Own the Customer: When to Build Your Own Ordering App

Third-party platforms don’t just take commission. They take positioning.

If you’re a UK food business using Uber Eats, Deliveroo, or Just Eat, you already know the obvious trade-off: they bring demand, then charge heavily for it. What’s easier to miss is the quieter cost: you stop learning who your customers are, why they come back, and what would make them choose you first.

Michael Olaleye, founder of Tasty African Food, learned this the hard way. After building a West African restaurant brand over years (and scaling it far beyond a single site), he realised the platforms were increasingly between his business and his customers. Orders arrived late, menus appeared incomplete, restaurants showed as “closed” due to app errors—and customers blamed Tasty African Food, not the marketplace.

For this edition of the Startup Marketing United Kingdom series, I want to treat their story as what it really is: a marketing strategy case study. Not “a tech project”. A decision to own the customer relationship.

Third-party delivery apps: the marketing costs you don’t see

The headline cost is easy to calculate: commissions often hit ~30% per order (and that’s before paid placement, promos, and operational overhead). But from a startup marketing perspective, the real damage is what you can’t easily put into a spreadsheet.

You lose control of your brand at the exact moment it matters

The marketplace UI becomes your shopfront. Your food, service, and reputation are filtered through:

• Platform search ranking and category placement
• Standardised menus and photography templates
• Customer support policies you don’t control
• Driver availability and routing decisions

So when an order arrives cold or late, the customer’s brain doesn’t say, “Oh, logistics partner issue.” It says, “That restaurant messed up.”

Here’s the stance I’ll defend: if you’re building a brand (not just shifting meals), you can’t outsource the last mile of trust.

Your pricing strategy gets squeezed from both sides

Platforms push discounting because it drives marketplace conversion. Restaurants then respond by raising prices on-platform to protect margin—creating a two-tier experience:

• Platform customers see higher prices and feel less loyal
• Direct customers get better value (but you struggle to migrate people)

That dynamic makes it harder to build a clean, consistent pricing strategy—especially for startups trying to establish a premium or specialist position.

You rent demand, instead of building it

Marketplaces are brilliant at demand capture (“I want food now”). They’re weaker at demand creation (“I want your jollof rice every Friday”).

When the platform owns discovery, you’re always one scroll away from being replaced by:

• A competitor offering 20% off today
• A chain with bigger ad spend
• A platform-sponsored “featured” listing

That’s not partnership. That’s dependency.

“The customer isn’t theirs, it’s ours”: why owning data is a growth strategy

Owning customer relationships is not a feel-good principle. It’s a compounding growth advantage.

Olaleye’s frustration mirrors what I see across UK startups: third-party channels provide orders but starve you of insight. If you don’t know who’s ordering, what they love, and when they return, you can’t run modern lifecycle marketing.

What you can do with first-party data (that platforms won’t let you)

Once you collect customer data ethically (with clear consent), you can run growth loops that marketplaces can’t match:

• Repeat purchase programs (loyalty points, stamps, tiered rewards)
• Personalised offers (e.g., “Suya lovers” get an early-week promotion)
• Win-back flows after 21/45/90 days inactivity
• Menu optimisation based on real reorder behaviour
• Local marketing by postcode or delivery radius

Snippet-worthy truth: A platform gives you revenue today; first-party data gives you revenue next month.

The UK startup marketing angle: retention beats acquisition in 2026

Paid social has been volatile, attribution has been messy since privacy changes, and competition for “intent” keywords is expensive. For food and local commerce, that makes retention and direct ordering even more valuable.

A simple benchmark many operators use: if you can increase repeat orders by even a few percentage points, you often outgrow what a new acquisition channel would deliver—because margin on repeat orders is usually higher.

When it actually makes sense to build your own ordering app

Building your own delivery app (or direct ordering experience) isn’t a badge of honour. It’s a business decision that should be triggered by clear signals.

Here are the signals I’d use.

1) You have meaningful repeat behaviour

If you see customers returning weekly or monthly, you’re sitting on retention potential that a marketplace can’t monetise for you.

Quick self-check:

• Do you have “regulars” who’d order regardless of discounts?
• Do certain dishes drive predictable reorders?
• Are you strong in a local area where word-of-mouth matters?

If yes, a direct channel isn’t a gamble. It’s a capture mechanism.

2) Commission is forcing bad decisions

If commissions push you into:

• Shrinkflation (smaller portions)
• Lower-quality ingredients
• Higher on-platform prices
• Fewer staff on busy shifts

…then the channel is changing your product. That’s the red flag.

3) You’re getting blamed for problems you don’t control

Tasty African Food heard customer complaints about late deliveries, missing menu items, and incorrect “closed” status—issues rooted in platform operations.

If customers associate those failures with your brand, you’re paying a reputation tax on top of commission.

4) You want to build a brand, not just a listing

A direct experience lets you tell your story—important for specialist cuisines and independent operators.

A marketplace listing can’t communicate:

• provenance and authenticity
• catering options and event ordering
• community and cultural narrative
• product depth (full menu, seasonal specials)

In startup marketing terms, this is positioning and differentiation. It’s not fluff.

What “building your own app” really means (and what to build first)

Many founders hear “build an app” and imagine a massive engineering project. In practice, the best approach is staged.

Answer first: Your first version should be a direct ordering system with a great experience, not a feature race against Uber Eats.

The minimum viable direct channel (what I’d prioritise)

If you’re designing your own ordering journey, focus on five essentials:

1. Fast reorder (past orders, favourites, one-tap repeat)
2. Accurate availability (no phantom closures, clean stock logic)
3. Clear delivery promises (time windows, cut-offs, pre-order)
4. Loyalty + offers (simple points, targeted rewards)
5. Customer support loop (refunds/credits you can control)

Tasty African Food’s approach—mapping the desired customer experience first, then working with a small tech team—is the right sequence. UX first. Tech second.

App vs mobile web: the practical trade-off

For many UK food startups, a mobile-optimised web ordering experience can outperform an app early on:

• lower friction (no download)
• faster iteration
• simpler SEO and local discovery

Apps shine when you’ve earned the right to be installed:

• high repeat frequency
• strong loyalty program
• push notifications that add value (not spam)

A sensible progression is: web ordering → loyalty capture → app when retention proves it.

How to migrate customers from marketplaces without tanking sales

The biggest fear is real: if you push too hard, you’ll lose marketplace volume before direct orders replace it.

The better play is to treat marketplaces as top-of-funnel and direct ordering as retention.

A migration plan that doesn’t feel desperate

Try a three-layer approach:

• Packaging inserts: “Order direct next time and collect loyalty points.” Keep it simple.
• Direct-only value: not huge discounts—better experience (pre-order, exclusive dishes, bundles for families).
• Post-purchase follow-up: QR code to “save your favourites” or “reorder in 20 seconds”.

The goal isn’t to punish platform customers. It’s to give them a better option.

What to track (so you know it’s working)

If you’re serious about startup growth tactics, measure this like a growth funnel:

• Direct channel share of orders (%)
• Repeat rate (30/60/90 day)
• Average order value (direct vs platform)
• Contribution margin per order (after delivery + payment fees)
• Customer lifetime value (even a basic estimate)

A clear rule: don’t build a direct channel and then fail to market it. The tech is the easy part; the habit change is the work.

The bigger lesson for UK startups: own the relationship, even if you borrow the channel

Tasty African Food didn’t build an app because it was trendy. They built it because third-party platforms had started to distort their brand, pricing, and customer experience.

For founders reading this within the Startup Marketing United Kingdom series, the takeaway applies well beyond food delivery. If your startup depends on any aggregator—marketplaces, app stores, comparison sites, large social platforms—ask one blunt question:

Are we building an audience we can reach tomorrow without paying a toll?

If the answer is “no”, you’re not doing marketing—you’re renting distribution.

Start small: collect consented first-party data, improve the direct journey, give customers a reason to come back, and measure retention like it’s your main growth channel (because for many startups in 2026, it is).

Where would your growth be in 12 months if you owned even 20% more of your customer relationships?