Google Ads vs Just Eat: Where £500 Actually Goes Further

The numbers in this post are illustrative worked examples based on published platform commission rates and our own experience running campaigns for UK takeaways. Your specific numbers depend on cuisine, location, average ticket, ad-account quality and many other factors. We've cited official sources for everything that isn't ours; everything else is framed as "in our experience" or "we typically aim for" — never as a guarantee.

If you run a UK takeaway, two of your largest marketing-related costs probably look like this:

1. Just Eat / Deliveroo / Uber Eats commission. 14–35% of every order, on every order, forever.
2. Google Ads. A monthly spend you control directly, paying for clicks that turn into direct orders or calls.

Most takeaway owners we meet think of these as separate questions — one is "the cost of being on the platform" and the other is "marketing spend." But the right way to think about both is as customer acquisition cost, and once you do, the comparison becomes much sharper.

This post walks through the actual maths on a typical UK takeaway doing £15k/month online.

The Just Eat maths nobody does

Take a worked example: a takeaway doing £15,000/month through Just Eat.

• Gross order value: £15,000
• Just Eat commission: based on Just Eat's published rates,^[1] commission ranges from around 14% (collection / order-only) to about 30% (full delivery). For a typical mixed-mode takeaway we'll use 20% as a working assumption = £3,000/month
• Effective customer-acquisition cost: £3,000 to acquire (and keep serving) those orders
• Per-order acquisition cost: if average ticket is £25, that's 600 orders. £3,000 ÷ 600 = £5 per order

That's the cost. Per order. Forever. Even on customers who order from you 50 times. Even on customers you yourself converted in your shop and then linked to the Just Eat app.

(Deliveroo^[2] and Uber Eats^[3] publish similar fee structures — the directional argument is the same.)

The Google Ads comparison

Now imagine the same takeaway spends £500/month on Google Ads.

• Spend: £500
• Cost per order: in our experience, a properly-optimised Google Ads account for a takeaway sits in the range £5–£10 in most UK areas after the first 4–6 weeks, varying with cuisine, postcode and ad account history. Let's use £7 as a working number for this example.
• Orders generated: roughly £500 ÷ £7 ≈ 70 orders/month at that cost
• Average ticket: £25
• Order value generated: ~£1,750

So far Google Ads looks broadly similar to Just Eat — around £7 to acquire each order. But here's where it diverges:

The lifetime difference

The Just Eat order has commission deducted every single time the customer orders. Forever. The Google Ads order has the £6 acquisition cost paid once — every reorder after that pays you full retail price.

If a Google-Ads-acquired customer orders 5 times in 6 months at £25 each:

• Just Eat lifetime: 5 orders × £25 = £125, with 20% commission = £100 net to you
• Google Ads lifetime: £7 one-time acquisition + 5 × £25 = £125 − £7 = £118 net to you

That's roughly £18 of extra margin per customer, every customer, after the first order.

The exact figure depends on reorder rate, ticket size, and how aggressive the platform commission is — but the direction is consistent. Once you've paid to acquire a customer once via direct marketing, every subsequent order earns full margin. On a platform, you pay every time, forever.

This is why we'd nudge most takeaways towards a mix of platforms (for new-customer discovery) and direct-marketing (for keeping repeat customers off the commission meter). The detail of how much to spend where depends on your numbers, not a blog post — happy to walk through the maths together if it helps.

The honest caveats

The maths above assumes:

1. You have a website that can actually take orders. If your "online ordering" is a phone number on a static page, Google Ads won't help. We typically build a proper ordering site alongside ads — see website design for what that looks like.
2. You have decent conversion rate. Most independent takeaway sites convert at 2–4% on Google Ads traffic. Below 2%, you're losing money on Ads. The fix is usually photography + faster checkout.
3. You don't double-count. Some customers who would have ordered via Just Eat anyway will go direct once they know the option exists. We typically see 20–30% of "ad orders" are partially cannibalised — meaning the true incremental margin is around 70–80% of the headline number. Still very large.
4. Your area has search volume. In a small market town with 200 weekly "near me" searches, £500/month on Google Ads will not work. We'll tell you in the audit.

"But Just Eat brings new customers I'd never reach"

True — and this is why we don't recommend leaving Just Eat. The platform is a new customer acquisition channel with its own discovery surface. The mistake is letting Just Eat keep being the channel through which your existing, repeat customers also order.

The right setup for most independent takeaways is:

• Just Eat / Deliveroo / Uber Eats — for new customer acquisition (worth the commission for first-time orders)
• Direct ordering site + Google Ads — for repeat customers and direct-discovery (paying full margin)
• Local SEO + Google Business Profile — for free organic discovery (the long game)

A common rule of thumb we suggest is something like 40% platform / 50% direct / 10% phone, vs the heavily platform-dominant mix we typically see when auditing independents. Don't take that ratio as gospel — it's a starting point for conversation.

What to do this week

If you're spending £3k/month on Just Eat commission and £0 on direct marketing, you have a margin problem masquerading as a revenue problem. The first £500/month of direct marketing spend (Google Ads + Local SEO + a working website) will earn back faster than almost any other investment in your business.

You don't have to take our word for it. Run the maths on your own numbers — happy to walk through them with you.

Or just keep paying 20% to Just Eat forever. That works too.