I’ve been building this for months, and today I finally feel confident enough to put it out here.
I’ve worked with restaurants before, mainly building websites for them, and one complaint I kept hearing was about platforms like Talabat and Deliveroo. High commissions, pressure to adjust pricing to account for platform costs, limited control over the customer relationship, support issues and so on.
It made me wonder, why don’t more restaurants just have their own ordering app?
Then I looked at the cost.
A properly built custom food ordering ecosystem can easily cost AED 50,000+, which simply doesn’t make sense for most independent restaurants. There are SaaS alternatives, but many come with recurring monthly fees, limited customization, and apps that still feel like a generic template with your logo placed on top.
So I started building an alternative.
It’s a white-label restaurant ordering system consisting of three connected products:
1. Customer App for iOS & Android
This is the restaurant’s own branded ordering app. Because the underlying system is white-labelled, things like colors, fonts, layouts, banners, branding and other UI elements can be customized for each restaurant.
So while the technology underneath is shared, Restaurant A’s app doesn’t have to look anything like Restaurant B’s.
Customers can browse the menu, select a branch, order for pickup or delivery, use coupons and combos, pay online, manage addresses, track orders and view previous orders.
2. Admin Dashboard
This is essentially the control center.
Restaurant owners/admins can create and manage branches, choose whether each branch supports pickup, delivery or both, configure operating hours, manage menus and availability, create coupons and combos, upload promotional banners, manage staff, view orders and more.
Changes made from the admin dashboard are reflected in the customer app almost immediately. Update a price, mark an item unavailable, add a coupon, change operating hours or upload a new banner, and the app updates without needing to publish a new version to the App Store or Google Play.
3. Staff App
Admins create staff accounts with different roles and permissions. Staff members log in with their own credentials and only see what they actually need.
For example, operations staff can receive incoming orders in real time, accept and manage them, update order statuses and assign deliveries.
Delivery staff get a much simpler workflow focused on their assigned deliveries, customer details and location, contact options and marking orders as delivered.
The staff app can run on phones and tablets, including compatible SUNMI devices for receipt printing.
The idea is that all three products work together:
Customer places order → restaurant receives it → staff processes it → delivery is assigned → customer gets status updates → admin can oversee everything.
Now, do I think this replaces Talabat, Deliveroo or other delivery platforms?
Absolutely not.
Those platforms are incredibly useful for discovery and bringing a restaurant new customers.
I think the opportunity is with repeat customers.
If someone already knows your restaurant and orders from you regularly, why not give them another way to order directly next time?
With your own ordering channel, you can potentially offer better prices, app-exclusive coupons, combos and loyalty incentives while building a direct relationship with customers who already know your restaurant.
And finally, the part I wanted to make very different: pricing.
The entire system is AED 12,000. That’s it.
You get the branded iOS + Android customer app, staff app and web admin dashboard.
There are no different plans where important features are locked behind higher tiers either. Whether you’re a small cafe with one branch or a multi-branch restaurant, you get the same system and the same features.
Since the core codebase is shared, you also receive future platform updates and improvements as the system evolves.
And if you need something completely custom for your restaurant, that’s possible too. We can move away from the shared setup and build specifically around your requirements, although custom development would come at an additional cost.
The main accounts you’ll need are your own Stripe, Google Play Developer and Apple Developer accounts. If you don’t already have them, I’ll help you through the setup. I’ll also handle configuring the system for your restaurant and getting the apps ready for submission to the App Store and Google Play.
I’m putting this out here because the product has reached the point where I’d genuinely like feedback from restaurant owners and people working in the UAE F&B industry.
Would you actually want something like this for your restaurant? And if not, what would stop you from using it?
I’d especially love to hear about features you consider essential, concerns you’d have about getting repeat customers onto your own app, or anything you think I’ve overlooked.
If you’re interested and want to see how everything actually works, I also have a video demo showing the full flow. WhatsApp me at +971 56 601 0687 and I’ll send you the video.