Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Just Eat algorithm: how to rank first? 🥇

With home delivery becoming a major trend, it's essential for restaurateurs to have all the tools they need to stand out from the crowd on meal delivery platforms.

Although the ranking algorithms are not precisely known and evolve regularly, here's a non-exhaustive list of the main criteria taken into account and some of our tips for appearing on the front line. 🤓

Acceptance, preparation and delivery times⏱

• Acceptance time ✅

The faster you accept the order, the less likely the customer is to change their mind and cancel their order. This also builds customer loyalty and associates your restaurant with principles of speed and flexibility. Platforms favour restaurants that accept orders quickly!

💡 On UberEats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat restaurateurs have the option of activating automatic order acceptance.

• Preparation time ⏳

It's vital that the delivery is made as quickly as possible, so that the user is satisfied and likely to order from your restaurant again via the platform. While you can't control the logistics of delivery, you can reduce the time between when you receive the order and when the delivery driver takes delivery.

How to optimise your preparation time, boost your order acceptance time and reduce your delivery time 🚴

Preparing, labelling and sorting each order, maintaining a clear pick-up area for delivery or assigning the role of delivery order manager to a member of staff are simple gestures that will help you reduce your preparation times.

Good stock management is a factor not to be neglected. It will help you save time on a daily basis and avoid any potential stock-outs in the middle of a shift. Tools such as Toast or Lightspeed can help you with this.

Also, think about optimising the overall layout of your restaurant, starting with the kitchen. If you have several distribution channels (on-site, takeaway, delivery), think about adapting and structuring your space to prepare and package food in the best possible way. You can, for example, dedicate an order collection area, a packing area for delivery, an "on site" or "take away" area, etc.

As mentioned above, some meal delivery platforms feature an automatic order acceptance option. According to a study carried out by Deliveroo, partner restaurants that use this option see their number of orders increase and their order rejection decrease by over 11%.

Customer reviews and ratings ⭐️

Your rating on the platforms is calculated by averaging customer reviews. This is how the platforms can guarantee the quality of your kitchen. Given that your rating is visible in the foreground on the home page, it's perhaps the most important criterion of all.

💡 Don't forget to also take care of your restaurant's Google listing, as many customers carry out a parallel search on the internet to validate their choice.

How to get stellar reviews 🏆

Although the quality of your dishes is the 1st criterion taken into account, there are little tricks that will help you optimise your notes:

• You can slip a personalised note or surprise into the order.
  

Your customers will be touched and remember you. In addition to making them happy, it's also a good way of building loyalty. Add, for example, a small, low-cost product without warning (a cupcake, sweets or the surprise of your choice!).

• Don't forget to ask your customers for their opinion by email after delivery.
  

You can encourage every customer to rate you on the delivery platforms by scheduling an automatic email after each order. If something goes wrong, give out your email address and invite the customer to write to you directly. This will be more personal and reduce your chances of getting a negative review.

• One golden rule: respond to all customer reviews.
  

Even if some of them aren't as positive as you'd hoped, responding to everyone will keep you close to your customers and make them feel important. Of course, this takes time, so you might want to draft ten or so responses in advance, which you can take and adapt according to the scenario.

A bad experience is significantly mitigated when the customer feels listened to and understood. By apologising and inviting them to repeat the experience, you'll usually be able to resolve the situation.

💡 To stack the odds in your favour, offer a discount on the next order. This will enable you to mitigate any dissatisfaction and also create a habit of consumption among the user.

Conversion rate 📈

This is simply the number of people who have placed an order after visiting your Uber Eats, Just Eat or Deliveroo listing. The best way to optimise your conversion rate is to create a strong desire in the consumer who lands on your listing. Here are some of our tips.

Put together your menu with the utmost care and design the perfect menu 🧑🍳

• Limit the choices: don't exceed 20-25 choices. This will help the customer absorb your DNA and speed up the sales process.

• Be synthetic: get straight to the point, describe your dishes simply and effectively. Bear in mind that your customers' time is often limited. You can also play with colours or emojis to guide the customer's choice: green, for example, for fresh food, red for a sense of urgency or to attract attention...

• Use categories adapted to your restaurant: choose a category type that really corresponds to your restaurant, and your menu will make sense to customers. You can choose several categories if they correspond to your restaurant, which will boost your visibility even more. On the other hand, avoid using a category that doesn't correspond to your restaurant: this can create frustration among customers and ultimately harm your brand image.

💡 Using recyclable packaging means appearing in the "Recycling" or "Zero Waste" category on Deliveroo and displaying the "Sustainable Packaging" tag on UberEats.

Dazzle with your restaurant's brand image 😎

• The photo you choose to showcase on platforms should be chosen with the utmost care: web users will make their first assessment from that first glance. You can call in a professional or do it in-house: plan the shoot, take the best angles, think about the right format, lighting... Your photos will have to represent the brand's universe and give desire.

💡 According to a study carried out by Deliveroo, the click-through rate on a menu increases by an average of 6.5% if photos of individual dishes are offered!

Order volume 📃

The more volume you've generated in the past, the more likely you are to generate volume in the future. In this way, Uber Eats and Deliveroo naturally highlight restaurants with a consistent history of orders placed on their platform.

There's a catch to this: when a new restaurant signs up, it's very difficult to be visible quickly. That's why adopting an intelligent strategy of promotional offers and sponsored ads will enable you to gain significant visibility while optimising your margins. We'll tell you more at the end of this article.

Direct search 📲

Direct search means that a customer types your restaurant's name directly into the aggregators' (UberEats, Deliveroo, Just Eat) search bar. This demonstrates that your restaurant is known and recognized, enabling the platforms to attract new customers.

On this subject, one of the best ways to generate direct search is to stay in the minds of consumers to create a consumption reflex at the moment of ordering. For this, there's nothing like being active on social networks. We know that Millennials (under 35) account for half the customers of meal delivery platforms. Take advantage of this information and adapt to this clientele.

💡 The video format is the most effective on networks: Viewers retain 95% of a message when watching it on video, compared to 10% when reading text, according to a study by Insivia.

While the above tips are fundamental to improving your referencing in the medium term, there are two tricks that, with the right strategy, will immediately boost your visibility on the platforms while maximising your profitability.

Set up promotional offers 🎁

In restaurants as anywhere else: we like to do business. Customers are fond of promotional offers and, given equivalent criteria, will tend to direct their choices towards restaurants practising them. Well aware of this, platforms logically favour restaurants displaying offers by giving them a visibility boost.

Different types of promotions are possible: percentage discount on the order, percentage discount on a product, free product over a certain amount, Buy1 Get 1 free, discount on the first order... The choice is yours.

Of course, at first glance, promotional offers represent a drop in margin on every order, so it's important to implement an intelligent strategy that enables you to find the best offer at every moment. Used properly, they can boost your profitability by up to 30%.

Be top of mind with sponsored ads 📣

Sponsored ads on Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat are also a great way to increase your order volume, attract new customers and boost your visibility.

In fact, similar to what Google does with Google Ads, the platforms give you access to favourable positions at the top of visibility on inserts reserved exclusively for restaurants wishing to be featured.

How does it work?

→ Start by establishing the budget you wish to allocate.

The budget corresponds to the spending ceiling that a restaurateur doesn't want to exceed for highlighting his point of sale over a given period.

→ Determine the stake corresponding to the maximum price you're willing to pay for a click on your menu.

For each user login, the platforms have a certain number of inserts reserved for the "advertising" highlighting of their restaurant partners. For each of these inserts, the algorithm will automatically search for the restaurant willing to pay the highest price per click to display it. Given that there are thousands of connections, this process repeats itself continuously, leaving a multitude of chances for restaurateurs to be featured.

To put it simply, it's in the form of auctions that your restaurant will or won't be featured. Your restaurant's visibility will evolve according to your bid and budget, compared with those of nearby competitors.

For example, if a restaurant bids £0.50 for a budget of £10, and each click costs £0.50, it will be featured regularly until it reaches 20 clicks (£0.50 x 20 = £10).

Just Eat works slightly differently as restaurants choose postcodes where they want to advertise, and establish a weekly budget without choosing the cost per click price.

Of course, easier said than done! A solution like Flynt will help you set up a personalised strategy of promotional offers and sponsored ads, enabling you to maximise your visibility on platforms while remaining profitable. Open to explore further?