Services · Mobile app development · Food delivery apps
Codeeo provides food delivery app development in the UK for restaurant chains, franchise groups, dark kitchen operators, grocers and food brands that trade in more than one city. We build customer apps, kitchen and dispatch tools and a central admin system that respects the differences between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, from hygiene rating schemes to calorie rules. The result is one platform your head office controls, with the local detail each branch needs to trade properly.
Codeeo has no UK office. We work remotely with UK clients, and discovery, design reviews and sprint demos take place by video call with your operations, marketing and finance teams, wherever in the country they sit. Shared boards, documents and test builds keep everyone looking at the same version.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
Platform capabilities
Running delivery in one town is an operations problem. Running it across the UK is also a data and compliance problem. Menus vary by region and franchisee, each kitchen is registered with its own local authority, England has calorie labelling rules that Scotland does not, and hygiene ratings use two different schemes. Head office needs control without making every branch wait for a central team to change a price.
Custom food delivery app development in the UK is worth it when a packaged ordering tool cannot model that structure. The capabilities below are the ones national operators ask about most. We decide in discovery which belong in the first release and which follow as you roll out to more cities.
One master menu managed by head office, with branch or region level changes to prices, availability and specials. Franchisees edit only what their agreement allows, and every change is logged so brand teams can see who altered what and when. Seasonal menus can be scheduled to go live everywhere at a set time.
Brand consistency across the country without slowing branches down.
Each site record knows which UK nation it trades in. Calorie display can be required for English sites of large businesses, hygiene information follows the correct scheme for Scotland or the rest of the UK, and the allergen data for all fourteen regulated allergens is shown everywhere before purchase.
The right rules applied to the right branch automatically.
Hot takeaway food is generally standard rated for VAT, while much cold food to take away is zero rated, and the treatment can differ between delivery and eating in. Items carry their own VAT settings, set with your accountant, so receipts and finance exports are right from the start.
Clean VAT reporting across every branch and brand.
Delivery zones, opening hours and charges are templated, so opening in a new city means copying a proven setup and adjusting it rather than starting again. New sites can stay hidden until registration and the first inspection are in place. Every food business, including delivery only kitchens, must register with its local authority at least 28 days before trading, and the platform tracks that per site.
New cities launched in a predictable, repeatable way.
Each franchisee or branch manager sees their own orders, menu, staff and payouts. Head office sees everything, with comparisons across regions, so struggling sites are spotted early and successful promotions copied elsewhere.
Clear accountability from head office down to each kitchen.
Tools for directly employed drivers, self-employed couriers or third party delivery partners, configured by region. Job offers, proof of delivery, vehicle records and payment summaries are built to fit the working model your legal advisers have approved.
Delivery that works the same way your contracts say it does.
Cards with Strong Customer Authentication, Apple Pay and Google Pay, gift cards and stored value, and pay by bank through Open Banking for larger orders. Split settlement to franchisees can be handled through a payment provider that supports marketplace payouts. Refunds and chargebacks are traced back to the branch that took the order.
Familiar checkout options with money routed to the right entity.
Account deletion, data export, privacy notices and marketing consent records that satisfy UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. Franchisees get access to only the customer data your agreements permit.
Customer data handled lawfully at national scale.
Screens built to WCAG 2.2, with screen reader labels, scalable text, strong contrast and clear focus order. Under the Equality Act, service providers are expected to make reasonable adjustments, and an accessible app helps you serve every customer. Accessibility checks run on every release, not just at launch.
An ordering app more customers can actually use.
Points, tiers or rewards that work across every brand and branch you run, with the rules held centrally. Campaigns can target a city, a brand or a customer segment, and results are reported back to the marketing team. Points balances survive when a customer moves city.
One loyalty programme that follows customers anywhere they order.
Who it is for
Online food ordering app development in the UK makes most sense for businesses with more than one location, more than one brand, or a structure that packaged tools handle badly. These four situations come up repeatedly, and each leads to a different first release. A single independent restaurant is usually better served by a simpler setup, and we will say so.
You have a proven format in one region and plan to open elsewhere, perhaps crossing into Scotland or Wales. We build the platform around rollout from the start: templated zones, central menus with regional pricing, nation specific settings and reporting by city. Each new opening reuses what already works, and the app is ready before the doors open. Branch managers in new cities get training material and a test build before launch, so staff arrive knowing the kitchen screen.
Rollout is designed in, not bolted on later.
Franchisees need control over their own operations, and the brand owner needs control over everything that touches the brand. We model permissions per franchise agreement, route payments and payouts correctly, and give franchisors reporting across the network. Customers see one consistent app, whichever franchisee cooks their order. New franchisees are onboarded through the admin platform with their own logins, menus and bank details, without engineering work.
Many virtual brands across many kitchens create a matrix of menus, sites and channels. We build the platform to manage that matrix: brand storefronts, kitchen queues by station, marketplace intake where integrations exist, and profitability reporting per brand per site. Each kitchen keeps its own registration and hygiene record in the admin system. Underperforming brands can be paused in one area and kept live in another.
Grocery delivery, meal kits and food brands selling direct to consumers need catalogues, slots, substitutions, subscriptions and age verification at the door for alcohol. Prepacked products need full labels with allergens emphasised. We build for those requirements, and connect stock and fulfilment data so availability is accurate across every area you serve. Delivery slots can be planned by postcode district so vans run full routes.
Grocery and meal kits follow their own rules.
Engagement models
A national platform is rarely a one off project. Most UK clients begin with a fixed scope first release and a pilot city, then continue with a retainer or a dedicated team as rollout proceeds. A dedicated team suits operators with a long roadmap, since the same engineers stay with the product and learn your business. Every model runs remotely, with demos and planning by video call and shared access to boards and test builds. Before you commit, we can review your current ordering stack and say where a custom platform pays off and where existing tools are fine.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
Cross platform customer apps for iOS and Android, a web admin platform, and cloud infrastructure that scales for national peaks such as major football tournaments and Friday nights. Hosting location, payment providers and integrations are agreed with you during discovery.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
The number of brands, sites, nations and integrations in the first release.
A single brand platform with a pilot city is quicker to deliver than a franchise network with split payouts, marketplace intake and grocery catalogues. Integrations with tills, stock systems and accounting software often take longer than the app screens, because they depend on third party access. We set the plan once the first release is agreed, and plan rollout to further cities as separate, predictable phases. Cost follows the same drivers, plus the amount of menu and site data that must be cleaned and migrated.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
Get in touchPROVEN RESULTS
Swift
Kotlin
Flutter
React Native
PostgreSQL
MySQL
MongoDB
AWS
Azure
Docker
GA4
Google Tag Manager
Search Console
Meta Pixel
Looker Studio