Order­ing food online has nev­er been eas­i­er, espe­cial­ly thanks to food order­ing and deliv­ery giants such as Just Eat, Uber Eats, and Deliveroo.

Accord­ing to the School for Pub­lic Health Research, one in five UK adults eat meals out or order take­aways in each week. Now hun­gry cus­tomers have access to hun­dreds of restau­rants and can order their favourite dish­es with­out get­ting up from the sofa.

But does con­ve­nience come at an inflat­ed cost? Accord­ing to Which? the answer is a resound­ing yes. While it may be super easy to view all the take­away options avail­able to you in one place, it turns out you are pay­ing for the privilege.

Apps such as those men­tioned above tend to add a pre­mi­um, and you could end up spend­ing a lot more than you need to, with many items on the menu being list­ed as more expen­sive than if you order through the restau­rant directly.

Nat­u­ral­ly, col­lect­ing and deliv­er­ing food will come with costs, and these are typ­i­cal­ly passed to the cus­tomer. How­ev­er, research indi­cates that order­ing through apps will set you back sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than if you’d ordered direct­ly, and if you are rack­ing up a lot of dish­es, that extra cost will keep get­ting high­er and higher.

So why are there hidden costs when ordering a takeaway?

The expense is actu­al­ly attrib­uted to restau­rants charg­ing extra for their food deliv­ered via these apps. The restau­rants them­selves pay a com­mis­sion to the apps (which is how the apps make their mon­ey). So in order not to lose out, they make their prod­ucts more expensive.

Restau­rants are charged any­where between 15% and 35% in com­mis­sion for hav­ing access to the plat­forms. While this means more orders for them, they make sig­nif­i­cant­ly less on orders placed via the app, and there­fore feel they must make their prod­ucts more expen­sive. With online food order­ing apps becom­ing the go-to way for most peo­ple to buy when they fan­cy a take­away, many restau­rants have felt pres­sured to join. Choos­ing not to list their menus on here could be mas­sive­ly bad for busi­ness­es. If they want to stay com­pet­i­tive, many feel like they have no choice but to list their take­away ser­vices through these apps and then have to pay the mas­sive com­mis­sion rates — with­out real­ly feel­ing as though they have much choice in the matter.

Delayed deliveries and careless drivers

While no one can ques­tion that these apps are con­ve­nient for cus­tomers, there have been sig­nif­i­cant com­plaints about orders arriv­ing late, food being cold, or leak­ing pack­ages. Miss­ing items are also a com­mon­ly report­ed prob­lem. Try­ing to com­plain and receive a refund or a fresh order can also prove tricky as cus­tomers are passed between the apps and the restau­rants, each pass­ing the buck to the oth­er to resolve the issue (it’s essen­tial to know your rights in these sit­u­a­tions, and a refund should be giv­en direct­ly back to the card with which you paid).

So while order­ing through an app does pro­vide unques­tion­able ben­e­fits, it is vital to be aware of the hid­den costs of doing so. Next time you fan­cy a take­away order­ing direct from the restau­rant may well save you mon­ey, bet­ter sup­port the busi­ness, and, if you do have any com­plaints, they are like­ly to be more sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly resolved too.