Activating Your Existing Customer Base

Every direct order goes through your TypeMenu dashboard — which means you have the customer's email or phone number for every order you have ever taken on the platform. Aggregators do not give you this data. The moment a customer orders direct, they become a person you can contact again at zero marginal cost.

In TypeMenu, your customer list lives in the dashboard under Customers. You can export it to CSV and feed it into any email or SMS tool. Tools like Mailchimp (free up to 500 contacts), Brevo, or MailerLite are more than sufficient for a typical independent. For SMS, Klaviyo, Brevo and Twilio all support UK shortcodes and long codes.

Before you send anything, two ground rules: only contact people who have either bought from you or actively opted in (your direct customers have done the first); and always include a one-click unsubscribe. UK PECR and GDPR rules are strict about marketing communications, and breaking them costs more than any campaign earns.

Most independents either send no marketing email at all or send too much, too generic, too often. The middle ground is straightforward: send when you have something specific and useful to say, never out of a sense of obligation.

A monthly cadence is the safe default. Once a month, a short email that previews what is new — a menu change, a seasonal special, opening hour adjustments, a holiday menu — with a clear order CTA. Subject lines that work tend to be specific and concrete: "Lamb shoulder is back on the menu" beats "October newsletter" every time.

The campaigns that consistently earn their place:

• New menu launches. Photograph the dish, write three sentences about it, point at the ordering page. Send the same day the dish goes live.
• Seasonal moments. A roast for Sunday in autumn, a sharing menu for the festive period, a vegan option for January. These give you natural reasons to email without inventing them.
• Re-engagement for lapsed customers. Segment customers who have not ordered in 60-90 days and send them a single, friendly message with a small incentive ("10% off if you order before Sunday"). Re-engagement campaigns consistently outperform almost everything else by ROI.
• First-order follow-up. Automated, sent 24-48 hours after a customer's first order. "Thanks for trying us — here is 10% off your next order, valid for 14 days." This single automation is often worth more than all your other campaigns combined.

Keep emails short — three or four sentences plus a clear button. Long restaurant newsletters get skimmed and binned. The customer is on their phone, deciding in five seconds whether to tap through.

SMS is the most invasive channel you have access to. A text message lands on the lock screen, gets read within minutes, and feels personal in a way that email does not. That is also why it is the easiest channel to ruin a relationship with — one too many promo texts and customers opt out for good.

Use SMS sparingly — once every six to eight weeks, at most. Reserve it for moments where the immediacy actually matters: a one-day-only offer, a sold-out dish coming back, a notice that today is the last day for festive pre-orders. The rule of thumb is "would a friend text me about this?" — if the answer is no, do not send it.

Format that works:

The "Reply STOP" line is not optional — UK PECR requires every marketing SMS to include an opt-out mechanism, and your SMS provider will enforce it. Use a short trackable link if your tool supports it, so you can see the click-through rate.

The customers ordering from you through Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat are your customers — you just do not have their contact details, because the aggregator sits between you. The single most effective way to convert them is a printed insert that goes into every aggregator order leaving your kitchen.

A small printed card, one side, four lines of copy and a QR. The economics are straightforward: each aggregator order costs you 25-35% in commission. Convert that customer to direct ordering and you keep almost all of that back. Even a 5% conversion rate over six months pays for the entire print run many times over.

Three things make this work. Be honest about why you are asking. Customers respond to candour about fees. Give them a reason — money off, free delivery, a free side — for switching. Without an incentive, they will not bother. Make it feel like a request, not a complaint. No aggregator-bashing. The aggregator got them to you the first time; the goal is just to make sure the second order does not.

Insert in every aggregator order. Track redemptions of the discount code over the following months — that gives you a real conversion rate. Most operators are pleasantly surprised by how high it is.

The single biggest mistake operators make with their customer list is sending one campaign, seeing modest results, and abandoning the channel. Activation works by accumulation. A customer who ignores three emails might tap through to the fourth because that is the week they were already thinking about ordering. A customer who threw away two aggregator inserts might use the third when there is a small queue at Deliveroo.

Treat your customer list as a long-term asset. A monthly email, an occasional SMS for genuinely time-sensitive moments, an insert in every aggregator order. Over a year, that compounds into a meaningful shift in your channel mix — and every percentage point you move from aggregator to direct ordering is real margin back in your pocket.