Restaurant Delivery Without Your Own Drivers: UK Courier Options and Costs (2026)

You can deliver orders from your own website or app without employing drivers by booking an on-demand courier for each order and paying per delivery. In the UK the networks that sell this to restaurants include Uber Direct, Stuart, Gophr, Deliveroo Express and Just Eat Go. Only two publish a starting price: Stuart from £5.50 per delivery ex VAT and Gophr from £7.50 by bicycle (vendor pages checked 28 October 2026). Below: how dispatch works, what each network publishes, what an employed driver costs in 2026, and how Aexir dispatches partner couriers per order.

How on-demand courier dispatch works

When Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats delivers a marketplace order, the marketplace owns the order, sends its own rider and folds the delivery cost into its percentage. On your own channel the order is yours, so delivery is arranged separately: by your own driver, or by a courier network that sells single deliveries to businesses, often called on-demand or white-label delivery.

1. The customer orders and pays on your website or app and chooses delivery.
2. Your ordering system sends the network a delivery request: pickup, drop-off and the time the food will be ready.
3. The network assigns a nearby courier. Stuart says its Dispatcher estimates preparation times and dispatches couriers “right when the food is ready”.
4. The courier collects and the customer gets a tracking link.
5. The delivery is confirmed (Stuart offers a PIN code or photo; Uber Direct includes proof of delivery) and you are billed for that one job.

Delivery becomes a variable cost: you pay for the deliveries you make and nothing for the hours in between. The catch is that you do not choose the courier, the price per job moves with distance and time, and supply depends on how many couriers the network has in your town.

The UK courier networks that deliver restaurant orders

These networks sell delivery for orders taken on a business’s own channel in the UK. Figures are as each publishes them on its own site; “not published” means the vendor’s pages carry no figure, and we have not estimated one.

Uber Direct

Uber Direct is Uber’s delivery service for orders taken on a business’s own website, app or phone line. Its UK page gives no price. You join through an integration partner, and where you book through a third-party platform, Uber says “that third-party platform provider may collect the fee”, so the price your ordering system charges per job is the one that matters. Alcohol and some other items may be restricted depending on your area.

Stuart

Stuart publishes the lowest entry price here: from £5.50 per delivery on its SMB tier, with “No contract, no commitment” and no minimum volume for SMBs. Its pricing FAQ says prices exclude VAT unless stated, SMBs are billed per delivery, and “off-peak or peak-hour pricing may apply” in some cities or zones. The rate moves with location, volume and transport type, from bikes to cars, and its Dashboard gives an instant quote before you sign up, so price your own postcodes first.

Two details matter for a takeaway. Stuart’s restaurant page lists couriers “from 8am to 11pm, 7 days a week”. And its help centre splits each price into a delivery fee, which carries VAT only when the courier is VAT registered, and a service fee, which carries VAT at 20%.

Gophr

Gophr is a UK same-day courier that publishes “from” prices by vehicle, from £7.50 by bicycle to £26.50 by large van. Its food page describes delivery “in under 60 mins” at the fast end, cheaper later same-day windows and job stacking. That suits catering trays, scheduled office lunches and large orders better than one hot meal across town. Gophr also offers drivers on pay-by-the-hour shifts to cover an in-house fleet; it does not publish that rate.

Deliveroo Express and Just Eat Go

Uber is not the only marketplace renting out its riders for orders on your own channel. Deliveroo Express, previously called Signature, is “a white-label delivery solution integrated into your website or app”, connected by API, and names restaurants and virtual brands among the businesses it is for. Just Eat Go, from Just Eat for Business, offers a “Single fee per order”, also by API. Neither publishes a price, so the practical question is whether your ordering platform already integrates them.

What your own drivers cost in 2026

An employed driver is a fixed cost per hour. From 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour, rising to £13.21 in April 2027. On top sit employer National Insurance at 15% on pay above £96 a week (2026 to 2027), 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday a year, business-use insurance and the vehicle. HMRC’s approved mileage rate for a driver’s own car is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from 6 April 2026, 24p for motorcycles and 20p for bicycles (gov.uk, checked 28 October 2026).

Some takeaways pay self-employed drivers per drop instead. Whether someone really is self-employed depends on how the work is arranged, not what it is called, so read gov.uk’s employment status guidance (gov.uk/employment-status) first.

The driver’s cost is mostly fixed, so it falls per delivery as volume rises and climbs on a quiet night; the courier’s cost follows the orders. Against Stuart’s starting price, a driver on these assumptions only works out cheaper above roughly five deliveries an hour, every hour, before National Insurance and holiday pay: £12.71 spread across the drops plus £2.75 of mileage on each. On 5-mile round trips that means about 23 miles of driving an hour plus handovers, so check whether that pace is realistic in your traffic. Courier quotes above the starting rate for your postcodes lower that line, and so does a driver who preps between runs.

The Uber Eats line is not like for like: that 30%, plus VAT, also buys the marketplace’s audience. The full fee stack is in how much commission Uber Eats takes. For regulars who already know you, delivery on your own channel costs a courier fee, not a share of the basket.

Couriers, own drivers or a marketplace: the trade-offs

Late trading needs its own check. With Stuart’s listed cover ending at 11pm, a kebab shop or pizzeria open past midnight needs a plan for the last hour or two. If courier cover in your town stops before you close, keep a driver for the last stretch, or switch delivery off then and leave collection open.

How to price delivery so it pays

On your own channel you set the delivery fee and minimum order. Do the arithmetic before you switch delivery on: at a £5.50 courier cost, delivery is 46% of a £12 order, 27.5% of a £20 order and 18% of a £30 order. Small baskets are where delivery loses money.

• Set a delivery minimum high enough that the courier fee never swallows the margin.
• Draw zones by real travel distance, not a neat circle, and charge more in outer zones where couriers charge more.
• Pass part of the cost to the customer as a delivery fee shown before checkout; treat the rest as the price of keeping the order off a marketplace.
• Make collection prominent. A collection order needs no courier.
• Compare courier invoices with delivery fee income monthly, then adjust zones and minimums.

Questions to ask before you switch couriers on

1. Does my ordering system request the courier automatically, or do I book each job in a separate dashboard?
2. Who bills me for each job, the courier network or my ordering platform, and at what price?
3. What does a delivery to my usual postcodes cost at 7pm on a Friday?
4. If a courier does not arrive or the food arrives damaged, who refunds the customer and who pays?
5. What hours do couriers cover in my town, including bank holidays?
6. Is VAT charged on the delivery fee, the service fee or both?
7. Are any of my items restricted, such as alcohol?

How Aexir dispatches couriers per order

Aexir is an online ordering system for independent restaurants and takeaways: their own branded iOS and Android ordering app, ordering website and browser till (POS on the Go), for a flat monthly fee at published prices. Aexir has no delivery fleet. In the UK, when a delivery order comes in from your app or website, a partner courier can be dispatched for it from the till, through integrated national courier networks including Uber Direct. It is charged per delivery on top of your subscription, only if you use it. Or use your own driver instead.

• Per-order courier dispatch and tracking on every plan.
• POS on the Go shows live courier tracking, driver details and ETAs, with one-tap driver reassignment.
• Per-branch delivery settings: a radius with fees by distance, a minimum order and a service fee, plus delivery zones drawn on a map in POS on the Go.
• Delivery and collection on every plan.
• Runs alongside Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats without connecting to them, so marketplace orders keep their riders.

UK plans are Web £30 a month ex VAT (ordering website and POS on the Go), Starter £30 (branded app), Plus £40 (app and website) and Pro £50 (app, website and POS on the Go). Card payments are 2.5% + 30p per transaction and additional locations £1 a day each. The price list does not publish a per-delivery courier figure, so ask for the price for your postcodes before you switch courier delivery on. Every plan is on the pricing page.