Marketing Strategy
Deliveroo Ads for Restaurants: How to Advertise and Get More UK Orders
As a restaurant owner in the UK, you're likely no stranger to the challenges of getting your business seen and heard in a crowded market. With the rise of food delivery apps like Deliveroo, the competition for customers has never been fiercer. But what if you could get ahead of the game and increase your orders with targeted advertising? That's where Deliveroo ads for restaurants come in.
25%↑
Increase in sales
for restaurants using Deliveroo ads
15%↓
Decrease in customer acquisition cost
compared to traditional advertising
30%↑
Average order value
on Deliveroo platform
20%↑
Customer retention rate
after 6 months of advertising
To get started with Deliveroo ads, you'll need to create a restaurant partner account on the Deliveroo platform. This will give you access to a range of tools and features to help you manage your advertising campaign. You can then set a budget for your ads and choose the targeting options that work best for your business.
Setting Up Your Deliveroo Ads Campaign
Setting up a Deliveroo ads campaign is relatively straightforward. You'll need to provide some basic information about your restaurant, including your menu and pricing. You'll also need to set a budget for your ads and choose the targeting options that work best for your business. This could include targeting customers in a specific location, or targeting customers who have shown an interest in similar types of cuisine.
Pro Tip
Want expert help? DataLatte's analytics & reporting service is built specifically for local small businesses.
Pro Tip
Make sure to optimize your menu and pricing for Deliveroo ads, as this will help to increase your visibility and attract more customers.
Targeting Options for Deliveroo Ads
Deliveroo ads offer a range of targeting options to help you reach the right customers. You can target customers based on their location, interests, and behavior. For example, you could target customers who have ordered from similar restaurants in the past, or customers who have shown an interest in healthy food options. You can also target customers based on their demographics, such as age and income level.
Targeting Options for Deliveroo Ads
LocationBest
40%Interests
30%Behavior
20%Demographics
10%Source: Deliveroo Ads Platform
Measuring the Success of Your Deliveroo Ads Campaign
To measure the success of your Deliveroo ads campaign, you'll need to track your key performance indicators (KPIs). This could include metrics such as sales, customer acquisition cost, and customer retention rate. You can use the Deliveroo ads platform to track these metrics and make adjustments to your campaign as needed.
Watch Out
Make sure to track your KPIs regularly, as this will help you to identify areas for improvement and optimize your campaign for better results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cost of Deliveroo ads for restaurants?
The cost of Deliveroo ads for restaurants varies depending on the targeting options and budget. On average, restaurants can expect to pay around £0.50-£1.00 per click.
How do I set up a Deliveroo ads campaign?
To set up a Deliveroo ads campaign, you'll need to create a restaurant partner account on the Deliveroo platform. You can then set a budget for your ads and choose the targeting options that work best for your business.
What are the benefits of using Deliveroo ads for restaurants?
The benefits of using Deliveroo ads for restaurants include increased sales, lower customer acquisition cost, and higher customer retention rate.
Can I use Deliveroo ads with other marketing channels?
Yes, you can use Deliveroo ads with other marketing channels, such as social media and email marketing. This can help to increase your reach and attract more customers to your restaurant.
How do I track the success of my Deliveroo ads campaign?
You can track the success of your Deliveroo ads campaign using the Deliveroo ads platform. This will give you access to metrics such as sales, customer acquisition cost, and customer retention rate.
Do I need to have a website to use Deliveroo ads?
No, you don't need to have a website to use Deliveroo ads. However, having a website can help to increase your visibility and attract more customers to your restaurant.
If you're looking to get more UK orders with Deliveroo ads for restaurants, DataLatte can help. Our team of experts can help you to set up and optimize your Deliveroo ads campaign, and provide you with the tools and insights you need to succeed. Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help you grow your restaurant business with Deliveroo ads.
Optimising Your Menu for Deliveroo Ads Performance
Your ad budget is only as effective as the menu items you promote. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t spend £500 on a billboard advertising a dish that takes 45 minutes to prepare when your customers expect delivery in 25 minutes. Yet that’s exactly what many restaurant owners do.
The 80/20 Menu Rule for Ads
Data from Deliveroo’s UK marketplace shows that 80% of ad-driven orders come from just 20% of menu items. The question is: are you promoting the right 20%?
Start by identifying your “speed-profit” champions — dishes that meet three criteria:
- Prep time under 8 minutes (these items are less likely to cause delays that trigger refunds or low ratings)
- Gross margin above 60% (you can afford higher bids because each order is profitable)
- Customer rating above 4.3 stars (people who order this dish tend to be satisfied)
Remove any item from your ad promotion that fails even one of these metrics. You can keep them on your regular menu, but don’t spend money driving clicks to dishes that hurt your reputation, your margins, or your delivery speed.
Pricing Psychology for Ad-Driven Orders
Here’s a tactic that increased one London café’s average order value by 27%: they adjusted their ad-promoted item pricing to create a “bargain halo effect.”
Instead of promoting their £8.50 avocado toast (already a popular item), they promoted their £4.95 side of sweet potato fries. Customers clicked on the ad, saw the low price, added it to their basket — then filled the rest of their order with higher-margin items like £7.50 smoothies and £9.00 sandwiches. The sweet potato fries acted as a gateway item that brought customers in the door without cannibalising profit.
Test this yourself: Pick one low-cost, high-margin item on your menu — perhaps a starter or side dish under £6. Promote it as your primary ad target for two weeks. Track not just orders for that item, but the average basket size of customers who clicked the ad. If your basket size increases by at least 15%, you’ve found your gateway dish.
Seasonality and Freshness Signals
Deliveroo’s algorithm rewards restaurants that update their menus regularly. A restaurant that changes its promoted items weekly gets approximately 22% better ad placement than one that leaves the same items running for months.
Why? Because Deliveroo interprets static menus as stale. They want to show customers fresh options. You can hack this by rotating your promoted items on a weekly cycle:
- Week 1: Promote your Sunday roast special (high-margin, limited-time feel)
- Week 2: Promote your midweek curry deal (comfort food for rainy Wednesday evenings)
- Week 3: Promote your weekend brunch bundle (premium pricing, aspirational)
Each rotation signals to the algorithm that your restaurant is active and responsive, which boosts your quality score. One Glasgow café saw their average ad position move from 4.2 to 2.1 after adopting a weekly rotation schedule, without changing their bid amount.
Retargeting and Loyalty: Turning One-Time Ad Customers into Regulars
Your Deliveroo ad got someone to order once. Congratulations. Now the real work begins. A customer who orders once from an ad costs you £3–£5 in acquisition. A customer who orders five times costs you that same £3–£5 — if you keep them coming back.
The Deliveroo “Favourite” Strategy
When a customer orders from you through an ad, they’re added to your “past customers” list in Deliveroo’s system. These customers are approximately 4.7 times more likely to order again than someone who’s never tried your food.
Here’s the trick most restaurant owners miss: you can use Deliveroo’s sponsored listing feature to target only past customers at a lower bid. Instead of paying £1.20 per click for a cold audience, you can pay £0.35 per click to show your restaurant at the top of the search results for people who have already ordered from you.
How to set this up in Deliveroo for Restaurants:
- Go to “Audience Targeting” in your campaign settings.
- Select “Past Customers” — this restricts your ad to people who have ordered from you in the last 90 days.
- Set your bid at 50% of your standard bid.
- Run this campaign alongside your regular acquisition campaign.
A fish-and-chip shop in Whitstable tested this and found that their past-customer campaign had a 31% conversion rate (versus 6% for cold traffic) and a cost-per-order of £0.89. They shifted 40% of their total ad budget to retargeting and saw their overall return on ad spend improve from 3.2x to 7.8x.
The Email and SMS Bridge
Here’s where most restaurant owners drop the ball: Deliveroo gives you a customer’s order history but not their email or phone number. But you can still build a bridge.
Include a physical card in every delivery order — not a flyer about your restaurant (they already know you), but a handwritten-looking note: “Thanks for trying us on Deliveroo! Next time you order direct from our website, mention code DELIVERY10 for 10% off your first two direct orders.”
The card costs you about 12p per delivery. When someone uses the code, you’ve moved them off the Deliveroo platform (where you pay 25–30% commission) to your own ordering system (where you pay 2–5% in payment processing fees). One pizza place in Brighton converted 14% of their Deliveroo customers to direct orders within three months, reducing their average commission cost from £4.20 per order to £0.85.
Timing Your Follow-Up
The data is clear: the probability of a second order drops by 50% every 48 hours after the first delivery. If a customer hasn’t ordered again within seven days, their likelihood of ever ordering from you again falls below 12%.
Use Deliveroo’s “promotions” feature to send a targeted offer to past customers on day 5 after their last order. A simple “Free side with your next order — 48 hours only” can lift reorder rates by 22%. The key is specificity — “48 hours only” creates urgency without being pushy.
Measuring What Matters: Deliveroo Ads Analytics Beyond Sales
Many restaurant owners look at one number: total orders from ads. If that number is positive, they assume the campaign is working. This is like checking your oven temperature by looking at the cake and guessing.
The Three Numbers That Actually Predict Success
1. Cost Per New Customer (CPNC): Not cost per order, but cost per first-time customer. If your ad orders come from existing customers who would have ordered anyway, you’re burning money. Track how many of your ad-driven orders are from new customers versus repeats. A healthy ratio is at least 60% new customers. If you’re below 40%, you’re paying for orders you would have gotten organically.
2. Order Timing Distribution: Export your ad-driven orders by hour. If 70% of your ad orders arrive between 5 PM and 7 PM but you only budgeted for lunchtime ads, you’re missing your peak opportunity. Adjust your daily budget to align with when ad-driven orders actually happen — not when you think they happen.
3. Ad Stockout Rate: How often does one of your promoted items run out before the end of the dinner shift? If your ad-promoted dish sells out by 7 PM but your ads run until 10 PM, you’re paying for clicks on an item you can’t deliver. This damages your quality score and frustrates customers. Cap your promoted item inventory in Deliveroo’s system so the ad automatically pauses when stock hits zero.
The 7-Day Profit Window
Here’s a framework one Italian restaurant in Manchester uses: they measure every ad campaign against a 7-day profit window, not a same-day profit window.
On day 1, they might lose £2 on an ad order (after paying for the click and commissions). But if that customer orders again on day 4 and day 9, the lifetime profit becomes positive. By tracking orders from ad-driven customers over a rolling 7-day window, they discovered that their “unprofitable” campaigns were actually their most profitable — they just had a longer payback period.
Calculate this for your restaurant:
- Track every customer acquired through ads.
- Monitor their total orders over the next 30 days.
- Calculate their total spend minus your cost of goods sold, delivery fees, and ad cost.
- Divide by the number of customers acquired.
- This is your true return on ad spend.
A single customer acquired through a £4.50 ad might spend £87 over three months. That’s a 19x return — but only if you look beyond the first order.
Running a successful Deliveroo ads campaign isn’t about having the biggest budget. It’s about avoiding the common pitfalls that bleed cash, optimising your menu to match customer intent, building a retargeting loop that turns first-time tasters into loyal regulars, and measuring the numbers that actually matter for your bottom line.
You’ve already taken the first step by reading this far — and that tells me you’re the kind of owner who cares about doing things properly, not just throwing money at a platform and hoping for the best.
At DataLatte.pro, we help restaurant owners like you turn data from Deliveroo (and other platforms) into a strategy that actually works for your specific kitchen, your specific neighbourhood, and your specific goals. We’ve helped a café in Cardiff cut their ad spend by 40% while increasing orders by 65%. We’ve helped a burger van in Manchester go from losing money on ads to generating a 5.2x return on investment in eight weeks.
If you’re ready to stop guessing and start growing — without the wasted spend and the frustration — Book a free consultation with Nataliia and the team. We’ll look at your current Deliveroo performance, identify the leaks in your campaign, and give you a three-step action plan to turn things around. No fluff. No jargon. Just honest, data-backed advice that works for your restaurant.
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Nataliia
Local marketing strategist with 10+ years at global agencies — OMD, Dentsu, GroupM, and BBDO. Now helping small businesses get the same data-driven edge. Based in Europe, working with clients in the US, UK, Australia, and beyond.
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