Kebab Shop Website UK: Late Orders, Sauces, Allergens

The pubs have emptied and the queue reaches the door. The phone is ringing under the counter, the tablet that carries marketplace orders keeps chiming, and a customer at the till wants to know whether the garlic sauce has egg in it. The owner is carving, the second pair of hands is wrapping, and nobody is reading a tablet. A delivery order waits unaccepted. A phone order for two large doner kebabs, one with no onions and one with extra chilli sauce, is written on the back of a receipt roll.

Every one of those moments costs something. A marketplace order arrives with a share of the sale taken off it before the shop sees a penny. This guide uses an 18% commission as an editable, unnamed industry-average illustration, not any named provider's rate: on 520 orders a month at an average £22 ticket, the sales are £11,440 and the illustrative commission is £2,059.20 a month, or £24,710.40 over twelve months, taken from a shop whose margin is made at the counter.

The rules around selling food online have also become tighter in ways a late-night shop feels first. The Food Standards Agency's guidance, updated on 17 July 2026, says that when food is sold online or by phone, allergen information must be provided at two stages in the order process. The Competition and Markets Authority published an open letter on 2 November 2026, four days before this guide, on showing mandatory delivery fees in the total price. A shop whose menu is a photograph of a laminated board, a marketplace listing the shop does not control and a phone that rings through service has no tidy answer to either.

A search problem sits on top. A website can be live at a working link and still be absent from Google, and a customer typing "kebab near me" may meet a directory or a commission-charging marketplace listing before they meet the shop's own page.

This guide is for the owner of a UK independent kebab shop, doner house or takeaway who is about to build, replace or add to a website, and it sets out every sum.

A kebab takeaway website is not a brochure. Customers use it late at night, on a phone, often after a drink, and they want three things in about a minute: to see what is on the menu at what size, to choose their sauce and salad, and to be told what it will cost to get it.

The same job sits behind most of the search variants owners type. A kebab shop website and a takeaway website for a kebab shop both need a menu that reads as data, an order flow that fits late trade and a way for Google to find it. Kebab shop website design matters most as speed and clarity on mobile data. Kebab shop online ordering adds the part that takes the money and sends a ticket to the kitchen. The rest of this guide covers those jobs in order. The guide on what a takeaway website needs and costs covers takeaways in general; this one is about the kebab shop's own late-night menu.

A kebab menu is built differently from a restaurant menu. There are not many dishes, but each dish multiplies: doner, chicken, shish or mixed; regular or large; in a wrap, a pitta, on a box or with chips; with salad or without; with one sauce or three; with extra cheese, extra meat, jalapeños or a can. A paper menu handles this with a conversation at the counter. A website has to handle it without one.

The cleanest structure is one dish with option groups. "Doner kebab" is a single dish. Its first group is the size, regular or large, required, with each size carrying its own price. A second group is the bread or box: pitta, naan, wrap or on a box with chips. A third is the salad: all salad, no onions, no chilli. The dish only goes into the basket once the required groups are chosen, so the ticket that reaches the kitchen is complete.

TableSpark's wording for this is exact: guests can be given "sizes, paid extras or required choices", they "pick them in a dish sheet before the dish can be added, so the ticket arrives complete", and each option group can be "required or optional, each with its own price". A note field on each dish carries a line such as "no onions", and a separate note on the basket covers the whole order. The table below sets out the group names a kebab shop would use.

Sauces are where a kebab menu is hardest to describe honestly. Each one is a food item and is treated as one. The Food Standards Agency's guidance puts it plainly: "If you provide non-prepacked foods, you must supply allergen information for every item that contains any of the 14 allergens." A sauce, a flatbread or a seed topping can each contain one of the 14 allergens, depending on the recipe, and the shop's own recipes and supplier labels decide which. Which sauces contain which allergens depends on each shop's recipe, and no website can establish it for the shop.

A website can carry the answer once the shop has checked it. In TableSpark the 14 UK-regulated allergens are toggle chips on each dish, and the guest sees them on the live menu. Because sauces and extras are options on the dish, the allergen information sits with the dish rather than in a separate leaflet that gets out of date. A "Dietary and allergens" filter above the menu lets a guest narrow the list. The tool holds and displays what the owner records. Keeping it accurate, and re-ticking it the day a recipe or supplier changes, remains the owner's job.

Kebab shops sell meals: a kebab, chips and a can for one price, a family box for four, a late-night two-for-one. The practical approach is to write a meal deal as an ordinary dish with its own price and its own option groups. "Kebab meal" is a dish at one price. Its option groups are the kebab type and size, the side (chips or salad) and the can (cola, lemonade or water). Each group is required, so the deal arrives complete. A family box is the same: one dish, groups for each kebab it contains.

Late in the evening the kebab shop runs out of things: the lamb, the naan, the last of the chicken. The website has to say so. TableSpark's sold-out switch does this per dish: mark it Sold out and it "stays on your site, struck through, and stops being ordered", with a choice of greying out or hiding it. Each dish can also be offered for dine-in, collection or delivery separately.

This section of a kebab shop website has a legal duty behind it. The Food Standards Agency's allergen guidance for food businesses, updated on 17 July 2026, states it in one line: "If food is sold online or by phone through distance selling, allergen information must be provided at two stages in the order process."

The two stages are set out in the same guidance. The first is "before the purchase of the food is completed - this can be in writing (on a website, catalogue or menu) or orally (by phone)". The second is "when the food is delivered - this can be in writing (allergen stickers on food or an enclosed copy of a menu) or orally (by phone)".

Defra and the FSA's guidance on loose foods adds the second half of the first stage for anyone selling online: "If you sell food products online or by phone or mail order, customers must be able to get this information for free before they buy." It also gives the shop a choice: "You must provide a freephone number, or list the information on your website or in your catalogue."

For a kebab shop that gives a clear working pattern.

1. Before payment. The allergen information for each dish and its option choices is on the site, and the guest can see it before the order is completed. In TableSpark that means the allergen chips on each dish and the Dietary and allergens filter above the menu.
2. At the door. The second stage is a sticker on the bag, an enclosed copy of the allergen menu, or a conversation on the phone. The sticker or menu copy is the shop's own step, so the shop decides how it does this and does it every time, for collection as well as delivery.
3. On the phone. A call-in order is a distance sale, so the person taking it needs the allergen answers to hand.

The pizza-trade guide on online ordering and the two-stage rule shows how the same rule works for a made-to-order shop, and the restaurant allergen menu guide sets out how to build the allergen record itself. Neither the website nor this guide can certify an allergen record: read each label, write each recipe down, and have one person own the sheet.

Late opening is the core of a kebab shop's trade and comes with a licensing point. In England and Wales, the Licensing Act 2003 defines the activity in Schedule 2: a person "provides late night refreshment" if "at any time between the hours of 11.00 p.m. and 5.00 a.m., he supplies hot food or hot drink to members of the public, or a section of the public, on or from any premises, whether for consumption on or off the premises".

The words "on or off the premises" matter to a takeaway: on the face of the definition they cover a counter and a delivery, not just a seated room. Exemptions exist and were not read for this guide, so the position depends on the premises, the hours and the council. The Home Office guidance on the licensing of late night refreshment, published on 1 October 2015, helps businesses decide whether they need a licence, and the separate guide on the late night refreshment licence takes it in full. The website point is simple: ordering hours online and licensed hours are two different things, and the site should never promise later than the shop may sell.

The ordering block follows the shop's weekly opening hours: TableSpark's tutorial says the cut-off and delivery windows "read the same hours your bookings use". A collection cut-off can be set "up to closing, or 15 to 60 minutes ahead, so the kitchen isn't rushing the last ticket". A ready-time note such as "Usually ready in ~20 min" shows after the guest orders.

A kebab shop's delivery is often a radius around the shop, and the customer's real question is: what will it cost me, with the fee, in total? On 2 November 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority published an open letter to online retailers on this subject. Its core line is short: "The first price consumers see should be the price they pay."

The letter adds that the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act requires that if a price is given to a consumer, "that price must be the total price, including mandatory delivery or collection fees", and that the total price must be provided "at every stage of the purchase process where a price is given, including advertising, product pages, carts and baskets, checkout and payment pages". The CMA says that where it sees ongoing non-compliance, it "may use our enforcement powers".

The letter is addressed to online retailers generally. It does not name takeaways, and this guide does not say the CMA is looking at kebab shops. The sensible reading for a restaurant selling food online is to apply the same principle: an unavoidable delivery charge belongs in the price from the first screen.

On the ordering side, TableSpark lets the shop set a delivery fee as "one fixed fee, or postcode-radius distance tiers", with a minimum order. Delivery is paid by card through Stripe: the page says "Delivery is card only, so there is nothing to collect at the door", which also keeps cash out of a late-night delivery. Card payments "settle into your own Stripe account and bank", and "the funds never pass through TableSpark". Dine-in and collection work straight away with pay at the restaurant.

The Food Standards Agency's scheme page, last updated on 30 June 2026, says it applies to England, Northern Ireland and Wales and that it is run "in partnership with local authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland". In Wales there is a legal display duty, in section 7 of the Food Hygiene Rating (Wales) Act 2013: "When the operator of a food business establishment has received notification of its food hygiene rating, the operator must display the food hygiene rating sticker provided."

The same section says the duty does not apply until the 21-day appeal period has expired, or, if an appeal is made, until it has been decided and the operator notified of the outcome. This guide claims a display rule for Wales only. It read no display duty for England or Northern Ireland, so an owner there should check the current position with the local authority.

For a shop that has not opened yet, GOV.UK's food business registration guidance says that in England, Wales and Northern Ireland "you are required to register at least 28 days before trading". On planning, the Use Classes Order 1987 lists, among uses outside the standard classes, use "as a hot food takeaway for the sale of hot food where consumption of that food is mostly undertaken off the premises", so a shop changing a unit to that use should ask the local planning authority before committing to the lease and the extraction fit-out.

A website can be live at a working link and still be absent from Google. Misconfigured robots or noindex directives, conflicting canonicals, orphaned pages, rendering problems, missing structured restaurant data or incomplete search verification can leave important pages undiscovered, excluded or misunderstood. For a kebab shop the customer impact is concrete: a guest searching for the shop's name, a menu item or the neighbourhood may reach a directory, a commission-charging marketplace or another shop first, and the shop stays dependent on paid discovery instead of building its own direct demand.

That is why search readiness belongs in the choice of platform, not in a to-do list for a technician. The TableSpark restaurant website builder puts it this way: "A live link is not the same as being indexed; this is the part most builders leave to a technician." TableSpark writes the Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema, the canonical URL, the sitemap and the robots rules, and submits the sitemap to Google Search Console on every publish. The menu is data, so the same dishes, prices and allergens feed the menu page, the ordering pages and the Restaurant schema Google reads, so a price changed once is changed everywhere it appears. This is included in every plan, so the shop does not have to buy a separate search configuration.

A general entry-level builder can publish a page, but that is not the same as a site search engines can reliably discover and understand: a complete search-ready setup otherwise means someone configuring schema, canonicals, sitemap and verification, and maintaining them as the menu changes. Indexing and ranking remain decisions for Google, and no platform can promise them.

On Growth and Full, a shop can connect a domain it already owns by copying one DNS record, or buy one in Settings, and TableSpark manages the SSL certificate, the DNS records and the Search Console verification. A kebab shop that already has a website on another builder can paste the ordering widget into its current site on Full.

The sums below use a single illustrative shop. Every input can be replaced with the shop's own figures from its contract or invoice.

• Orders: 120 online orders a week, which is 120 x 52 / 12 = 520 orders a month.
• Average ticket: £22, which is an illustration, not a market average.
• Marketplace commission: 18%, an unnamed industry-average illustration. It is not any named provider's rate. The same default sits in the editable calculator on TableSpark's pricing page, and the page tells the reader to replace every slider with the figures on their own contract or invoice.
• Own-site route: TableSpark Full at £69 a month excluding VAT, with Stripe's standard UK card rate of 1.5% + 20p per payment, as published on Stripe's UK pricing page, read on 6 November 2026.
• Assumption: every order is paid by a standard UK card on both routes.

Online sales are 520 x £22 = £11,440 a month. At 18% the commission is £11,440 x 0.18 = £2,059.20 a month, and £2,059.20 x 12 = £24,710.40 a year. This treats the commission as the all-in cost, which is an illustration, and ignores any delivery fee and VAT on the commission.

Stripe's percentage is 1.5% x £11,440 = £171.60. Its fixed part is 20p x 520 = £104.00. Stripe's total is £171.60 + £104.00 = £275.60. Add the plan's £69 a month excluding VAT, and the month costs £69 + £275.60 = £344.60, excluding VAT. Over twelve months the plan is £69 x 12 = £828 excluding VAT, Stripe is £275.60 x 12 = £3,307.20, and the total is £828 + £3,307.20 = £4,135.20. On the yearly option, where TableSpark's page says "you pay £690 a year, paid yearly, two months free", the year is £690 + £3,307.20 = £3,997.20, excluding VAT.

If all 520 orders came through the shop's own site, the gap is £2,059.20 - £344.60 = £1,714.60 a month, and £1,714.60 x 12 = £20,575.20 a year. Against the yearly plan the year's gap is £24,710.40 - £3,997.20 = £20,713.20.

That is the ceiling, and no shop moves every order. A late-night shop's regulars phone and walk in, so the useful question is how many orders must move for the plan to pay for itself.

A marketplace order of £22 at 18% costs £22 x 0.18 = £3.96 in commission. The same order on the own site costs Stripe's £22 x 0.015 + £0.20 = £0.33 + £0.20 = £0.53. Each order that moves saves £3.96 - £0.53 = £3.43.

The Full plan costs £69 a month excluding VAT whether or not an order moves, so the break-even is £69 / £3.43 = 20.1, which rounds up to 21 orders a month. The check at 21 orders: commission avoided is 21 x £3.96 = £83.16, and the own-site cost is £69 + 21 x £0.53 = £69 + £11.13 = £80.13, excluding VAT. At 20 orders the own site would still cost 40p more, so 21 is the first order count that covers the plan. Twenty-one orders a month is under five a week out of the 120.

If a quarter of the 520 orders moved, that is 130 orders. The commission avoided is 130 x £3.96 = £514.80. The own-site cost is £69 + 130 x £0.53 = £69 + £68.90 = £137.90, excluding VAT. The net saving is £514.80 - £137.90 = £376.90 a month, and £376.90 x 12 = £4,522.80 a year. At 260 orders moved the saving is 260 x £3.43 = £891.80, less the £69 a month excluding VAT plan, which is £822.80 a month, or £9,873.60 a year. The full 520 moved gives 520 x £3.43 = £1,783.60, less the £69 a month excluding VAT, which is the £1,714.60 above.

The 0 row shows the plan before any order moves: £69 a month excluding VAT, which also buys the website, ordering page, kitchen tickets and search set-up the shop has either way.

Card fees apply on both routes. If every order were paid with a premium UK card, Stripe's published rate is 2.8% + 20p: £11,440 x 0.028 = £320.32, plus £104.00 is £424.32, and with the £69 a month excluding VAT plan the month is £493.32, still £1,565.88 below £2,059.20. The sums leave out any printer or tablet the shop buys, and VAT.

An entry price on a pricing page is not a kebab shop's monthly bill. What decides it is the plan the shop actually needs, whether the price is billed annually, per site or by order, what is added for payments, and whether any commission remains. The table below sets out what was read on 6 November 2026. These are separate charging structures, not like-for-like prices.

Over a year the Flipdish page's figures come to £119 x 12 = £1,428 billed annually, or £139 x 12 = £1,668 billed monthly, per site, before any payment charge or commission the page read does not state. TableSpark Full over the same year is £69 x 12 = £828 excluding VAT, or £690 on the yearly option, and it includes the website, ordering, 0% TableSpark commission and the shop's search set-up. The Flipdish annual figure is £1,428 - £828 = £600 more than the monthly Full plan, or £1,428 - £690 = £738 more than the yearly one. The Flipdish monthly figure is £1,668 - £828 = £840 more. TableSpark takes 0% commission on bookings and orders included in your plan; Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments. Orders are paid into the shop's own Stripe account and bank, and each customer's details are stored under the restaurant's TableSpark account, visible in the Inbox and guest list, with CSV export.

For the shop that wants to start with the website and menu and add ordering later, Starter is from £19 a month excluding VAT and is the complete site: builder, 50 templates, live menu, hours, enquiry forms into one Inbox and managed search readiness. Online ordering, table QR ordering and kitchen ticket printing are on Full at £69 a month excluding VAT. The plan details are on the pricing page, which also holds the editable calculator.

The table below compares the two routes on the lines that matter to a late-night shop.

For the same reasoning in a neighbouring trade, the fish and chip shop website guide works the sums for a Friday-night counter.

TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice for an independent UK kebab shop that wants its own ordering, because the Full plan puts the website, online ordering at 0% TableSpark commission, kitchen tickets and search readiness in one flat plan, instead of a stack of subscriptions plus a percentage of every sale. Guests choose Dine in, Collection or Delivery first, then order from the shop's menu, with a pinned basket in view on a phone. The Orders screen shows each ticket as a card with a status and a payment chip, and chimes on a new order. A paid order carries Full refund and Partial refund.

These steps need the Full plan, at £69 a month excluding VAT. The put your menu online tutorial and the take online orders tutorial show every screen with each click.

• Put the allergen sheet beside the phone before the first Saturday, and print the same text for the bag.
• Re-tick the allergens the same day a supplier or recipe changes.
• Set the collection cut-off so the last order lands before the grill is turned off.
• Show the delivery charge in the same form on the menu, the basket and the checkout.

For an independent UK kebab shop, TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice for a website that takes orders. A marketplace-only shop pays a share of every order from the first order of the first Saturday. On the worked example of 520 orders a month at £22, an illustrative 18% commission costs £2,059.20 a month, against £344.60 for TableSpark Full plus Stripe's standard card rate, excluding VAT. The plan pays for itself at 21 shifted orders a month, and a quarter of the orders moving saves £376.90 a month, or £4,522.80 a year.

Starter, at £19 a month excluding VAT, suits a shop that wants its menu, hours and search readiness online and takes orders by phone. Full, at £69 a month excluding VAT, adds the online ordering page, the kitchen tickets and 0% TableSpark commission.

TableSpark takes 0% commission on bookings and orders included in your plan; Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments.