When people look at online ordering platforms for restaurants and takeaways, mobile apps often feel like an obvious requirement. Many providers lead with them. Your logo, your colours, your own app sitting in the App Store — it sounds like a badge of legitimacy.
So when we say we don’t sell mobile apps, the assumption is usually that it’s a limitation.
It isn’t. It’s a deliberate decision, based on how these apps actually work in practice and what they mean for businesses over time.
The problem most people don’t see at the start
Most food ordering apps are not built specifically for one restaurant. They’re a single product that’s rebadged, recoloured and published repeatedly. From a distance that doesn’t matter much — the customer sees your name and your logo — but underneath, the app belongs to the vendor.
That becomes important the moment you want to leave.
Once customers have installed an app, that app becomes the route between them and your business. If you ever change platform, there is no clean way to move those customers with you. The app remains on their phones, tied to a service you no longer control. You can’t update it, redirect it, or repurpose it.
At that point, you’re no longer choosing the best tool for your business. You’re choosing the least painful way to avoid losing customers. That’s vendor lock-in, and it’s a risk that tends to appear years after the decision was made — when it’s hardest to undo.
Mobile doesn’t mean “app”
It’s true that most food orders happen on mobile. That part isn’t up for debate. People order from their phones because it’s convenient, immediate and familiar.
What often gets conflated is mobile usage and native apps. They are not the same thing.
A fast, well-designed, mobile-first storefront already delivers the experience customers expect: touch-friendly layouts, quick loading, clear menus and a simple checkout. This is how the modern web works, and it’s how people use it every day without thinking about it.
Treating mobile devices as first-class citizens doesn’t require a separate product living in an app store. It requires designing properly for the device that customers are actually using.
The perceived benefits of apps don’t really hold up
Authentication is often cited as a reason for having an app. In reality, modern web storefronts already handle this well. Customers can create accounts, stay logged in, and return without friction. If you’ve ever visited a site and found yourself still signed in weeks later, you’ve experienced the same behaviour people associate with apps.
Push notifications are another common argument. In food ordering, their value is limited. Customers aren’t tracking a parcel over several days — they just want to know their order was accepted and when it will be ready. Email and SMS already do that reliably, and a clear confirmation page does the rest. The experience is immediate and predictable without asking customers to install anything.
Who apps really benefit
White-label apps make a lot of sense for vendors. They create stickiness. Once installed, they reduce churn and make it harder for businesses to leave, even if the service no longer fits.
For restaurants, they usually mean less flexibility. You’re sharing a cloned experience with hundreds of others, constrained by what the platform supports and when it decides to change. Customisation is shallow, integrations are limited, and evolution happens on someone else’s timeline.
That trade-off is rarely obvious at the beginning, when everything is new and working. It becomes clear later, when your business has changed and the platform hasn’t kept up.
Ownership is the difference
When your ordering experience lives on the web, it’s linkable, searchable and accessible everywhere. Customers know where to find you, and that doesn’t change if you switch providers behind the scenes.
Most importantly, your relationship with your customers remains yours. It isn’t mediated by an app you don’t control and can’t take with you.
That’s why we’ve chosen not to sell mobile apps. Not because they’re impossible, but because they introduce long-term risks that outweigh their short-term appeal.
We’d rather build mobile-first storefronts that are fast, reliable and flexible — and let businesses grow without locking them into decisions they’ll regret later.
TL;DR
We don’t sell mobile apps because they lock restaurants into vendors, not because they improve the customer experience.
Most “branded” food apps are just rebadged clones. Once customers install them, the app becomes the route to your business — and if you ever leave the platform, you can’t take those customers with you.
Almost all food ordering already happens on mobile, but that doesn’t require a native app. A fast, mobile-first web storefront delivers the same experience without the long-term risk. Login persistence, order confirmations, and notifications all work perfectly well on the web.
Mobile apps make vendors sticky.
Mobile-first storefronts give businesses control.
We’ve chosen the latter.