Services · Ecommerce development · Food delivery marketplaces
Codeeo builds food delivery ordering website development projects in Dubai for founders and operators who want to run their own marketplace: restaurants sign up, list menus, receive orders and get paid, while you take a commission and keep the customer. We build the customer ordering site, the restaurant partner portal, the operations console and the payment and payout logic underneath. The money side is where most marketplaces break, so we design it first.
A marketplace in this city lives or dies on trust in three directions. Diners trust the menu and the delivery window, restaurants trust that payouts arrive correctly, and you trust that commission, VAT and refunds reconcile at month end. Every feature below serves one of those three. Nothing here depends on a native app; diners order on the mobile web.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
What the platform includes
Large aggregators already cover most of Dubai, so a new marketplace wins by being narrower and better at something: a district such as Jumeirah Lake Towers, a community such as Filipino or Keralite home cooking, office catering for free zone tenants, or healthy kitchens only. Whatever the angle, the platform needs the same backbone. Restaurants must be vetted before they go live, menus must stay accurate, checkout must accept the payment methods people here expect, and payouts must reconcile against commission and VAT. These are the components of a food ordering platform we build, each one configurable by your operations team after launch.
A partner sign-up flow that collects the trade licence, food establishment permit, bank details and VAT registration where relevant, with document upload and an approval queue. Nothing goes live until your team has checked it, and expiry dates trigger reminders before licences lapse. Partners also accept your commercial terms digitally, with the signed version stored on their record.
Only verified kitchens appear on the platform.
Restaurants manage dishes, modifiers, add-ons, photos, allergen tags, prep times and opening hours themselves. Items can be paused during a rush, and menu changes can require approval if you curate quality closely.
Menus stay current without your team retyping them.
Customers enter an address or drop a pin, and the site shows only kitchens that can reach them, with delivery fees and minimum orders set per zone. Makani numbers and building names help riders find towers and villa clusters. Zones can be drawn on a map by your team and changed for events or road closures.
Diners only see restaurants that can actually deliver to them.
Card payments through a UAE acquiring gateway with 3D Secure, Apple Pay and Google Pay, saved cards through tokenisation, and cash on delivery where you choose to allow it. Tabby or Tamara can be offered on larger catering baskets if your provider agreement covers them.
Customers pay the way they prefer, and failed payments are rare.
Commission rates per restaurant, category or promotion, deductions for refunds and marketing fees, and payout statements on a weekly or monthly cycle. The ledger records every movement so finance can trace any figure back to an order.
Partners understand their statements, and month end closes cleanly.
Customer receipts and commission invoices to partners, carrying your TRN and the VAT treatment agreed with your tax adviser. Exports match what your accountant needs for returns to the Federal Tax Authority, and the data model is ready for the UAE e-invoicing rollout.
Tax records come straight from the platform rather than spreadsheets.
A web console for your operations team showing live orders, kitchen acceptance, rider assignment and delays, whether riders are your own fleet or a third party courier connected by API. Customers follow progress on a tracking page.
Operations see problems before customers complain.
Customers report missing items or late orders with photos, and agents resolve them with full or partial refunds, credits or partner chargebacks according to rules you set. Every decision is logged against the order and the restaurant.
Disputes are fair, consistent and visible to everyone involved.
Ratings only from verified orders, with moderation tools and the option for restaurants to reply. Behind the scenes, acceptance rates, cancellations and complaint counts feed a quality score your team uses for ranking and coaching.
Good kitchens rise, and weak ones get help or get removed.
Promo codes funded by the platform, by the restaurant or shared between them, with the split recorded in the ledger so payouts stay correct. Diner accounts keep addresses, past orders and saved cards, and reordering a favourite meal takes two taps on the mobile web. Marketing consent is captured separately from the order.
Discounts grow orders without silently eating into partner payouts.
Who this is for
A marketplace is a commerce business with two sets of customers, and the model you choose decides the build. Some founders want to own riders, others hand delivery to restaurants or couriers. Some charge diners a fee, others charge partners only. We map your model before design, because commission rules, payment flows and support costs follow from it. We also ask early who carries the risk of a cold or missing meal, because that answer shapes refund rules, partner contracts and the support team you will need on a Friday evening.
You want a platform for one area, such as Al Barsha, Discovery Gardens or Dubai South, or for a community cuisine that aggregators underserve. Restaurants handle their own delivery or use a shared courier, and you take a smaller commission than the big apps. The first release focuses on onboarding, ordering and payouts, with dispatch tools added once order volume justifies them. Arabic and English menus matter more here because community kitchens often write dish names their own way.
Lean commission and simple dispatch suit early volume.
Companies in DIFC, Dubai Internet City or Dubai Silicon Oasis order lunches for staff from a curated set of kitchens. The platform needs company accounts, budgets per employee, scheduled drops, consolidated monthly invoices and approval rules. Payment shifts from cards at checkout to invoiced billing for the employer, which changes the ledger design. HR teams get a simple admin view to add or remove staff.
Company billing and scheduled orders drive the build.
Your marketplace lists licensed home based food businesses and small kitchens. Verification matters most here: permits, food handling training records and hygiene declarations must be collected and checked. We build stricter onboarding, smaller daily order caps per kitchen and pre-order windows instead of on-demand delivery. Your terms make clear which party prepares the food and which party sells it.
Onboarding checks and pre-orders protect diners and cooks.
You already take direct orders for your own brands and want to add partner restaurants to fill gaps in cuisine or area. We extend your existing ordering platform with partner onboarding, commission and payouts, keeping your own brands' margins separate in reporting so the partner programme can be judged on its own numbers.
Separate reporting shows whether partners add profit.
How we work together
Most founders start with a fixed scope first release covering onboarding, ordering, payments and payouts, then move to a monthly retainer as partners join. Platforms growing quickly often take a dedicated team for the payment, dispatch and support tools. Our team of 80+ works across Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi, with workshops and pilot reviews held in Dubai, close to the restaurants you are signing. Retainer releases usually follow partner growth: new zones, new cuisines, new promotion types and better reporting for restaurants that want to see their own trends.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
Laravel or Node.js services with a PostgreSQL ledger, a Next.js ordering site and partner portal, queues for order events and webhooks, and payment gateways that serve UAE merchants. Hosting is sized for the lunch and dinner peaks rather than the daily average. Monitoring alerts your team when payment webhooks fail or a kitchen stops accepting orders.
01Web
02Commerce
03Data and cloud
04Marketing and tracking
Partner onboarding, commission, payouts, refunds and tax records.
The customer site is the visible part. Underneath sits a partner portal, a ledger that tracks every dirham between diner, restaurant and platform, a payout cycle, VAT invoices and a dispute process. Most of the build effort and most of the risk sit there. We scope those pieces first so the ordering screens are designed around money that reconciles. Partner onboarding and the operations console come next, then the diner facing pages that sit on top of them.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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