How The Regency Club, an established Harrow restaurant, beat 30% commission
How The Regency Club — an established Harrow restaurant — cut commission and owned their customer base
An established Harrow restaurant — not a chain, not a delivery-only brand. The Regency Club has been running with MealShift for over a year now. 60%+ of their orders flow through their own website (with MealShift handling every drop) and they pay a fraction of what they used to in commission. Here’s the playbook they used.
The Problem
Every regular customer cost 25–35% in commission
Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat charge between 25% and 35% on every order — including the regulars. For a busy independent restaurant, that commission stack quietly becomes the single biggest line item on the P&L. Most don’t see it until they tally it at year-end.
The Regency Club had the same problem most established Harrow independents have: they could see the money leaving but had no way to stop it. The apps owned the customer relationship, the data, and the algorithm deciding whether the restaurant was visible that week.
The Numbers
What a busy Harrow restaurant doing real volume actually looks like
Customer-specific volume and revenue figures are not shared. Savings figures are based on the difference between standard platform commission (30%) and what the Regency Club actually pays today.
The MealShift Solution
Pay per drop. Keep the customer.
- Zero commission on direct orders — pay a per-delivery fee instead, starting from £4.95, with volume discounts up to 20% off as monthly volume grows.
- Verified drivers already delivering in Harrow daily — no recruiting, no training, no insurance headaches.
- Customer relationship stays with the restaurant — orders flow through the Regency Club’s own website, under their own brand.
- App orders still served at reduced cost — we deliver Uber Eats/Deliveroo/Just Eat orders too, dropping platform commission from 30%+ to ~12% via the self-delivery tier.
The honest math
How a 60/40 direct-vs-marketplace split rewrites the cost base
The Regency Club’s order channels today split roughly 60% direct / 40% marketplace. Each channel has a very different cost profile:
- ~60% direct orders (their own website, customer orders directly): commission 0%. Customer’s delivery fee typically covers MealShift’s drop fee. Net cost to the restaurant: effectively zero per order.
- ~40% marketplace orders (Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Just Eat) on the self-delivery tier: commission drops from 30% to ~12% because MealShift handles the delivery. Customer’s marketplace delivery fee partially covers our drop fee.
- MealShift drop fees: from £4.95 per drop, with rates that vary by zone and distance. Volume discount of up to 20% off applies at this scale.
The blended effective rate works out to roughly 12–14% all-in across all channels — vs 30% on the standard platform model. That’s a delivery cost-base cut of more than half. For an established restaurant doing serious volume, that delta translates into £5,000+ per month staying in the kitchen — comfortably £60,000+ a year of margin that would otherwise be in San Francisco.
And the bigger prize: 60%+ of their orders now belong to the Regency Club, not to Uber. Their email list, their reorder strategy, their next-menu announcement — all of it sits on the restaurant’s side of the equation.
The Results
What The Regency Club gets from MealShift
- Over 12 months running with MealShift — proven, not a trial
- 60%+ of orders now flow through the Regency Club’s own website — direct customer relationship, zero commission
- Remaining 40% kept on Uber/Deliveroo/Just Eat self-delivery tier — ~12% commission instead of 30%+
- MealShift handles all deliveries — direct + marketplace — under one operation
- Blended commission cost cut by more than half vs the standard 30% platform model — from ~30% standard down to ~12–14% all-in
- ~£5,000+ per month saved vs the standard platform model (after MealShift drop fees + reduced marketplace commission)
- ~£60,000+ per year — money for staff, equipment, and growth
- Launched a fully-branded direct delivery service with zero driver-hiring effort
- Faster, more reliable deliveries — our Harrow drivers know HA1–HA9 backwards
- Customer database stays with the Regency Club, not the apps
— Rahul Sharma, The Regency Club
The Bigger Picture
Why this works for any Harrow restaurant
The Regency Club isn’t unique — they’re an example of what happens when an established independent restaurant stops paying commission on their regulars. Most Harrow restaurants and takeaways doing 20+ orders a day have the same opportunity: keep the apps for discovery, run direct ordering for everyone else, pay-per-drop for the delivery.
Our coverage across HA1, HA2, HA3, HA5, HA7, HA8, HA9 means most Harrow postcodes are inside a single zone-priced drop, with delivery typically completed in under 30 minutes from pickup.
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