Build Your Own Delivery App: Own the Customer

Third-party delivery apps can grow your orders while quietly shrinking your business.

That sounds dramatic, but do the maths. If a platform takes 30% commission (a common figure in UK food delivery), you’re not just paying for “marketing”. You’re handing over margin, brand visibility, and—most dangerously—the customer relationship.

Michael Olaleye, founder of Tasty African Food, learned this the hard way. After starting nearly two decades ago and scaling to a serious UK footprint (27 restaurants, 250+ staff, and £7m revenue), his team still found themselves apologising for late deliveries and missing menu items caused by platform issues they couldn’t control. That pain triggered a smart marketing move: build a proprietary ordering app to own the customer experience.

This post is part of the Startup Marketing United Kingdom series, so we’ll treat this story as what it really is: a UK startup marketing case study in building brand awareness and loyalty by taking back the channel.

Third-party delivery platforms aren’t “marketing”—they’re a tax

If you’re relying on Uber Eats/Deliveroo-style platforms as your main growth engine, you’re paying for customers you don’t get to keep.

Here’s the core problem: third-party marketplaces are designed to maximise their repeat orders, not yours. They want customers loyal to the app, not loyal to your restaurant.

The margin maths most founders avoid

A 30% commission doesn’t just hurt profits; it changes how you price, promote, and invest.

• If your average order is £25, a 30% commission is £7.50 gone immediately.
• Add packaging, labour, ingredients, and delivery complexity—and suddenly your “growth channel” is breaking even (or losing money) on every order.

That forces ugly decisions: raise prices (and look expensive), cut portions (and damage reviews), or reduce quality (and kill retention). None of those are marketing wins.

The brand experience becomes someone else’s UI

Customers don’t experience “your brand” on a marketplace. They experience:

• a generic menu layout
• inconsistent imagery
• the platform’s discount logic
• the platform’s delivery ETA and driver behaviour

So when an order arrives late, the customer remembers your name—but you didn’t control the outcome. Tasty African Food heard this repeatedly: customers blamed them for platform errors such as being marked “closed”, partial menus, or delayed delivery.

A useful rule: If you’re being judged on an experience you can’t control, you’re taking reputational risk for free.

Owning the customer experience is a marketing strategy, not a tech flex

Building your own delivery app isn’t about showing off product chops. It’s about reclaiming the parts of the funnel that actually build a brand.

Tasty African Food’s turning point was asking a blunt question: Why are we letting someone else own the customer experience?

That’s the right question for any UK food business that wants sustainable growth.

What “ownership” really means

When you own the ordering channel, you can control the things that make customers return:

• Full menu visibility (including specials, bundles, and add-ons)
• Storytelling and brand cues (your imagery, your tone, your values)
• Reliability signals (accurate hours, prep time, delivery expectations)
• Customer recovery (easy refunds, make-goods, proactive apologies)

And in marketing terms, ownership means you can run campaigns that aren’t hostage to platform algorithms.

The real asset is data (and platforms keep it)

The most frustrating part of marketplaces isn’t just fees. It’s the lack of insight.

If you don’t know:

• who your repeat customers are
• what they order most often
• how frequently they buy
• what offers bring them back

…you can’t do proper retention marketing. You can’t segment. You can’t personalise. You can’t build a community.

Tasty African Food wanted to build more than a takeaway. They wanted a brand-led movement around West African food. That’s impossible when customer data sits behind a platform wall.

Snippet-worthy truth: A restaurant without customer data is running blindfolded retention marketing.

A practical playbook: how to build your own app without overbuilding

Most UK founders hear “build an app” and think expensive, slow, risky. It can be—if you treat it like a giant software project.

A better approach is to treat it like a marketing channel build. Start with customer experience, then back into features.

Step 1: Design the customer journey before you design screens

Tasty African Food started by mapping the experience they wanted, not copying Uber Eats.

If you’re doing the same, start with three questions:

1. What should the first-time buyer feel? (Confidence? Curiosity? Hunger urgency?)
2. What should a repeat buyer do in under 20 seconds? (Reorder last meal, customise, schedule.)
3. What’s the “brand moment” inside the flow? (Origin story, signature dishes, community impact.)

This prevents the classic mistake: building features nobody cares about while missing the one that drives repeat orders.

Step 2: Launch with a minimum lovable set of features

You don’t need everything on day one. You need the basics to be rock solid.

A sensible v1 for a restaurant ordering app:

• account + checkout that doesn’t break
• accurate opening hours and lead times
• full menu with modifiers (spice level, sides, extras)
• click-and-collect (often easier to operationalise than delivery)
• order status updates

Tasty African Food’s app “wasn’t perfect on day one”, but it was theirs—and that ownership is what allowed them to iterate quickly.

Step 3: Add retention features that marketplaces don’t give you

Once ordering works, move into retention.

Tasty African Food introduced:

• loyalty rewards
• targeted offers
• pre-ordering

Those aren’t “nice-to-haves”. They’re the mechanics of repeat revenue.

If you’re in the UK market, loyalty can be as simple as:

• 9 stamps = 10th meal discounted
• double points on quiet weekdays
• member-only bundles during peak cost periods

The goal: shift customer behaviour in ways that improve margins and predictability.

Step 4: Partner smart (you don’t need a huge dev team)

Tasty African Food partnered with a small tech team aligned to their vision.

If you’re selecting a partner, insist on:

• ownership of your customer data
• integration with your POS/kitchen workflow (or at least a clean order intake)
• reporting dashboards you can actually use
• a clear release cycle for improvements

You’re not buying software. You’re buying a growth channel. Treat it like you’d treat hiring a senior marketer.

The hybrid strategy that works for most UK food startups

Going fully off-platform is rarely realistic at the start. Platforms do provide discovery. The mistake is letting discovery become dependency.

Here’s the approach I’d back for most UK operators:

Keep marketplaces for acquisition—pull customers into your channel for retention

Use Uber Eats/Deliveroo for reach, then give customers a reason to order direct next time.

Practical ways to do that without being spammy:

• Put a direct-order incentive inside the bag (e.g., “Free side on your first app order”).
• Make your direct channel the only place for certain items (family trays, seasonal specials).
• Use click-and-collect pricing that’s visibly better.

Be careful with platform rules and local regulations—but the principle stands: marketplaces are top-of-funnel; your app is where loyalty lives.

Treat your app as a brand hub, not just a checkout

A proprietary delivery app can carry your story in ways marketplaces never will:

• founder story and food origins
• behind-the-scenes kitchen content
• catering and event ordering
• “build your own” bundles for families

For a cuisine with cultural depth—like West African food—this is a marketing advantage. People don’t just buy calories; they buy identity, familiarity, and discovery.

Common questions founders ask (and straight answers)

“When should I build my own delivery app?”

Build when you’ve got repeat demand and you’re paying enough commission that you could fund a direct channel. If 20–40% of your orders come from regulars, you’re already sitting on the audience you need.

“Will customers actually download another app?”

Yes—if you give them a reason. Convenience alone isn’t enough. Savings, loyalty points, faster reordering, and exclusive items are what make it stick.

“Is a website ordering system enough?”

For some businesses, yes. A mobile-first website can outperform an app early on. The real requirement isn’t “app vs web”; it’s owning the customer relationship and data.

What this means for startup marketing in the UK

UK startup marketing often obsesses over acquisition: ads, influencers, platform visibility. The stronger move is building a channel that compounds.

Tasty African Food’s story shows a clean progression:

• marketplaces brought traffic
• traffic exposed structural problems (fees, control, data)
• a direct app improved loyalty, insight, and ability to innovate

That’s not just operational. It’s brand strategy.

If you’re building a food brand in the UK in 2026, you’re competing in a market where consumers are price-sensitive and attention is fragmented. Owning a direct ordering channel is one of the few ways to protect margin while building a loyal customer base.

Your next step: audit how much of your growth is rented (platform-driven) versus owned (direct repeat customers). If the balance is skewed, it’s time to fix the channel mix—before the commissions dictate your future.

What would change in your business if you could identify your top 500 customers and market to them directly every week?