How does Just Eat organise the restaurant list?
The order in which restaurants appear on Just Eat is dynamic and subject to a wide variety of factors. Our aim is to show our customers the restaurants they are likely to order from, in a fair way for our restaurant partners, whilst optimising for a great ordering experience. We’ve designed a ranking algorithm that balances the needs of our customers, our restaurant partners and our drivers. It balances equally important objectives:
- Customer satisfaction (we want to showcase restaurants that are relevant to our customers’s tastes and where they are likely to have a great experience, leaving them satisfied and wanting to come back)
- Restaurant success (we want to give restaurants a fair chance to thrive on the platform, helping them get discovered by more customers and grow their local business)
- Just Eat operational efficiency (including courier network efficiency and call centre workload)
To fulfil these objectives, the ranking algorithm (and where restaurants appear on the ranking list) is influenced by the following factors:
Customer preferences: the restaurant list is personalised for logged in customers so a restaurant that is more relevant to their tastes will appear higher up the restaurant list. This is based on their recent order history.
Distance to the customer: Just Eat shows restaurants that are closer to the customer above restaurants that are further away, in order to improve waiting times, driver efficiency and quality of the delivery.
Restaurant operational performance: Restaurant performance is measured via a variety of factors including order volume, reorder rates, successful orders and accuracy of order updates provided to customers. The better a restaurant’s operational performance the higher up the restaurant list they will appear as this helps us predict the probability of an order reaching the customer without any issues.
New restaurants: Restaurants that are new to the Just Eat platform are boosted higher in the ranking list for the first couple of weeks, to help them build up their customer base and restaurant operational performance score. New restaurants are displayed with the ‘New’ label.
Logistic efficiency: Just Eat may temporarily move restaurants down the list if we know that their orders are unlikely to be delivered to customers within a reasonable timeframe due to capacity issues at the restaurant or our delivery services. In addition, both Just Eat and the restaurant can decide to close a restaurant on the platform if it’s too busy, in which case it will no longer appear in the restaurant list. For chains with multiple restaurants that deliver to a customer’s location we show the closest open branch first and move the further away chains down the list.
Promoted placement: Restaurant partners can appear higher up the restaurant list by using a pay-per-click service that allows them to improve their visibility on the platform for a certain area. This is recognisable via the ‘Promoted’ label displayed on the restaurant in the listing.
Strategic partnerships: Just Eat can manually boost a limited number of restaurant partners in the listing to highlight strategic partnerships.
Other factors: Restaurant partners that are part of the Local Legend scheme receive a boost to their restaurant position. Furthermore, if any filtering, sorting, or searching actions have been taken, this will affect the order and types of restaurants shown based on that criteria.
Testing: From time to time, we may run tests or experiments to monitor and improve our service, and these may have a temporary impact on the position of restaurants.
