Top 8 Best Food Delivery Apps in the UK 2020 (Deliveroo, Just Eat and More)

The UK's takeaway culture has taken a turn for the better. There’s no more rooting through the kitchen drawer, searching for takeaway leaflets that have been posted through your letterbox. Apps can bring you everything from high-end restaurant cuisine to snacks or coffee-shop treats. 

Ordering a takeaway over the phone is often more hassle than it’s worth. Requests can be misheard over the restaurant chatter and more often than not, you need to venture out into the cold to collect your dinner. (Which is usually not quite ready, so you inevitably have to wait!)

On the other hand, ordering in a Deliveroo on a Friday night has become somewhat of an event. Everyone gathers in one house, suggesting their favourite spots to eat, you all pick what you want within a few seconds, then in under an hour, you’ll have your food – without ever having to pause the party to collect your order.

Delivery apps make dining in as easy as it possibly could be. All of your go-to restaurants are displayed on one screen (as well as many others worth exploring). It’s simple, quick, and there’s no need to do anything apart from getting the plates ready. Now that’s the way to do takeaways!

In this section, we’ll discuss our top insider tips on choosing the best food delivery app to download. We'll include a close look at delivery fees, transport options and food categories. Let’s get stuck in!

These apps are a genius, hassle-free way to get dinner to your door and into your belly. But what kind of food are you after? Here is a breakdown of the three main categories.

It might not be the best thing to eat every day, but fast food is perfect on a hangover, or to satisfy those not-so-healthy cravings. Some apps have a large focus on fast food, with the majority of their options fitting into this category. 

Fast food options will include meals like burgers, tacos, kebabs, pizzas or fish and chips. Generally, there will be a mixture of small businesses-like local fried chicken shops and big brands such as McDonald's or Pizza Hut.

If you’re looking for food that feels a bit more like a treat rather than a guilt-trip, go for an app which has lots of restaurant options. Many restaurants now only offer deliveries through a food delivery app, so take advantage of that!

These often include popular chains like Franco Manca, Leon or Wagamamas, and will serve dishes like poke bowls, pizzas, salads, ramen and anything the cooks are dishing up on a regular basis. But if you're lucky, you'll find more obscure, one-off restaurants like Muriel's Kitchen, Alberts Delhi or The Richmond Hill Bakery. 

Along with entire meals, warm and ready to devour, food delivery apps are also branching out into groceries. This is perfect for those times when you’ve just run out of milk, you need another bottle of wine at a gathering, or a recipe you’re making needs more butter than you have. 

These options usually aim to deliver your goods in under 30 minutes, by means of bicycle. Using supermarkets and small, corner shops, depending on the app in question, there’s the opportunity for quite a wide range of products available. You can also find wine merchants and alcohol shops listed on some!

It’s great when an app promotes that it has over 30,000 restaurant partners, but for us indecisive folk, 30,000 choices sounds like an absolute nightmare! If your food delivery app contains lots of filters, you can easily narrow down your search. 

If you have a favourite cuisine, such as Indian, Chinese or Italian, choose an app with cuisine filters – this is quite common amongst food delivery apps, so you shouldn’t have a problem.

For the more obscure filters, you'll usually need to look a bit deeper. Other categories you might want to filter could include healthy eating, vegetarian or vegan food, or gluten-free options.

When an app claims to have a certain number of restaurant partners, say 10,000, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have that many to choose from. Every app works on a location-based system, so it all depends on whether those restaurants are in your catchment area.

If you live in a big city, like London, you’ll find that you’ll get a huge range of options. But you’ll get much less if you live in a small town that doesn’t have access to that scale of variety.

Either way, if you’re up for venturing off your normal eats and into new territory, you’ll want to choose an app with a high number of partners to maximise your chances of more options!

Each food delivery app works a little differently. The delivery fees and means of transportation differ, which subsequently can alter the time of your expected delivery. Here's a look at the most common options.

In most cases, you will need to foot the bill for the delivery. These fees are usually not made apparent until you reach the basket to complete your order. At just one or two pounds in most instances, it shouldn’t break the bank, but it is something to be aware of. 

If you’re keen to save some pennies, you can download an app which offers free delivery over a certain amount – this is more likely if there's more than one of you eating, as your total will almost always go over the minimum.

If you find an app which advertises free delivery, be aware that the company might have upped the cost per meal to cover this loss, which, depending on how much you have ordered, can cost significantly more than a flat-rate delivery fee.

Delivery apps either use cars, motorcycles, or bikes to deliver their goods, and each has its pitfalls and benefits. Food delivery companies like UberEats use their own cars, meaning that more often than not your food will arrive promptly so that it’s good to eat straight away!

The same cannot be said of companies that use bicycles. Of course, depending on how far away your chosen restaurant is, the GPS that the deliverers use, and the speed of their little legs, the food might arrive still hot, but we wouldn’t depend on it! The timings of these companies vary from between 30 minutes to occasionally over an hour. 

Card payments are the go-to for ordering online. They provide you with contactless delivery, it becomes easy to pay the correct amount, and it’s much less hassle than sifting through your wallet, counting out change. But if you prefer to pay in cash, make sure the app offers this option. 

As for tips, if you don’t have a few coins left to give your super-speedy delivery person their hard-earned cash, see if they offer an option to tip by card along with your order. 

Now that you know all the ins and outs of ordering your dinner via an app, let’s move on to our recommendations! Here are our top 8 food delivery apps in the UK. 

Most of us are too tired or busy to whip up a culinary masterpiece from scratch every night of the week, which is why ordering a takeaway is often the easiest solution. But if you're looking for something a little healthier for your midweek meals or you want some help building a recipe repertoire you do have time for, check out some of our suggestions. 

Now that apps have reinvented the takeaway wheel, there are plenty of ways to get food delivered to your door with minimal effort on your part. Now choose the best one for you, put your feet up, and wait for the bell to ring – there'll be no cooking tonight!

Author: Roxy Pratley