The right EPOS for fast food and takeaways is the one that reduces how much of each order somebody else takes. For most quick service operators in 2026, the largest controllable cost line is not food and it is not staff. It is aggregator commission on orders from customers who already know your name.
Delivery platforms genuinely earn their cut on a first order. They put you in front of somebody who had never heard of you. The problem is that they keep taking the same cut on the two hundredth order from that same customer, and by then you are paying a discovery fee for a regular.
Reported UK commission in 2026 typically runs at around 14% where you deliver the orders yourself and roughly 25% to 30% where the platform’s couriers deliver, before per-order fees, paid promotions and VAT. Operator-facing analysis published by Whito’s 2026 UK takeaway data report puts the UK takeaway and food delivery market at £23.6 billion across just over 50,000 takeaway businesses, with the online delivery segment worth £14.3 billion, and sets direct ordering through your own system at 0% to 5% against 14% to 30% on platforms.
Rates are negotiated per site and vary by city, cuisine and exclusivity, so treat those as reported ranges rather than a price list and check your own statements. The arithmetic is still worth doing. On a £20 order at 30%, six pounds leaves before you have paid for the food, the packaging, the gas or the person who cooked it. Two hundred of those a week is a five figure annual sum.
Because a direct order carries card processing costs and nothing else. TouchTakeaway integrates with your ICRTouch EPOS to give you a branded web shop for delivery and click and collect at 0% commission, with orders dropping straight into the same till and kitchen workflow as everything else.
The practical strategy most operators land on is not abandoning the apps. It is treating them as paid discovery and moving repeat customers across. A QR code in the bag, a first-order discount on your own site and a receipt that names your ordering page are cheap interventions with a compounding return.
Crucially, direct orders also mean you own the customer data. Order history, frequency and average value stay with you rather than with a platform, which is what makes any kind of loyalty scheme possible in the first place.
Reported uplifts vary widely by operator and format, but the direction is consistent: kiosk orders tend to be larger than counter orders. A 2023 McKinsey analysis cited by Glory Global put average gains for QSRs using kiosks at 12% in sales, 15% in order value and 18% in gross margin.
Consumer appetite has moved too. Tillster’s 2025 Phygital Index, reported by TechLink Services, found 61% of consumers say they want more kiosks in restaurants, up from just over a third in 2023.
The mechanism is unglamorous. A kiosk asks every single customer whether they want to go large, add a side or upgrade the drink, without getting flustered when there are nine people in the queue. It also removes the social friction of customising an order in front of a queue, which is where a lot of add-on spend quietly disappears.
CCR Systems supplies the Alfred, Stan, Themis and Élya kiosk range in freestanding, countertop and wall-mounted formats, so a small takeaway with a three metre frontage has options that do not involve losing a metre of it.
Removing the handover. Verbal or handwritten order relay is where errors, remakes and refunds originate, and every remake is a portion of food and a slot of kitchen time paid for twice.
TouchKitchen puts orders on a screen in the kitchen the moment they are taken, whether they came from the counter, a kiosk, your web shop or an aggregator tablet. Orders queue in sequence, get bumped as they are made, and nobody is squinting at a curling ticket in the heat.
CollectionPoint then shows open orders on a customer-facing screen so people can sit down and watch their number move rather than crowding the counter asking if it is nearly ready. On a Friday night that is worth more floor space than it costs.
They do when they are driven by the till rather than maintained separately. TouchMenu syncs with TouchPoint so a price change or a sold-out item updates on screen automatically, which means your menu board is never wrong and nobody has to reprint anything.
Beyond accuracy, screens let you push different content by daypart. Meal deals at lunch, family bundles at teatime, and the higher margin items in the position the eye lands on first. We looked at how to measure that return in Beyond the Menu Board.
Whichever of these three is currently costing you the most: commission, queue length or remakes. If aggregator statements are the number that makes you wince, start with your own ordering channel. If you are turning people away at peak, start with kiosks. If the kitchen and the counter disagree several times a shift, start with a kitchen display.
All of it runs on the same ICRTouch platform, so nothing is a dead end. See the full picture on our EPOS solutions for fast food and takeaways page, and remember that all of it depends on a connection that does not drop at 8pm, which is why business Wi-Fi is not an optional extra.
If you want to know what your current commission is costing you against a direct ordering channel, bring us a recent aggregator statement and we will work through it with you.
Call 0151 644 8296, email contact@ccrsystems.co.uk or get in touch here.
