Deliverect vs Flipdish: Which Restaurant Technology Platform Is Better?

Deliverect vs Flipdish

People compare these two a lot, which is a bit odd, because they don't do the same job.

Deliverect sits between the delivery marketplaces and your till. Orders from Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo land in your POS or on your kitchen screen instead of on three separate tablets lined up on the counter. That's the main thing it does.

Flipdish is a full restaurant system: POS, direct online ordering, a branded app, kiosks and loyalty. The point of it is to get customers ordering from you directly, so there's no marketplace in the middle taking 30% of the bill.

So the real question isn't which one is better. It's which problem you're trying to fix. If it's tablet chaos, Deliverect fixes that. If it's the size of the commission bill from Just Eat and Deliveroo, Flipdish is the one that goes after it.

What Deliverect does

Deliverect connects marketplace channels to the POS you already have. An Uber Eats order comes in and it shows up on the POS or kitchen screen automatically. Nobody has to re-key it from a tablet, so you get fewer typos, fewer missed modifiers and fewer "where's my order?" calls because something sat unnoticed on a tablet behind the coffee machine.

You can also manage your menu across all the marketplaces from one place. Change a price or mark an item as sold out once and it updates everywhere. Without that, someone is logging into three different partner portals at 7pm on a Friday to switch off the cod because you've run out. Deliverect also gives you order reporting across channels.

The company started in Ghent in 2018 and integrates with a long list of POS providers. That's a big part of why groups who are happy with their existing POS like it - they don't have to change anything at the counter.

What the core Deliverect product doesn't do:

  • take orders directly from your customers
  • run a branded ordering website
  • run a mobile app for your restaurant
  • handle payments on direct orders
  • replace your POS
  • lower what you pay the marketplaces

Deliverect has been adding its own ordering and kiosk products, so if any of that matters to you, ask exactly what's in the plan you're quoted. But most restaurants that buy Deliverect buy it for aggregation, and aggregation doesn't change the commission. Take 100 orders through Uber Eats with Deliverect connected and you pay Uber Eats commission on all 100. The kitchen has an easier night. The margin is exactly the same.

What Flipdish does

Flipdish gives you your own ordering channels. Customers can order through:

These are direct orders. No marketplace takes a cut, and the customer's details come to you, not to Deliveroo.

That last part matters more than people expect. When someone orders through a marketplace, the marketplace keeps their name, email, order history and how often they order. You get a first name and a delivery address. You can't send them an offer on a quiet Tuesday, because you don't know who they are. With direct orders you do.

On top of ordering, Flipdish includes:

Flipdish can bring marketplace orders in as well, so you don't have to choose between growing direct orders and keeping your Just Eat listing.

Feature comparison

FeatureFlipdishDeliverect
POS system✓No (integrates with third-party POS)
Direct ordering website✓Not part of the core aggregation product
Branded mobile app✓No
Self-service kiosks✓Not part of the core aggregation product
Marketplace aggregationAvailable✓
Menu management✓ across all channels✓ across marketplaces
Loyalty programme✓No
AI phone ordering✓No
Reduces marketplace commission✓ (by moving orders to direct)No
UK and Ireland✓✓

POS integration

This is where the two products are most different in practice.

Deliverect assumes you already have a POS and plugs into it. That's handy if you've got a POS you like, or if you're a group with a contract that doesn't end for another two years. The catch is that you now have two companies involved every time an order goes wrong. If a Deliveroo order doesn't print in the kitchen, is it Deliveroo, Deliverect or the POS? On a busy Saturday the answer usually comes after the customer has already complained.

Flipdish is the POS. Online orders, app orders, kiosk orders and orders taken at the counter all go into the same system and onto the same kitchen screen. One menu, one set of prices, one place to mark the cod as sold out. If something breaks, there's one support number to ring.

That doesn't mean you have to rip everything out on day one. But if your POS is old, or you're opening a new site anyway, it's worth pricing up the full Flipdish setup against "existing POS plus Deliverect plus a separate ordering website". The second option is three suppliers and three bills.

The commission problem

A UK takeaway paying 30-35% commission on Just Eat or Uber Eats orders hands over roughly a third of every marketplace order before it has paid for food, staff or rent. On a £25 order that's somewhere between £7.50 and £8.75.

Deliverect doesn't touch that number. It makes the orders easier to handle - fewer tablets, fewer mistakes, less re-keying. The commission is still charged on every order that comes through a marketplace.

Flipdish comes at it from the other side. If customers can find your website, download your app and get a reason to come back, like loyalty points or a discount on their next order, some of them stop ordering through the marketplace. Not all of them. Some people will always open Uber Eats out of habit. But every order that moves to your own channel is an order with no 30% taken off it.

So the payback from Flipdish is partly operational (one POS, one menu, one set of reports) and mostly about margin. The payback from Deliverect is almost all operational.

Can you use both?

Yes. Some restaurants keep Deliverect to handle marketplace orders and use Flipdish to build up direct ordering at the same time.

It's a sensible way to switch over without losing marketplace revenue on day one. The marketplaces are still good at putting you in front of people who've never heard of you. The trick is getting those people to order from you directly the second time - a leaflet in the bag with your app link and a first-order discount does more than you'd think.

If that works, marketplace orders become a smaller share of the total, and the aggregation tool is doing less to earn its monthly fee. At some point it's worth asking whether you still need it, or whether Flipdish's own marketplace integration covers what's left.

Running both also means two contracts, two support lines and two places where your menu can drift out of sync. Fine for a while. Annoying long term.

Pricing

Deliverect charges a monthly subscription based on how many locations you have and how many orders go through it. Pricing isn't published and quotes vary a lot depending on your setup and how many channels you connect.

Flipdish prices the whole platform across POS, online ordering and optional add-ons. If you're currently paying separately for a POS, an ordering website and a loyalty tool, Flipdish often works out cheaper than those three added together.

The subscription isn't really the comparison that matters, though. What matters is what Flipdish costs against what you stop paying in commission.

Take a restaurant doing £20,000 a month through marketplaces at 30% commission. That's £6,000 a month in fees, or £72,000 a year. Move a fifth of those orders to direct ordering and £4,000 a month of sales no longer carries commission. That's £1,200 a month back, about £14,400 a year. Move 40% and it's double. Direct orders still have card processing fees, but those are a small fraction of a marketplace cut.

Deliverect can't produce numbers like that, because it isn't built to move orders anywhere. Its savings come from staff time and fewer mistakes. Those are real, but they're harder to put a figure on, and they don't grow as your order volume grows the way commission savings do.

Which one suits which restaurant

Deliverect makes most sense if you're heavily dependent on several marketplaces and your main headache is operational. Ghost kitchens are the obvious case: several brands cooking out of one kitchen, each listed on two or three platforms, and no shopfront or regular walk-in customers to build a direct channel around. It also suits operators who are happy with their current POS and aren't ready to put time into direct ordering yet.

Flipdish fits better if you want to own the customer relationship and cut what you pay the marketplaces. That's most takeaways and QSRs with a loyal local crowd, the places where the same people order every Friday night. It also suits multi-location groups that want one system running POS, ordering, loyalty and marketing across every site, instead of a separate tool for each job held together with integrations.

A rough test. If your regulars had your app on their phone, would they order from you directly? If the answer is yes, you're paying commission on orders you could be taking yourself.

Where that leaves you

Deliverect is good at managing marketplace orders. It doesn't fix the commission, it doesn't replace your POS and it won't build you a customer list.

Flipdish goes after the cost itself by giving you your own ordering channels. Direct orders mean better margins, customer data you actually own and less exposure to platforms that can raise their rates or change their terms whenever they like.

For UK and Irish restaurants that want to keep more of what they make on delivery and takeaway, Flipdish is the better choice.

See how Flipdish could work for your restaurant at flipdish.com.