GloriaFood Alternative: The Best GloriaFood Alternatives Before It Shuts Down
GloriaFood is shutting down
GloriaFood was the free ordering tool that thousands of independent restaurants dropped onto their websites. Oracle bought it, wound down the free tier and started moving users to Oracle MICROS, its enterprise hospitality platform. MICROS wasn't built for a single takeaway or a small restaurant, and it isn't priced for one either.
So if you're on GloriaFood, you need somewhere else to take direct orders, and you'd rather not end up on an enterprise system to get it. Flipdish is the platform we'd point UK and Irish restaurants to. It takes direct orders without commission, and it also does the things GloriaFood never did.
What GloriaFood did, and where it stopped
The pitch was simple. Free online ordering, no commission per order. You put an ordering widget on your website and customers ordered from you instead of from a marketplace that kept a cut. For a lot of takeaways that was enough, which is why it spread.
It stopped there, though. GloriaFood had:
- No POS integration
- Thin reporting and customer data
- No loyalty or CRM
- No way to manage delivery marketplace orders
- No kiosk or in-venue ordering
- A basic mobile app
If you're being forced to move anyway, copying GloriaFood onto another widget just means you do this again in a few years with the same gaps. It makes more sense to pick something that covers what was missing.
What to look for in a replacement
Start with the thing you already had: commission-free direct ordering. Everything else is what you add on top.
| What you need | Why it matters now |
|---|---|
| Commission-free direct ordering | It's what GloriaFood gave you, so you shouldn't end up paying more per order |
| Branded website and app | Customers see your restaurant, not a marketplace listing |
| POS integration | Counter orders and online orders land in one place |
| Customer data and loyalty | You know who your regulars are and can contact them |
| Delivery marketplace management | Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo tablets stop piling up on the counter |
| UK and Ireland support | A local team and local payment methods |
You won't need every row on day one. But a platform that can't do most of them will leave you shopping again.
Flipdish
Flipdish is an online ordering and restaurant management platform built for UK and Irish operators. If you want to own your ordering channel and stop paying marketplace commissions, it's the obvious next step from GloriaFood.
Here is what you get that GloriaFood couldn't give you.
You get a branded restaurant website, a full ordering site under your own name rather than a widget bolted onto someone else's page. You also get a branded mobile app for your restaurant, so regulars can reorder from their phone without searching for you on a marketplace.
On the till side there's a restaurant POS, which puts counter orders and online orders in the same system. A kitchen display system sends orders straight to the kitchen, so nobody reads a ticket off a printer and retypes it. Orders from Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo come into the same place through marketplace order management, which means one screen instead of three tablets.
For getting customers back, loyalty and marketing tools run campaigns for you. AI Marketing goes a step further and sends retention campaigns based on how each customer actually orders. Integrated payments take online and in-person payments and settle them together, so you reconcile one set of figures. And AI phone ordering answers calls and takes the order, which helps on a Friday night when staff are already stretched.
Flipdish is commission-free on direct orders. You pay a platform fee instead of a percentage of every order. At low volume the difference is small. As orders grow, the percentage model gets more expensive and the platform fee doesn't.
What about the other options
You'll come across other routes when you search. A WordPress ordering plugin. An ordering add-on from a card payments company. A QR code table-ordering app.
They each do one job. A plugin takes orders on a website and that's it. A payments company's ordering add-on is a payments product first. A QR app is built for dine-in, so it doesn't replace takeaway ordering at all. Pick any of them and you'll still need separate tools for POS, loyalty and marketplace orders, which is the same patchwork GloriaFood left you with.
Flipdish covers those in one platform, and that's the reason it's the one to move to.
What changes in a normal week
It's easier to see the difference with a few examples than with a feature list.
A takeaway with a counter and a phone that never stops ringing. On GloriaFood, web orders came through the widget, counter sales went through a separate till, and phone orders had no system at all. On Flipdish the counter and web orders sit in the same POS, and the AI phone agent can answer calls and take the order, so the person at the counter isn't juggling a handset and a queue.
A restaurant that's on Just Eat and Uber Eats as well as its own site. Those orders usually arrive on their own tablets, each with its own menu to keep up to date. With marketplace order management they arrive alongside your direct orders, in the same place the kitchen already looks.
A group with several sites. GloriaFood had no multi-location support. Flipdish was built for groups, so one set of customers and one brand can cover every site rather than each location running its own isolated setup.
A restaurant that wants regulars back. GloriaFood gave you very little customer data, so there was nobody to send a campaign to. With the data you hold on Flipdish, loyalty and marketing tools have something to work with.
GloriaFood vs Flipdish
| Feature | GloriaFood | Flipdish |
|---|---|---|
| Direct online ordering | Yes | Yes |
| Commission per order | No | No (platform fee model) |
| Branded mobile app | No | Yes |
| POS integration | No | Yes, native |
| Kitchen display system | No | Yes |
| Loyalty and CRM | No | Yes, full platform |
| AI marketing | No | Yes |
| Marketplace aggregation | No | Yes: Just Eat, Uber Eats, Deliveroo |
| AI phone ordering | No | Yes |
| Multi-location support | No | Yes, built for groups |
| Status | Shutting down | Live |
Questions to ask before you sign anything
Whichever platform you look at, ask these. They take ten minutes and they save you a bad surprise later.
How much will you pay each month, and is there any percentage taken on direct orders? Who owns the customer data, and can you export it? Can your existing menu be imported, or will someone retype it? What happens when an order fails to reach the kitchen? And who do you phone when something breaks on a Saturday night?
If the answers are vague, treat that as an answer. Put the same questions to Flipdish on a demo.
Moving off GloriaFood
Don't wait for the shutdown to start this. The order matters more than the speed.
- Export your menu now. Items, modifiers, prices, descriptions and photos. If you've set opening hours or delivery zones, write those down too, because they're easy to forget until a customer asks.
- Download whatever order history and customer data your account lets you export. Once the account closes, it's gone.
- Choose your replacement. Use the table above and be honest about what you'll use in the first six months, not just what looks good.
- Build the new ordering channel and place a few test orders yourself. Keep GloriaFood running until a test order has gone through the new site, reached the kitchen and been paid for.
- Change every link that points at the old ordering page. That means your website button, your Google Business Profile, Instagram and Facebook bios, and any QR codes printed on menus, flyers or takeaway bags. The printed ones are the ones people miss.
- Tell your customers. An email or SMS saying where to order from now is enough. Check you have permission to contact the people on your list before you send it.
Flipdish's onboarding team supports you through the migration.
Why direct ordering is worth the effort
Delivery marketplaces charge restaurants 15-30% commission per order. Take a restaurant doing 100 orders a week at an average of £25. That's £2,500 in sales. At 20% commission, £500 a week goes to the marketplace. Move even a third of those orders to your own website and app and you keep roughly £165 of it, every week.
GloriaFood showed that commission-free direct ordering works for independent restaurants. Having to leave it is annoying, but it's also a reason to set up the channel properly, with a site and app that are yours.
With a branded website and app on Flipdish:
- Customers order from you directly, so fewer orders go through marketplaces
- You hold the email and phone details of your customers
- Loyalty rewards give people a reason to come back
- Campaigns reach your own customers without paying for marketplace placement
Making the move
GloriaFood did one thing well for a long time. The risk now is replacing it with another single-purpose tool and finding the same gaps.
For restaurants in the UK and Ireland, Flipdish puts direct ordering, POS, loyalty, marketplace orders and AI tools on one platform.