Meridianstacks builds restaurant ordering apps for Dubai and the wider UAE that run alongside Talabat and Deliveroo, not instead of them: aggregators keep bringing you new customers, while your regulars and pickup orders move to your own app — where no commission is taken. Menu with modifiers, scheduled pickup, own-driver delivery, loyalty, push offers, Arabic and English, cash and card — at a fixed price in dirhams, with milestone billing and code you own outright. Your matched hub is Nairobi (UTC+3) — one hour behind Dubai, so standups happen in your afternoon, not your midnight.
UAE restaurants commonly pay a double-digit percentage commission on every aggregator order — on regulars' orders as much as first-timers'. The honest fix is not quitting the platforms; it is dual-running: aggregators for discovery, your own ordering app for regulars and pickup. Meridianstacks builds that app for a one-off fixed price — AED 28,000–56,000 for a custom ordering storefront (our Focused tier), AED 56,000–113,000 for a platform with loyalty, push and kitchen display (Standard), AED 85,000–169,000 with iOS and Android apps (Full) — billed by milestone, with the code, the customer data and the customer relationships 100% yours.
Let's be fair about what Talabat and Deliveroo genuinely do well: they put your restaurant in front of thousands of people who have never heard of you, and on delivery orders they bring a rider fleet you do not have to hire, insure or dispatch. For a new customer, that commission is a marketing and logistics cost that often makes sense.
The problem is the orders that were never theirs to sell. The family that orders from you every Thursday. The office around the corner that collects at 1pm. The customer who found you on the platform a year ago and has ordered forty times since. On every one of those orders, a double-digit percentage commonly leaves your till — for discovery that already happened and, on pickup, for delivery that never happens at all.
The dual-run play: keep the aggregators switched on for new customers, and give regulars and pickup customers a reason to order through your own app instead. You do not need to move every order — you need to move the repeat ones.
| Order type | Best channel | Why |
|---|---|---|
| First-time customer | Aggregator | They found you there — that is the platform doing its job |
| Regular, delivery | Your app | Discovery already paid for; your driver or a flat delivery fee |
| Regular, pickup | Your app | No logistics needed — full margin stays with you |
| Office / group orders | Your app | Scheduled, repeat, high-value — the worst orders to pay commission on |
A worked example only — not any aggregator's actual rate. We use an illustrative 20% commission; substitute the figure from your own statements. It assumes half your aggregator volume shifts to your own app, which takes deliberate effort (see the FAQ below).
| Monthly aggregator sales | Commission per month (illustrative 20%) | Commission per year | Focused build (AED 28,000–56,000) pays for itself in* |
|---|---|---|---|
| AED 40,000 | AED 8,000 | AED 96,000 | ~7–14 months |
| AED 80,000 | AED 16,000 | AED 192,000 | ~4–7 months |
| AED 150,000 | AED 30,000 | AED 360,000 | ~2–4 months |
*Payback assumes half of that volume moves to your own app, so the saving is half the commission column. Run the numbers with your real rate and volumes — if they do not work, we will say so on the call.
Full menu with options, extras, combos and item-level availability — spice level, remove onions, upsize the meal — synced live so the kitchen never sees an order it cannot make.
Customers pick a collection slot or a delivery window. Your drivers get a simple dispatch view with zones and order status — or launch pickup-only first and add delivery later.
Points, stamps or credit that reward direct orders — the concrete reason a regular opens your app instead of the aggregator's.
Send tonight's offer to every customer who opted in — free, direct and instant, instead of paying for placement in someone else's app.
Orders land on a kitchen screen sequenced by pickup slot and prep time, with one-tap status updates that notify the customer automatically.
Full right-to-left Arabic alongside English across menu, checkout and kitchen. Card payments in AED via local gateways, plus cash on delivery and pickup.
Concrete uses: a Dubai burger brand moving its Thursday regulars to direct orders; a Sharjah cafeteria taking scheduled office pickup; a multi-branch grill house running one app with per-branch menus and its own drivers.
A free scoping call maps your menu, order volume and delivery setup. You get a feature list, timeline and a fixed price in AED before any work starts.
We design the customer ordering journey and kitchen display, in English and Arabic, and confirm your payment gateway and delivery model.
Senior engineers build the menu, checkout, loyalty, push and kitchen screens — with weekly demos in your afternoon, not your midnight.
Every flow is code-reviewed and tested end to end — real menu, real payments, real kitchen screen — before a single customer sees it.
We deploy to your hosting and the app stores, hand over repositories you already own, and document everything. Each milestone is billed only when you accept it.
QR cards in every bag, a launch offer funded by saved commission, loyalty from order one. Optional retainer for new features and seasonal menus.
Realistic timeline: 5–8 weeks for a focused ordering storefront; 8–12 weeks with loyalty, push and kitchen display; 10–15 weeks with iOS and Android apps.
| Build | UAE agency | Meridianstacks | Aggregator only |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focused — custom ordering storefront (web) | AED 90,000–140,000 | AED 28,000–56,000 | AED 0 upfront — but a commission on every order, forever, and the customer relationship stays theirs |
| Standard — ordering platform with loyalty, push & kitchen display | AED 140,000–200,000 | AED 56,000–113,000 | |
| Full — headless / multi-channel + iOS & Android apps | AED 200,000–250,000+ | AED 85,000–169,000 |
Agency ranges are indicative of what UAE studios typically quote; every Meridianstacks build is a fixed price in dirhams agreed before work begins, billed by milestone — you pay for delivered, accepted work. The aggregator column is not a build at all: it is renting a listing, which is exactly why it belongs in your mix for new customers and nowhere else.
Prices published from our Open Price Book (v1.0 · July 2026 · next review October 2026). All prices exclude VAT.
Everything we build for UAE businesses — apps, platforms and dedicated teams, priced in dirhams, staffed from our Nairobi hub on Gulf hours.
The bands on this page come from our ecommerce line: custom storefronts to headless, multi-channel commerce with mobile apps.
Every band we publish, in every currency we quote — reviewed quarterly, so you can check our numbers before you ever talk to us.
Book a free 30-minute scoping call with a senior engineer — in your hours. Bring a recent aggregator statement; you'll get an honest answer on whether your own app pays, a realistic timeline and a fixed price in AED.
Book a free scoping call →