. Everyone wins except the platform.

Hidden cost #3: Algorithmic visibility dependence

The apps rank you by an algorithm nobody publishes. Your business can go from page 1 to page 3 overnight for reasons nobody explains. We’ve seen it happen to established Harrow takeaways with no warning:

• A competitor starts paying for “sponsored placement”
• The platform tests a new ranking factor
• Your order acceptance rate dips by 2% in a busy week

Suddenly your app orders drop 40%. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just stopped being visible.

When 100% of your digital presence lives inside someone else’s algorithm, you don’t own a business — you own a dependency.

What Harrow takeaways are doing about it

The takeaways making the right moves in Harrow in 2026 are playing a long game:

Phase 1 (months 1–3): Build an owned channel. Your own website, your own ordering tool, your own phone number clearly displayed. Doesn’t have to be fancy — a WooCommerce install plus a delivery partner is enough.

Phase 2 (months 3–6): Redirect traffic. Insert in every app bag: “Order direct next time, get 10% off”. Sticker on the door. Mention on the phone. Loyalty card. Small moves compound.

Phase 3 (months 6–12): Reduce app dependency. Keep the apps for new-customer discovery, not for regulars. Most of our Harrow clients land at 40–60% direct orders by month 6. That’s the percentage of your business that’s no longer paying commission.

Phase 4 (year 2): Grow on owned channel. Email list. WhatsApp. Local SEO on your site. Google Business Profile reviews. Partnerships with local offices and schools. None of these are possible if you don’t have the customer data.

Where MealShift comes in

We’re not a marketplace. We won’t list your Harrow takeaway next to three competitors. We’re the delivery layer underneath your own brand — pay-per-drop, no commission, no lock-in.

Specifically in Harrow:

• Coverage across HA1, HA2, HA3, HA5, HA7, HA8, HA9
• Delivery fees from £4 (volume discounted further)
• Zero commission, zero monthly minimum
• Integrates with your existing ordering tool (or we’ll recommend one)
• Drivers who already know the area — no “finding the back entrance” delays

And two things that change the economics even further:

1. Your customer can fund the delivery. On direct orders, charge a delivery fee exactly the way Uber does. The £2.99 the customer already expects to pay goes to you — not Uber — and it covers most or all of our drop fee. A properly structured direct order costs you effectively zero in delivery.

2. We deliver your app orders too. Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat all offer a “self-delivery” tier where commission drops from 30–35% down to ~12% — provided you handle the delivery. We do. Keep every app listing you have, drop the commission to a third of what you pay now, and the customer’s delivery fee flows back to you to offset our cost. Same order, same customer experience, two-thirds of the commission saved.

Book a free 15-min call

If you run a Harrow takeaway and you’ve had the creeping sense that the apps are running you rather than the other way around, let’s talk.

👉 Book a free 15-minute consultation →’

[email protected] · 020 7149 8996

FAQ

Won’t I lose customers if I scale back on Uber Eats? No — because you’re not scaling back on acquisition. You’re scaling back on paying commission for customers who are already yours.

How do I actually capture customer data from direct orders? Any modern ordering tool (WooCommerce, Shopify, specialist restaurant platforms) captures email and phone by default. Just make sure your checkout asks for it.

What if my current website can’t take orders? We can point you at low-cost ordering plugins (most are £10–£30/month). Setup is typically under a week.

New guide: What a real food delivery partner actually does — the 2026 guide for UK restaurants. Covers commission maths, marketplace self-delivery tiers, and how to pick a partner that doesn’t own your customers.