How Restaurant Groups Can Make Delivery and Takeaway More Profitable

Off-premise has well and truly earned its place at the table. For UK restaurant groups, delivery and takeaway aren't extras anymore. They're a real part of how the business runs and how revenue gets made.

But there's a frustration a lot of operators will recognise. Things feel busier than ever, the orders are coming in, the kitchen is flat out, and yet somehow the profits aren't reflecting any of that effort.

According to the Toast Voice of the UK Restaurant Industry 2025 report, profitability is the single biggest pain point for 48% of UK restaurant leaders. Inflation is still biting for 80% of operators, disposable income is tight, and the promise of off-premise growth can start to feel like a bit of a mirage.

Here's the thing though. Delivery genuinely can work. It brings volume, visibility, and orders you wouldn't otherwise get. The problem is it also brings platform fees, packaging costs, refund headaches, and a whole new layer of operational complexity to manage on top of an already busy service.

The groups that are actually improving their delivery margins aren't the ones chasing the highest order volumes. They're the ones who've stepped back and asked a harder question: is the way we're running delivery actually set up to make us money? And then they've done something about it.

The margin reality behind off-premise growth

Consumer appetite for off-premise is still strong. In the Toast Consumer Preferences on Dining and Restaurants survey, 51% of respondents say they dine out or order from food businesses weekly or more. Off-premise sits right inside that habitual behaviour.

But volume isn't the same as profit, and it's easy to lose sight of that when the orders are flowing.

If your delivery menu has been priced to absorb platform fees without a really clear picture of what each dish actually costs to make, pack, and send out, the margin can quietly disappear. You're growing sales on paper while contribution quietly shrinks in the background. It happens to a lot of good operators.

For anyone looking after the finances, the question worth asking isn't whether delivery matters. Of course it does. The real question is whether it's producing clean, measurable contribution once every variable cost has been taken into account. For operations managers, the concern is slightly different but just as important: is delivery creating friction that bleeds back into the dining room and makes everything harder?

The groups that have genuinely turned delivery into a profitable channel didn't get there by discounting their way to more orders. They got there by getting disciplined about how delivery actually works inside their business.

Menu engineering for food that actually travels

It might sound obvious, but one of the biggest levers for delivery profitability isn't marketing or promotions. It's simply deciding what you're going to sell.

The Voice of the UK Restaurant Industry 2025 report found that 57% of UK restaurants have already reduced their menu offerings in response to inflation. And while that's partly about managing costs, it's also just good operations. Fewer items means tighter prep, less waste, and a much cleaner purchasing process.

For delivery specifically, that kind of focus matters even more. Not everything travels well. A dish that performs brilliantly in the dining room can become a liability on the road, especially once you factor in the packaging it needs, the likelihood of it being remade after a complaint, and the refund risk if it arrives looking nothing like it should.

A lot of UK groups are approaching delivery with a bit more intention now. Instead of copying and pasting the entire dine-in menu onto an ordering app, they’re asking a simpler question: what actually works when it leaves the building?

The dishes that consistently perform off-premise aren’t always the flashiest ones. They’re the ones that survive the journey. They stay hot, or crisp, or properly assembled after 30 or 40 minutes in a bag. They can be prepped cleanly when the kitchen is deep in a Saturday night rush. And when someone opens that order at home, it still feels worth what they paid.

That’s where data starts to move from “nice to have” to genuinely useful. Riding House Café, for example, looks closely at product mix by time of day and by site. Seasonal menu tweaks aren’t based on instinct or preference, but on what’s actually selling and contributing. If you’re running more than one location, that kind of visibility matters. It replaces gut feel with something firmer, and when margins are tight, that clarity makes decision-making a lot less risky.

The aim isn't to shrink your menu for the sake of it. It's to make sure every item on your delivery menu is actually pulling its weight.

Packaging: cost centre and brand moment

Packaging often gets treated as a pure expense. In reality, it's both a cost and a perception driver.

From a pure numbers perspective, the question isn't really whether to spend more on packaging. You're spending on it either way. The more useful question is whether the right packaging is saving you enough in refunds, complaints, and negative reviews to justify the investment. In a lot of cases, it absolutely does.

But you can only know that if you can actually see what's happening. If your delivery accuracy rate and refund frequency aren't being tracked at group level, you're essentially flying blind. Packaging becomes something you just spend money on rather than something you can genuinely use to protect your margin. And that's a shame, because for operators who do have that visibility, it becomes one of the more straightforward levers to pull.

Operational design: keeping flows clear without splitting your team

One of the less obvious drains on delivery profitability is operational collision. When off-premise orders peak at the same time as a busy dining room, kitchens bottleneck, tickets pile up, and errors creep in across both channels.

The Toast Voice of the UK Restaurant Industry 2025 report highlights managing multiple service channels as a top technology challenge. But this isn't about adding more tablets. It's about designing clearer flows.

Groups that improve margins tend to do three things differently. They build clearer prep sequencing for delivery items. They use integrated kitchen display systems to cut down on manual entry errors. And they track dispatch times as closely as table turns.

Across multiple locations, visibility becomes critical. Without centralised reporting, it's hard to spot whether one branch's delivery margin is quietly subsidising another's underperformance.

If you're in the middle of a delivery optimisation project, it's worth stepping back to look at how data flows across your group. You can explore how centralised reporting and configuration support operational consistency on our Multilocation Management page.

Balancing third-party platforms with direct channels

Third-party platforms are still a big part of the UK off-premise picture. According to the Toast Voice of the UK Restaurant Industry 2025 report, 49% of operators use third-party delivery or ordering solutions.

For many groups, platform reach is genuinely valuable. The margin challenge comes when platform orders replace direct ones rather than complement them.

High-fee channels can bring in new guests. Direct channels, whether through your own ordering site or a loyalty scheme, are where repeat margin compounds. That's the balance worth building towards.

This is especially relevant given that many diners look for deals when choosing where to eat. Discount-led acquisition without a retention pathway just compresses margin further.

The better you understand repeat order behaviour, the more precisely you can invest in keeping those guests coming back. Delivery analytics including repeat rate and average order value by channel become genuinely useful tools, not just back-office reports.

Accuracy, refunds, and the hidden cost of errors

Delivery errors aren't just frustrating. They're financial leaks.

Each incorrect item can trigger refunds, replacement deliveries, or negative reviews that put a dent in future demand. Yet many groups track gross delivery revenue without fully accounting for error-adjusted margin.

Integrated systems that connect front-of-house, kitchen, and payments help here. Wolfpack, a growing craft beer group, found that removing manual double entry between till and card machine streamlined service and cut unnecessary steps. The same principle applies directly to delivery: fewer manual handoffs mean fewer mistakes.

For operations managers, the key metric isn't just average delivery time. It's the percentage of orders that leave the kitchen correct, complete, and on time.

Labour design in a constrained market

Labour is one of the defining constraints in UK hospitality right now. In the 2026 industry predictions report, 60% of operators expressed concern about labour shortages. Off-premise adds another layer of complexity to rota design.

Delivery can make a shift significantly more intense without a single extra guest walking through the door. And if your rotas have been built purely around in-house demand, which is the case for a lot of operators, the kitchen can really struggle when an off-premise surge hits on top of a busy service. That's when overtime creeps in, people get stretched, and the quality of both channels can start to suffer.

Some groups are finding that the answer isn't just hiring more people. It's thinking differently about the roles they already have. When front-of-house teams aren't tied to a fixed till, whether that's through handheld ordering or integrated payments, they have more freedom to move around, help where they're needed, and turn tables faster. In a model where dine-in and delivery are both running at pace, that kind of flexibility makes a real difference.

It's worth remembering that how you schedule your team is as much a profitability decision as how you price your menu or manage your inventory. It deserves the same level of thought.

Value perception in a price-sensitive market

The Toast Consumer Preferences survey shows over 70% of diners say price is at least quite influential in their restaurant choice. In delivery, that willingness to spend has to be balanced against fee transparency and a sense of fairness. If platform mark-ups feel disproportionate, guests start to reduce how often they order.

A lot of UK groups are finding that the answer isn't to build complicated surcharge structures on top of an already confusing fee landscape. It's actually to simplify. Clear bundles, family meals, or a straightforward set menu give guests something that feels like good value, and they help protect average order value without making people feel like they're being squeezed.

Nobody wants to feel like they're being tricked into spending more. The goal is just to make sure that what the guest perceives as a fair price and what actually works for your margin are pointing in the same direction.

Making delivery a designed system, not a bolt-on

Delivery and takeaway aren’t going anywhere in the UK market. They’re woven into how people eat now. So the real decision isn’t whether to offer them. It’s whether they’re built into your operating model properly, or just sitting alongside it.

The delivery setups that hold their margin are designed to be that way. You can usually tell the difference. The menu has been chosen with travel in mind. Packaging isn’t an afterthought. Reporting actually shows what each channel is contributing. Rotas reflect when delivery really peaks, not when it “should”. And direct ordering isn’t treated as a side project, but as something that compounds over time.

If delivery is going to stay a core revenue stream, it has to work as part of the system. When it does, it stops feeling like a margin compromise and starts behaving like a stable, predictable contributor to the business.