How to increase takeaway sales: 25 tactics that work in the UK

Short answer: To increase takeaway sales, work on four levers at once. Get more orders by being easy to find at 6pm. Get bigger orders with combos, add-ons and a free-delivery threshold. Get people ordering more often with a WhatsApp list and loyalty. Then keep more of each sale by moving regulars from delivery apps to your own commission-free ordering page.

This guide gives you 25 practical tactics, sorted by lever. It also includes a worked £ example for a typical UK takeaway and a 30-day plan you can start this week. It's written for pizza shops, curry houses, chippies, kebab shops, Chinese takeaways and burger bars, and most of it works for cafés and restaurants too.

The quickest win on this list is #19: a commission-free ordering page for your regulars.

Create your free ordering page

The takeaway sales formula

Every takeaway's sales come from three numbers:

Sales = number of customers × orders per customer × average order value

What you keep depends on a fourth number: the cost of each channel. A £22 order through a delivery app where the app delivers can cost you £7.92 in commission and VAT. The same order on your own ordering page costs about 53p in card fees.

So "how to increase takeaway sales" really means four jobs:

Find your weakest lever first. If your order count is fine but customers spend £15, start with bigger orders. If you have lots of one-off customers, start with "more often".

More customers: get found and chosen (tactics 1–7)

1. Win the 6pm Google search. Most takeaway decisions happen on a phone, a few minutes before ordering. Keep your Google Business Profile complete: hours, menu, order link, phone and at least 10 recent food photos.

2. Collect reviews every week. A takeaway with 300 reviews at 4.6 beats one with 12 reviews at 4.9. Put a Google review QR code on bags you send out and on the counter.

3. Be open when others aren't. Many independents close on Mondays or shut early on Sundays. If demand is there, opening those hours can bring in customers who had no other choice. Test it for a month.

4. Check your delivery area. Too small, and you miss nearby estates. Too big, and food arrives cold. Use delivery zones with different fees for near and far. Menuthere has basic delivery zones on the Free plan, and zones with different fees on Lite and above. Our delivery fee calculator helps you price them.

5. Use delivery apps for discovery, at the lowest tier you can. Apps bring new customers you'd never reach. If you have drivers, Just Eat charges 14% + VAT and Uber Eats 13% + VAT, against 30% + VAT when the app delivers. Compare all three in our Just Eat vs Deliveroo vs Uber Eats guide.

6. Photograph your best sellers properly. Menus with good photos sell more. Shoot your top 10 dishes in daylight and use the same photos on Google, your ordering page and the apps.

7. Do a door drop, done right. A printed menu through local letterboxes still works for takeaways, especially near new-build estates. Add a QR code that goes to your own ordering page and a first-order code so you can count the results. For design, start with our takeaway menu templates.

For 48 more ideas on getting found, read our restaurant marketing ideas.

Bigger orders: raise your average order value (tactics 8–14)

8. Build combos around your best seller. "Large pizza, side and a 1.5L drink" for one price. Combos make the choice easy and add an item most people wouldn't have picked.

9. Ask "add a drink or dessert?" every time. On the phone, at the counter and at online checkout. Set up add-ons and extras on your ordering page so the prompt appears automatically. Menuthere supports sizes and add-ons on every plan, and you can tag allergens and calories on each dish so customers order with confidence. See add-ons and choices.

10. Set a free-delivery threshold. "Free delivery over £25" nudges a £21 order up to £25. Pick a threshold about 15–20% above your current average order. Menuthere lets you set both a minimum order value and a free-delivery threshold at checkout.

11. Offer sizes, and make the middle one the best value. Most people avoid the cheapest and the dearest. A clear "regular, large, family" ladder pushes them to the middle or up.

12. Add a family or sharing bundle for weekends. Friday and Saturday orders are often for several people. A "feeds 4" box makes ordering easy and raises the basket.

13. Trim your menu. A long menu slows decisions and spreads your kitchen thin. Cut dishes that rarely sell and give the space to profitable best sellers.

14. Review your prices with real numbers. Ingredient prices move fast. Use our GP calculator to check each dish's gross profit, and remember that hot takeaway food carries 20% VAT (VAT on takeaway food guide). Card surcharges are banned for consumers in the UK, so build card fees into your prices.

More often: turn first-timers into regulars (tactics 15–19)

15. Build a WhatsApp list with permission. Ask at the counter, on the phone and at checkout: "Can we WhatsApp you our weekly special?" Keep a record of who agreed, and make opting out easy.

16. Send one weekly message that sells. "Tonight: 2 for Tuesday" or "Curry club Thursday" with a link to order. One message a week is plenty. Menuthere Pro includes WhatsApp broadcasts.

17. Reward the fifth order. A stamp card or digital loyalty points ("every 5th order gets a free side") keeps people choosing you over the place down the road. Loyalty points are on Menuthere Pro.

18. Make reordering one tap. Customers who can reorder in seconds come back more often. With Menuthere's WhatsApp ordering, a regular sends "Hi", taps Order Now and gets updates automatically. This is a Pro feature, and Meta charges per message separately. If you want your own app on customers' phones, the Branded App plan adds one-tap reorders and push notifications for offers. See the restaurant app builder.

19. Give regulars a commission-free way to order. Your own ordering page takes collection and delivery orders from the same menu. Menuthere takes 0% commission. The Free plan covers up to 50 orders a month, and online card payments run through your own Stripe account on Lite and above. See our takeaway ordering system.

Fewer lost orders: stop sales leaking away (tactics 20–23)

20. Stop missing calls on Friday night. Every unanswered call is a lost order, and that customer may now be on an app. Point the phone message and your Google profile to your ordering link so people can order without waiting.

21. Hear every online order. Use loud order alerts on a phone or tablet and print kitchen tickets automatically. Menuthere's partner app rings for new orders and prints to your kitchen printer. See new order alerts.

22. Mark sold-out items straight away. A customer who orders the last lamb bhuna, then gets a call saying it's gone, may not come back. On Menuthere you can mark a dish as sold out in seconds, and switch it back on when it's ready.

23. Fix food that travels badly. Soggy chips and cold naan cost you repeat orders. Vent your chip boxes, separate sauces, and time your drivers. Read your one-star reviews for clues.

Keep more of every sale (tactics 24–25)

24. Know your cost per order by channel. Work it out from your statements every month:

Rates from Just Eat's UK sign-up page and Stripe's UK pricing, checked 11 October 2026. If you're VAT-registered, you can usually reclaim the VAT on app commission. See the full Just Eat commission breakdown.

25. Move a share of regulars to direct, every month. You don't need to leave the apps. Keep them for new customers, and give your regulars a reason and a route to order direct. Even 15% of orders moving makes a real difference, as the example below shows.

Worked example: a UK takeaway doing 1,000 orders a month

A pizza and kebab shop takes 1,000 orders a month at an average of £22. That's £22,000 a month. 600 orders come through a delivery app on the own-drivers tier (14% + VAT, not VAT-registered). 400 come by phone or at the counter.

Here's what three small changes are worth. These are illustrative figures, so use your own numbers.

Total: about £3,700 more in sales and about £475 less in fees a month. Over a year, that's roughly £44,400 extra sales and £5,700 saved in app commission.

If those 150 orders had been on the app-delivers tier (30% + VAT), the saving would be £7.92 − £0.53 = £7.39 per order, or £1,108.50 a month.

Your own page has a plan cost too: US$0 on Menuthere Free (up to 50 orders a month), or US$17 a month on Lite (billed in US dollars; your bank converts it).

Your 30-day plan to increase takeaway sales

Then repeat what worked, drop what didn't, and try two new tactics next month.

Start with the lever that costs you most: app commission on regulars. It's free for up to 50 orders a month, with 0% commission. Want a walkthrough?

Create your free ordering pageBook a demo (opens in a new tab)

How to increase restaurant sales and café sales

The same four levers work for sit-down restaurants and cafés, with different tactics.

How to increase restaurant sales:

• More customers: reviews, Google photos, group and office bookings, gift vouchers.
• Bigger orders: suggest starters and desserts, add a drinks list with clear pairings, offer sharing plates.
• More often: birthday offers, a set lunch, regular events such as a quiz or curry club.
• Faster tables: QR ordering at the table lets guests order drinks and extras without waiting for staff. QR codes are on Menuthere's Free plan.

How to get more customers in a restaurant on quiet nights: run a midweek set menu, team up with a nearby cinema or theatre, host a local group (running club, book club), and post the offer on Google and WhatsApp the same morning.

How to increase café sales:

• Bundle a coffee and pastry at breakfast.
• Run a stamp card.
• Let office workers pre-order lunch for collection.
• Add a second "daypart", such as an afternoon cake and coffee deal.

Mistakes that hold takeaway sales back

• Discounting every night. Customers learn to wait for the deal. Discount quiet nights only.
• Running offers on the app's highest tier. A 20% discount plus 30% commission plus VAT can wipe out your margin on that order.
• No way to order direct. If your Google profile only links to an app, you pay commission on customers who were already looking for you.
• Breaking your app agreement. Check your app agreement before you add leaflets to app bags, and only message app customers if they've given you their details and consent directly.
• Not measuring. Without your cost per order and repeat rate, you can't tell which ideas work.