Takeaway.com 101: the essential guide for restaurants

Founded in the Netherlands in 2000, Takeaway.com specializes in online food ordering and home delivery. In 2020, the company merged with Just Eat to form Just Eat Takeaway.com, one of the leading global online food delivery companies.

Just Eat Takeaway.com operates in 20+ countries, with its subsidiary Takeaway.com serving Belgium, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Portugal and Romania.

If you own a restaurant and are considering signing up with Takeaway.com, here’s everything you need to know about this online food delivery marketplace.

How does Takeaway.com work?

Unlike most of its competitors, Takeaway.com's business model focuses mainly on restaurants making their own deliveries. 

Does that mean restaurants without a delivery service cannot join the platform? No, because Takeaway.com does offer logistics for select restaurants without a delivery fleet.

With this hybrid model, Takeaway.com wants to ensure that its customers have the largest variety of restaurants from which to choose.

Here’s how ordering at Takeaway.com works:

• A hungry customer places an order via their local delivery site or mobile app

• Takeaway.com facilitates the ordering and payment process, forwarding the order to the restaurant

• The restaurant prepares the meal and makes the delivery, or a Takeaway.com driver will occasionally pick up and deliver the order.

• Alternatively, sometimes consumers can collect their meals themselves.

How can restaurants sign up?

Joining Takeaway.com is free of charge. The registration process is fairly straightforward, and onboarding usually takes no longer than a few days:

• Head to Takeaway.com and click the “Sign up a restaurant” link in the footer

• Fill out the form with your name, address, restaurant name, and contact info

• Takeaway.com will get in touch with you to help you upload your menu and get your restaurant online

• Once your restaurant is listed on Takeaway.com, you can start receiving orders. 

When you receive an order via the Takeaway.com website or app, you’ll receive it either on your ‘Takeaway Box,’ the delivery company’s own POS receipt printer, or directly in your own POS system.

In the “Integrating your online orders to your POS will help you excel” section of this article, we will give you more info about receiving Takeaway.com orders directly in your own point-of-sale system.

Fees and commissions 

As we mentioned above, listing your restaurant on Takeaway.com is free. However, like most third-party delivery service providers, Takeaway.com charges restaurants a commission for orders placed through their marketplace.

Commission percentages range from around 8 to 12%, depending on which country your restaurant is located in. Restaurants that use Takeaway.com’s logistics to fulfill their delivery orders pay higher commission rates that may range between 20 and 25%.

Takeaway.com also charges fees for specific services provided to restaurants, including:

• Promoted placement in the app

• Sales of merchandise and packaging

How can restaurants rank high on Takeaway.com?

Takeaway.com uses several ranking parameters the order to determine in which restaurants are shown on its website or mobile app. These include:

• The restaurant’s distance from the consumer

• The restaurant’s quality score, based on its customer reviews

• The restaurant’s popularity score: the number of orders processed by the restaurant

• Newly joined restaurants are temporarily ranked higher in the app (around 1 week)

• Takeaway.com’s paying “TopRank” promoted placement, a service that lets restaurants pay to improve their ranking

While you cannot change your restaurant location, you can work on several things to improve your quality and popularity scores.

Integrating your Takeaway.com orders with your restaurant’s POS system streamlines the ordering process, improving your staff's efficiency and allowing you to use your time and resources more efficiently. 

A POS integration will help you to improve customer satisfaction thanks to:

• Increased order accuracy: your staff no longer has to copy orders to your point of sale as this process becomes fully automated, eliminating order mistakes 

• Improved delivery times: with a POS integration, incoming orders can be automatically accepted, sent to the kitchen, and printed, ensuring a smooth preparation process and increasing speedy delivery times

• Larger order volumes: automating the online order flow gives you more time to focus on what matters most - preparing exceptional food

Integrating your online orders to your POS will help you excel

Connecting your Takeaway.com sales channel to your existing point-of-sale system helps you manage your orders more efficiently. It aggregates all your orders from other online ordering platforms onto one screen.

Additionally, an all-in-one POS integration solution like Deliverect Restaurants lets you sync your POS menu with its platform, allowing you to easily create, edit, and publish your online menus across all your third-party online food delivery platforms.

Takeaway.com supports integrations with various POS players in its operating countries, including unTill, Lightspeed, Countr, Trivec, ICR Touch, and many more. 

Advantages and drawbacks

 Partnering with a third-party delivery service like Takeaway.com helps restaurants reach new customers and appear in more searches and on more screens.

Restaurants can benefit from Takeaway.com’s ready-made infrastructure, such as its secure online payment systems, order tracking technology, marketing network, and loyal user database.

However, Takeaway.com takes a commission for every order made via its platform, which can be challenging for restaurants operating on low margins.

One thing is sure: each restaurant needs to evaluate the pros and cons of working with a delivery partner such as Takeaway.com individually, as no restaurant business is the same.