The Q4 2025 benchmarking report for UK food delivery services has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK food delivery services perform across the digital space.
The Q4 2025 benchmarking report for UK food delivery services has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national food delivery services, including The FoodHak, Abel & Cole, Riverford Organic Farmers, Gousto, Detox Kitchen, SimplyCook, HelloFresh, Mindful Chef, Pasta Evangelists, Fresh Fitness Food, and Oddbox.
The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other food delivery services to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate subscription sign-ups. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q4 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 food delivery services on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK food delivery services or request a copy of the report for the full review.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.
Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing. Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q4 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK food delivery services was £7,895, with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £17 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Fresh Fitness Food reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, and Oddbox has the highest at £53.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Oddbox has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £264, and HelloFresh has the highest at £239,000.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. Food delivery services will want to take particular care to ensure that key conversion pages such as plan pricing information and menu examples are clearly sign posted, and not blocked by dead ends and 404s.
In our previous audit, Mindful Chef reported the most 404 errors (133). This quarter, Mindful Chef has reduced their 404 errors to 54, no longer making them the service to watch. Instead, Detox Kitchen currently has the most 404 errors (148). When users encounter broken pages, they’re more likely to leave quickly, increasing bounce rates. Over time, this can signal to search engines that the website provides a poor experience, potentially harming rankings.
When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. In a competitive market, food delivery services will want to ensure their site visitors have a positive experience with their brand from the very first click, and a speedy website is an ideal way to keep users on-site and funnelled towards converting.
In our previous report, Mindful Chef received the slowest mobile site speed (12). This quarter, Mindful Chef reported a score of 9 (a reduction from the past quarter). However, the service to currently watch is Fresh Fitness Food, scoring 8 for mobile site speed. Regularly monitoring mobile performance with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse helps identify speed issues early.
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Food delivery services can look to work with a digital PR specialist, who can identify opportunities within the food, lifestyle, and national press to gain brand coverage and backlinks.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. In our last report, The FoodHak received the lowest DA score (28). This quarter, The FoodHak remains the service with the lowest DA score (30) — though they’ve since made a slight improvement from our last audit. Earning backlinks from relevant, authoritative sources strengthens a website’s reputation within its industry, and these links show that other experts consider content reliable and informative. As a result, search engines reward a site with greater trust and improved domain authority.
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. We'd expect general interest to be falling across the food delivery services sector, as consumers are cutting back on treats and non-essentials due to the cost of living crisis. However, food delivery services can still receive sales, and following a successful keyword strategy can increase their organic traffic across all devices.
Seven brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with SimplyCook receiving the biggest loss (-68%). On mobile, 2 brands reported a drop in organic traffic, with Mindful Chef receiving the biggest loss (-34%). Websites can increase organic traffic by publishing high-quality, keyword-optimised content that meets user intent. Creating helpful articles, guides, and resources attracts searchers from both desktop and mobile.
Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Reviews' are a strong option for food delivery services to consider, as they can help them stand out from their competitors directly on the SERP.
HelloFresh remains at the top spot for the most Universal Search appearances (24,672) — a decrease from 37,470 in our previous audit. The majority of these appearances came from ‘images’ (20,900).
Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. For food delivery services, they might include recipe terms in their longtail keyword strategy, identifying recipes and food types that most typically bring converting customers to their site.
Riverford Organic Farmers secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (2,078), and HelloFresh secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (7,066). Longtail keywords should be strategically placed in meta titles, headings, and image alt text. This helps search engines understand page relevance and improves rankings for niche topics. Consistent optimisation across key elements strengthens overall SEO performance.
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. For UK food delivery services, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see product options and deals.
We’ve included screenshots of Oddbox’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK food delivery service should focus on diversifying their content so each post has originality.
When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Recipe content and nutrition facts are a simple way that food delivery services can create shareable, engaging content.
HelloFresh secured the most Facebook Likes (2.5m) and the most Instagram followers (260,200). Twitter was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. HelloFresh received the highest total engagement rate (220,031), and Hoover secured the highest average engagement (12,943).
20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Though food delivery services may be more tempted to put emphasis on the visual elements of their brands, making food and recipes look as appealing as possible, they must not neglect to set their pages up well for those with vision deficiencies.
In our previous audit, Pasta Evangelists received the most accessibility alerts (67). This quarter, Pasta Evangelists has slightly increased their accessibility alerts 78 — keeping them the brand to watch. They also received the most errors (39). When accessibility issues exist, users who rely on screen readers or keyboard navigation may struggle to interact with content properly. Missing labels, poor contrast, or untagged images can make pages confusing or unreadable, which can reduce overall usability and satisfaction.
To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Rory Tarplee.