You check the app on a Thursday evening and the rating has slipped again. The recent reviews mention a missing drink, a lukewarm burger and a long wait. It is tempting to blame the app or the rider, but a good share of complaints start between the order arriving and the bag leaving your counter, and that part is yours to control.
The short answer: log every complaint, sort it by cause and by who controls it, fix the biggest controllable cause first (often missing or wrong items), and track complaints per 100 orders every month. Better operations give your rating a fair chance to recover. They do not guarantee it.
What a rating tells you, and what it does not
Every platform handles ratings differently, and the detail is not always public. Deliveroo’s English help centre, which does not name a country, says the rating shown on the restaurant list is an average of your last 400 ratings, shown once ten orders have been rated, and that restaurants with good ratings appear higher up the list. For Talabat, noon Food, Careem, Keeta and Smiles we could not find public rating formulas, and we will not guess. Ask your account manager how ratings, replies and disputes work on your account.
Find the root cause before you fix anything
Start a complaint log: date, outlet, platform, order number, what the customer said, the cause, who controls it and what you did. Tag each complaint with one cause (missing or wrong item, cold food, late or long wait, packaging or spill, quality or portion, cancellation or unavailable item) and who controls it: the restaurant, the rider or platform, or both.
Cold food can be a kitchen problem (packed too early) or a delivery problem (the rider waited). Deliveroo’s UAE partner policy sets out a first assumed split that you can dispute in Hub: the restaurant pays for missing items, wrong items and poor-quality food, and Deliveroo pays for rider delays, spills in transit, cold food and undelivered orders. Other platforms may differ, so check your contract.
Example 1: complaints per 100 orders (illustrative). Divide complaints by orders, then multiply by 100.
| Outlet | Orders | Complaints | Per 100 orders |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outlet A | 1,200 | 54 | 4.5 |
| Outlet B | 600 | 21 | 3.5 |
Outlet A has more than two and a half times as many complaints, but its rate is 4.5 against 3.5. Compare outlets by rate, not by count.
Example 2: root causes of Outlet A’s 54 complaints (illustrative).
| Cause | Complaints | Share | Per 100 orders | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing or wrong item | 19 | 35% | 1.6 | Restaurant |
| Cold food | 11 | 20% | 0.9 | Shared |
| Late or long wait | 9 | 17% | 0.8 | Shared |
| Packaging or spill | 8 | 15% | 0.7 | Shared |
| Quality, taste or portion | 5 | 9% | 0.4 | Restaurant |
| Cancellation or unavailable item | 2 | 4% | 0.2 | Mostly restaurant |
Figures are rounded and invented to show the method, not benchmarks. To pick what to fix first, combine size and control: missing or wrong items are the largest group and sit entirely with the restaurant, so they come first. Cold food and delays come next, once timestamps show where the time was lost.
Reduce missing and incorrect items
- Pack in one place, with a dedicated station and one person closing each bag.
- Check against the ticket, counting sauces, cutlery and drinks, and pin a list of your most commonly missed items at the station.
- Seal, label and confirm the handover: order number on every bag, matched with the rider.
- Mark stock-outs straight away. Deliveroo and Careem both tell partners to mark unavailable items in the menu.
Protect food quality on the way to the customer
Test how your food travels, safely: pack a real order, keep it in a delivery bag for a typical journey time and log the temperature at packing and at the end. Do not eat or serve test food held outside safe temperatures. Deliveroo’s UAE food hygiene policy (dated 2021) says partners must use packaging suitable for delivery, and should use sealed bags with a receipt and order number, and pack hot and cold separately. Its help centre advises packaging that lets moisture out, so vent fried and crispy items, pack sauces separately and time food for the rider’s pick-up.
Dubai Municipality’s 2023 guideline for food delivery vehicles (version 2) says hot food must be kept at or above 60°C and cold food at or below 5°C, in sealed containers with anti-tamper stickers, and that food should not be in transit for more than half an hour unless equipment maintains temperature. Much of this falls on whoever owns the delivery equipment. It applies in Dubai only, so check the authority for the latest version. The packing advice above is practice, not law.
If the same dishes keep appearing in cold, soggy or spilled complaints, change how they are packed, split their components, or take them off delivery. Our guide to menu engineering for food delivery apps shows how to judge which dishes are worth protecting.
Manage preparation delays and cancellations
Be honest about prep time. For a week, compare when each order is actually ready with the pick-up time you were given. Where a platform offers a busy mode, such as Deliveroo’s or the “mark as busy” option in noon Food’s Partner app, use it when the kitchen is full. Careem’s partner FAQ says tablet users should accept orders immediately, and that delays can lead to bad ratings and reduced orders.
Record every cancellation reason (out of stock, too busy, closed early, wrong-rider handover, customer request, no rider found). Platforms decide fault differently: Deliveroo’s UAE cancellations policy treats a partner cancelling after acceptance, or after handing the order to the wrong rider, as partner fault, and a lack of available riders as Deliveroo’s. Keep your records and check your platform’s rules before deciding whose delay it was.
Handle complaints and negative reviews properly
Reply with care. Deliveroo’s help centre says partners reply through the ratings and reviews section of Hub and the customer gets the reply by email, not in the app. Confirm what your portal allows. Name the specific issue, say what you have changed, and do not blame the rider or the customer.
Never buy or steer reviews. Deliveroo’s help centre, in an article that cites UK consumer law, says partners must not offer discounts, credit or other incentives in exchange for any review, and that it may remove incentivised reviews, which then stop counting toward your rating. Treat this as the rule everywhere until a platform’s terms say otherwise.
Keep evidence and dispute wrong charges. Deliveroo’s UAE policy lets partners dispute a refund in Hub within seven days of the refund email notification, so check Hub for the current steps. A saved ticket, timestamp and photo of the sealed bag help. Ask your account manager about the dispute route on other platforms. Our guide to common aggregator management mistakes shows how to check statements against your fee sheet.
Measure whether it is working
Each month, by outlet, track complaints per 100 orders (total and by cause), missing-item complaints per 100 orders, cancellations you caused, orders ready late, and your displayed rating with its review count. Deliveroo’s help centre says Partner Hub shows rejected orders, missing items and late-prepared orders over 28 days, plus star rating. Other platforms may differ, so calculate anything your portal does not report from your complaint log.
Example 3 (illustrative): an outlet with 1,200, 1,250 and 1,300 orders in three months logs 19, 15 and 11 missing-item complaints. That is 1.6, 1.2 and 0.8 per 100 orders. A falling rate is a prompt to ask why, since staffing, menu mix, rider availability and season can all move these numbers. Change one thing at a time.
Frequently asked questions
Do ratings affect how visible my restaurant is?
Deliveroo’s UAE ranking policy lists partner ratings among the characteristics it considers. For other apps we could not find public documentation, so ask your account manager. If customers open your page but still don’t order, see our guide to why restaurants get views but not orders.
Who pays when an order has a missing item or arrives cold?
It depends on the platform and your contract. Deliveroo’s published UAE policy sets a first assumed split, which partners can dispute in Hub: the restaurant pays for missing and wrong items, and Deliveroo pays for cold food and spills in transit.
What is a good complaint rate?
We found no published UAE benchmark, so we will not quote one. Measure your own complaints per 100 orders, compare outlets by rate, and aim for a steady fall over several months.
Want a second pair of eyes on your delivery operations?
Secret Sauce is a restaurant growth agency that helps UAE restaurants improve their delivery-app performance. Want to understand where your restaurant is losing orders or margin? We can help you identify the gaps through a Restaurant Delivery Performance Audit: a one-time, focused review of how your restaurant performs on the delivery apps, followed by a clear plan of what to improve first. Ongoing support is available if you want help putting the fixes into practice. Contact us at hello@secretsauce.ae.