On a £20 aggregator order you keep roughly £14 without uplift. An 8% uplift claws back about 60% of commission without moving menu velocity. Here's how to price every channel, occasion, time and deal with intent — not by accident.
Every other growth lever takes months. Pricing moves the P&L the day you change it. But most operators set prices once, copy them across every channel, and never revisit — losing 3–6 points of margin to aggregator commission and 2–4 points of AOV to flat deal structures.
The operators who beat the market don't price by gut. They price by four dimensions: who is ordering (channel), why they're ordering (occasion), when they're ordering (time), and how the offer is structured (deal architecture). Get all four right and the same menu earns materially more — without customer backlash.
Each dimension is an independent lever. You can pull them in any order, but the combined effect compounds — a small move on each adds up to a much larger move on the bottom line than a big swing on any single one.
Dimension 1
Your website, your app, and each aggregator has a different cost to serve. Price accordingly. Aggregator items should carry an uplift that claws back a meaningful share of commission; your own channels should be priced to reward loyalty.
Protects marginDimension 2
Delivery, collection and dine-in behave differently. Delivery customers tolerate higher pricing because the convenience premium is real. Collection customers are more price-sensitive. Dine-in carries the highest margin because there is no fulfilment cost.
Grows AOVDimension 3
Quiet Tuesday lunches need different pricing to Saturday-night peak. Early-bird discounts, happy hours, and off-peak collection deals smooth demand and fill kitchen capacity that would otherwise sit idle.
Smooths demandDimension 4
Deals are a pricing tool, not a discount. A well-built meal deal lifts AOV by £3–£6; a poorly-built one cannibalises full-price sales. Bundle high-margin items with staples. Never discount hero items that would sell anyway.
Protects mixEvery channel has a different take rate. Price them the same and you hand margin to the channel taking the most. The goal isn't to make aggregator customers pay more for the same food — it's to stop cross-subsidising Deliveroo and Uber with your own-channel customers.
Illustrative numbers for a typical UK takeaway: ~30% aggregator commission, ~1.5% card fees on own-channel, ~4% payment fees on aggregator. An 8% uplift on aggregator items recovers ~£1.60 per £20 order — roughly 60% of the commission gap — with no measurable impact on order volume at most price points.
This is what a simple, defensible pricing strategy looks like on a single hero item. Your website and app are priced identically — they're both your direct channel. Aggregators carry a consistent uplift. Dine-in can stay at menu price because there's no fulfilment cost.
| Menu item | Dine-in | Web / App | Aggregators | What you keep on £20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large pepperoni pizza | £18.95 | £18.95 | £20.50 (+8%) | £15.60 via aggregator £18.40 direct |
| Chicken tikka masala | £11.95 | £11.95 | £12.95 (+8%) | £9.85 via aggregator £11.60 direct |
| Cod & chips | £9.50 | £9.50 | £10.25 (+8%) | £7.80 via aggregator £9.20 direct |
Andromeda maintains a single master menu for every site. Channel-specific pricing is applied automatically — you don't maintain three menus, you maintain one menu and a simple rule. Update a price once; every channel updates within minutes.
A deal is a pricing instrument. Good deals lift AOV by bundling items a customer wouldn't have bought on their own. Bad deals discount items the customer would have bought anyway. The difference is worth 3–5 margin points at the chain level.
Lift deal
Bundles a £2 side and £1.50 drink onto the main at a £1 discount. Customer adds £3+ to the basket; you keep ~£2 incremental margin. The main would have sold anyway.
Lift deal
Encourages larger order sizes on quiet nights. The dessert is a tiny cost-of-goods item with high perceived value — perfect bundle inclusion.
Leak deal
Discounts items the customer would have bought anyway. Trains the customer to wait for the deal. Attracts cherry-pickers, not regulars.
Leak deal
Your best-selling item doesn't need a discount. Discount a slow-moving item instead — you drive trial and protect the hero's margin.
Every deal in Andromeda is a first-class object — start/end dates, channels it applies to, minimum basket, item exclusions, how it stacks with vouchers. Build it once in the portal; it runs everywhere automatically.
"We added 12% to every item on Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Volume didn't move. Margin went up 4 points across the group. It's the single most profitable Tuesday afternoon we've ever had."
— Regional franchisee, 9-site pizza chain on AndromedaMost won't. Aggregator apps show items in isolation — customers don't cross-reference your website. Across thousands of sites on Andromeda running uplift, we see no measurable impact on order volume at uplifts up to about 12%. Above that, volume starts to soften. 6–10% is the sweet spot for most operators.
Partially — and that's the point. Aggregator commission is a cost of serving that channel, just like packaging, delivery bags and higher food cost from portion control. Every other cost gets reflected in the price; aggregator fees should too. You're not profiteering — you're normalising margin across channels.
Andromeda applies time-of-day and day-of-week pricing automatically at the till, the app, the website and the kiosk. Staff see the same item at the correct price for the time it's ordered — no manual adjustment, no forgotten promotions. Prices flip themselves.
No aggregator uplift. Operators are paying 25–30% commission and charging the same price as their own website. The fastest profit increase most operators can make in a single afternoon is applying an 8% uplift across aggregator items. It takes about 20 minutes in the portal.
Quarterly at a minimum. Aggregator commission rates change, card processing fees change, food cost changes, and customer behaviour changes. Treat pricing like a quarterly financial discipline — not a one-off setup you did two years ago.
Yes. You can set minimum prices per item per channel — deals, vouchers and loyalty redemptions are automatically capped at the floor. You never accidentally sell an item below cost because a stack of promotions piled up.
Our commercial team runs through your current pricing with you on a call — channel uplift, deal audit, occasion pricing — and shows you where the margin is currently leaking. No slide deck. No obligation.
Book a pricing review