How to take takeaway orders on WhatsApp
There are three ways. Answer orders yourself in the WhatsApp Business app; let customers order through a marketplace's WhatsApp channel; or have your own number answered by an assistant that takes the order, takes payment and sends the ticket to your kitchen. The first costs you time. The second costs you the customer. The third keeps both.
1. Answer it yourself in the WhatsApp Business app
The WhatsApp Business app is fine for a handful of orders a night. Someone at the counter reads every message, writes the order down and sorts out payment, usually cash on collection or a bank transfer they have to check.
It stops working when the shop gets busy. There is no menu with choices for each item, no payment in the chat and nothing prints, so on a Friday night the phone becomes one more job for whoever is on the counter. A reply that takes ten minutes is a customer who has already ordered somewhere else.
Telling regulars about a deal has limits too. A broadcast from the app only reaches people who have saved your number in their phone.[3]
2. Let customers order through a marketplace's WhatsApp
Just Eat started taking orders on WhatsApp in the UK on 1 October 2026.[2] Customers chat to build a basket from any of Just Eat's UK partners, then pay in the Just Eat app.[1][2]
The chat happens on WhatsApp, but the order, the payment and the customer belong to the marketplace, and the marketplace's terms apply. Your shop is one of many it can suggest to the same customer.
3. Have your own number answered for you
Customers message your shop's own number, the way they would message a friend. An assistant answers straight away and takes the order the way your counter would.
Here is what happens, start to finish:
- The customer messages your number in text or a voice note, in whatever language they speak.
- The assistant shows your menu, with photos, and asks the questions each item needs: the size, the sauce, no pickles.
- If the assistant isn't sure what a voice note said, it asks the customer instead of guessing.
- The customer gets a summary and a button to pay. The money goes to your shop's own Stripe account. EasyOzy never holds your takings.
- The ticket prints in your kitchen, already paid.
If you want to answer someone yourself, open the chat on your dashboard. The assistant stays quiet while you're in it.
The three side by side
| WhatsApp Business app | A marketplace's WhatsApp | Your own number, answered | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who answers | You or your staff | The marketplace | An assistant on your number |
| Payment | Sorted out by hand | Taken by the marketplace, in its app | Online, from a button in the chat, into your own Stripe account |
| The customer | Yours | The marketplace's | Yours |
| The kitchen | Someone writes it down | Through the marketplace's system | Prints on your printer |
You can't sell alcohol, tobacco, vapes or medicines on WhatsApp
WhatsApp's business policy doesn't allow them to be sold through it, whichever way you take orders.[4][5] EasyOzy enforces this for you: those items can't be added in the chat, and the assistant sends the customer to your own ordering website to buy them.
Expect orders in more than one language
When we replayed 61 voice notes customers had sent to shops on EasyOzy, about a third were in Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi or Gujarati.[6] The assistant answers in the language the customer used.
Set up three things first
- Your menu, with the choices each item needs and a photo of each.
- Your opening hours and the area you deliver to.
- Somewhere the order prints, so nobody has to watch a phone.
- Just Eat Takeaway.com, "Just Eat Takeaway.com sets new industry standard as first to introduce WhatsApp food and retail ordering option in Europe", 21 May 2026. Checked 24 October 2026.
- Retail Times, "Just Eat becomes first UK delivery platform to introduce WhatsApp ordering", 1 October 2026. Checked 24 October 2026.
- WhatsApp Help Center, "How to use broadcast lists on the WhatsApp Business app". Checked 24 October 2026.
- WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy, sections 4 and 5 (last updated 23 September 2026). Checked 24 October 2026.
- Meta for Developers, WhatsApp Business Platform policy violations (Alcohol, Tobacco, Drugs, Healthcare). Checked 24 October 2026.
- EasyOzy internal measurement: 61 customer voice notes sent to shops on EasyOzy, replayed August 2026. Aggregated; no shop's or customer's figures. Checked 24 October 2026.
Usman Javed builds EasyOzy, the ordering assistant takeaways use on WhatsApp, Instagram and their own websites.