Should a Peebles takeaway use the delivery apps?
Carlton Scott | Scottish Borders Business | 8 October 2026
Use them for customers you would not otherwise reach, and price for them separately. The platforms charge around 30% commission on orders they deliver, or 14% plus VAT where you deliver yourself, so an app order at the same menu price as a collection can earn less than half the margin. In Peebles the profitable core is the direct trade: commuters on a Friday night, weekend visitors and the riders coming off Glentress. The apps are the top-up.
Glentress and the Tweed Valley Forest Park hold some of the best mountain bike trails in Britain minutes from Peebles High Street, and they deliver customers in waves you can set a watch by, coming off the hill muddy and wanting hot food fast. The John Buchan Way starts in Peebles and sends day walkers off towards Broughton and back, weekend day trippers fill the High Street whenever the sun appears, and behind all of it sits one of the most prosperous local populations in the Borders: Edinburgh commuters and comfortable retirees who will happily pay for quality on a Friday night. Peebles gives you the demand. The work is keeping the margin.
How much commission does Just Eat take from my takeaway?
Around 30% on orders Just Eat delivers and 14% plus VAT where you deliver yourself, on Just Eat’s own published rates, and a May 2026 guide to reducing Just Eat commission puts the all-in cost of a marketplace order at 25% to 31% of the sale once fees and promotions are counted. On a £20 order that is £6 gone before the food, and on a £45 family order it is £13.50. Know what each channel earns per order, because a shop that treats a marketplace order like a collection is paying to be busy.
Is it worth having my own ordering website instead of Just Eat?
For your regulars, yes; for finding new customers, keep both. A direct order carries no marketplace commission, so a £20 order placed on your own site keeps the £6 that a delivered marketplace order gives away, and the 2026 trade guides agree that the aim is to move repeat customers to ordering direct rather than to leave the platforms. Put the web address on every bag and menu, offer a small direct-order incentive, and count the split between direct, collection and app orders each month. In a town where the same commuters order every Friday, the split moves fast.
Should a takeaway in an affluent town charge more?
Usually, yes, and most don’t. Peebles customers compare with Edinburgh rather than with the cheapest counter in town, yet menus here routinely sit below what the market would carry, multiplied across every order, every night. The second expensive habit is a flat rota in a wave-driven town: the weekend surge off the hill and the wet Tuesday trough are both predictable from the calendar and the forecast, and staffing to the average loses money at both ends. Price to the town, staff to the waves, and the same customers make you noticeably more.
What we see in Borders takeaways is that the underpriced menu and the flat rota nearly always travel together, and fixing the first usually pays for fixing the second inside a month.
How do I control waste in a takeaway?
Weigh what goes in the bin for a fortnight, then change the prep list rather than the menu. Most takeaway waste is prepped food that never sold: rice, chips, sauces and salad made for a Saturday that the weather turned into a Tuesday. In Peebles the forecast is the prep list: a dry weekend means the Glentress wave, a wet one means a quieter counter and a busier phone, so set prep to the day, the weather and the trail conditions, and check portions against the costed recipe every week.
How much does a business coach cost in the Scottish Borders?
Between £500 and £3,500 a month plus VAT for one-to-one coaching, depending on the coach’s experience, according to Alan Wick’s May 2026 guide to UK coaching fees, and the bill runs for as long as the coaching does. What moves the price of any advice is how much of the work the adviser does for you: coaching talks you through it, and a fixed-fee diagnose-and-fix piece of work goes through the numbers with you and makes the changes. The Profit Clarity Framework is the second kind: a fixed £1,495 + VAT for 30 days on your takeaway’s real numbers, and nothing after that.
Where can a Peebles takeaway owner get help with the numbers?
That’s exactly what the Profit Clarity Framework™ does: a 30-day diagnose-and-fix process on your real numbers at the fixed fee above, built for owners who are on service every night, and it leaves you with a more profitable takeaway. We’ve set out how it works for the town’s takeaways on our Peebles takeaway page, including how little of your time it takes and what we’d need to start. There’s also an overview of the framework for takeaways, and the same numbers at work in two busier towns in our Jedburgh takeaway article and our Galashiels takeaway article, and the same numbers across the street in our Peebles pub article. Most clients who commit to the framework and follow our recommendations see a full return on the fee within 90 days.
Photo © Iain Lees, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph (geograph.org.uk/photo/8363965)