Takeaway deals and discounts not to miss
The UK loves a takeaway and the market value of foodservice delivery in the UK is estimated at around £13.4 billion and rising. Deliveroo is a popular choice, so we’ve explored all the ways you can bring down the cost of your takeaway delivery.
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Look for new customer offers
If you’ve not yet signed up to Deliveroo, make sure you search the web for any welcome offers.
We keep an eye out for the offers too, so you can check for the latest on our takeaway deals page. But you’ll often find the best first order bonuses on cashback sites. If you’re new to Deliveroo, Quidco is offering 3.75% cashback and TopCashback is giving 5.55% (correct as of September 2024).
Join Deliveroo Plus
Deliveroo Plus can save you money on your takeaway deliveries if you’re a regular customer but this subscription does come with a price.
There are two levels of Deliveroo Plus, where you’ll pay £3.49 a month for Silver or £7.99 for Gold. Both will entitle you to free delivery on most orders. The free delivery threshold is for orders over £15 if you’re a Silver member or over £10 if you’re a Gold member.
Watch out though for extra “extended delivery fees” for restaurants further away, as these will be added on even with a membership.
Additionally with the Gold membership, you’ll also get 10% credit back on orders over £30. Both promise exclusive offers and rewards.
You can get a Deliveroo Plus free trial for two weeks on the app, which you can cancel at any time. Once the trial ends, you’ll pay the monthly subscription unless you cancel.
We’ve gone into more details on how Deliveroo Plus works in our review.
Get Deliveroo Plus free via Amazon Prime
You can have one year of free Deliveroo Plus Silver membership if you have Amazon Prime. To access this offer, you can sign up on your Deliveroo app or you can sign up on Amazon. After a year it sometimes renews for free for another year, but do check.
You can pick up a 30-day free trial to Prime every 12 months or so, or pay just £8.99 a month, which could be better for occasional users.
Check your app for offers
Deliveroo has lots of individual restaurant offers that you can find in the offers tab.
The offers include discounts, free items and multi-buy offers, most with a minimum spend.
But watch out for the 50% discount off selected items offers, as although this sounds great, upon closer inspection, one of my local restaurants that offers this, actually only has 50% off an insulated bag and nothing actually off any food!
Pay with an Amex Gold credit card
If you have an American Express Preferred Rewards Gold credit card you’ll get two lots of £5 credit at Deliveroo every month. If you are already ordering twice a month, that’s £120 saved in a year.
When you first get the card you can also earn bonus points worth around £100, as well as four airport lounge passes. It’s also free in the first year – however after 12 months it’ll cost £195 a year, which probably isn’t worth it. We’ve covered how the Amex Gold card works in our detailed review.
Earn cashback
At the time of writing, Quidco is offering 0.75% cashback and TopCashback is giving 1.11%. They’re not big returns, but it takes zero effort to click through a cashback site when you order your takeaway.
If you’re a subscriber to Complete Savings, you can get a better cashback rate of 10% back on every Deliveroo order – but you will be paying a monthly fee.
Deliveroo is also on Airtime, so if you connect your credit or debit card, you can also earn Airtime credit towards your mobile bill when you pay for your Deliveroo order. Here’s our review of Airtime.
Purchase discounted gift cards
Cashback sites like Jam Doughnut and Cheddar offer cashback on gift card purchases and are a really easy way to save money on your orders.
At the time of writing, Deliveroo vouchers have 4.5% cashback on Jam Doughnut, 3% cashback on Cheddar, 2.5% on TopGiftCards, 5% on Snip and 4.5% on HyperJar.
It’s an extra step to do before ordering your takeaway, but the rates are generally better than the traditional cashback sites, so it’s worth the effort to save a little extra on your deliveroo orders.
Extra charges on Deliveroo
Service fee
Deliveroo charges a service fee of 5% based on the order amount before any discounts or promotions are applied, with a minimum charge of 49p and a maximum of £2. If you’re a Gold Deliveroo Plus member, then the maximum you’ll pay is 99p.
Small order fee
When your order total is less than the restaurant’s minimum, Deliveroo will top it up with a fee. To remove the fee, you can add more to your basket. Restaurants that are further away, tend to have higher minimum orders but there’s no hard and fast rule.
Delivery fee
The delivery fee varies based on your location, so you’ll pay less for nearby restaurants. Unlike Uber Eats, you can’t see the delivery fee until you actually click on the restaurant, which can be annoying if you want to use it to help you make a decision on where to order from. That said, if you have a Plus account, then you won’t be paying a delivery fee for most restaurants if you spend over £15 for Silver membership and £10 for Gold.
If you want to order from a restaurant that’s not so local, in most cases expect to pay an extended delivery charge. This varies greatly in cost and again, if you’re a Deliveroo Plus member, you’ll pay less most of the time.
Priority delivery fee
If you want priority delivery so you have your food on your plate in less time, then there’s an additional cost. A quick look at my app and for my area, it appears to always be £2.49.
Top up orders
You can use Deliveroo for grocery deliveries too and even combine it with your takeaway delivery. Top up orders for groceries, may be offered to you after placing a restaurant order without incurring any additional service fees.
If available, you’ll see a timer on the app showing you how long you have to place your additional order. If you do it before the timer reaches zero, the service fee for the second order will be waived saving you between 49p and £2. The minimum order value is still applicable to all these orders, as is the delivery fee.
Is Deliveroo the cheapest takeaway delivery service?
Like I’ve said before, it all depends on where you are ordering from, since the other competitors, Uber Eats and Just Eat, may have better offers on the takeaway you want and vice versa.
But if you’ve signed up for a pay monthly subscription to Plus, then to get value for money, you need to be ordering from Deliveroo frequently.
And always take a look at the ‘Offers’ tab to find all the deals in your area before you order.
Top tips:
1) Don’t use any of these apps as it is just throwing money to the wind – purchase direct and typically save 20% to 30%.
2) Don’t buy too many takeaways as they are junk food and not good for you – once a week is about the limit, arguably too much.
3) After trying it once I no longer use giftcards – you might get 5% off but then you can’t use a vouchers (e.g. 10%-20%) so you actually lose out!
4) Service fees really wind me up – they charge both the restaurant and the customer and do very little for it.
Gosh this is just incomplete advice. Avios app is 7%, but also Monzo is 7%. So 14% right there if you go thru avios and then pay with Monzo. You forgot to mention that airtime rewards only works for VISA cards with deliveroo. So these offers cannot be combined; however, 14% is the best offer right now so this has not been researched at all….hire me? lol.
Or just go out and get it yourself. Or get something at the shop to cook at home.