Why your Glovo promotion is not showing to customers

Glovo is one of the few platforms that will refuse to let restaurant operators create a discount at all, and it gives two separate reasons for doing so. The first is performance: the portal blocks the tool with “Reach the next ‘Rewards’ level to unblock Promotions” and explains “Currently your level is ‘Need Improvement’.” The second is pricing: after a recent price rise the portal imposes a cooldown and states “You may not create a discount during this period.” Neither is an error. Both are a promotion that will never appear because it was never allowed to exist.

We do not publish a downtime figure for Glovo. Our July 2026 measurements cover the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Glovo does not operate in those markets, so there is no honest number to put here. What Glovo does publish, in its own terms, is that some features “may not be available to some Partners, due to the country in which they operate, certain legal requirements, performance on the Glovo app, among other circumstances.”

What is Glovo “Promotool” and where does it live?

It is a named product inside the Vendor Portal, and Glovo defines it in its published terms: “‘Promotool’: platform inside the Promotion section of the Vendor Portal made available to Partners in order for them to be able to request and manage their applications for marketing.” Paid placement is a separate thing again, “‘Self-Service Advertising’: platform inside the Advertising section of the Vendor Portal”, and the two together are what the terms call “the Tools”. Source: glovoapp.com/docs/en/legal/terms-ads-promos.

The portal navigation uses different words from the terms, which is worth knowing when you are looking for the screen. The menu labels in the partner portal include “Growth Centre”, “Marketing”, “Promotions”, “Advertising” and “Smart Marketer”. When the tool is not provisioned the portal says so plainly, under a key named for exactly that condition, with “Promotion not available” and “Please contact your account manager”.

Why does Glovo say you need to reach the next Rewards level to unblock Promotions?

Because access to the discount tool is tied to a merchant performance tier. The blocking dialog carries the title “Reach the next ‘Rewards’ level to unblock Promotions”, the body “Currently your level is ‘Need Improvement’. You just need to improve in a few areas to start using Promotions”, and a button reading “Check your ‘Rewards’ level”.

Glovo does not publish the thresholds behind that tier, so we are not going to invent numbers for it. What the string does establish is the shape of the constraint: promotion access on Glovo is earned and can be lost, and a store in the lowest tier has no discount tool at all. A related string points at pricing rather than service, telling the operator to “Check your offline markup to unlock promotions.” Source: the public localisation dictionary at portal.glovoapp.com.

Why can a recent price change stop you creating a Glovo discount?

Because Glovo treats a price rise followed by a discount as a suspect sequence and enforces a waiting period. The dialog is headed “You have a recent price change” and reads: “To ensure authentic price adjustments, your restaurant has a {numOfDaysBlocked}-day cooldown starting from {blockageStartDate}. You may not create a discount during this period. Discount creation may resume on {unblockedDate}.”

The cooldown length is a variable rather than a published number, so it differs by case. For a chain this matters most at menu roll out. A national price update pushed across an estate on Monday can leave every branch unable to launch the campaign that was scheduled for Friday, and nothing connects the two events in anybody’s calendar. Glovo also refuses edits after creation, telling operators “If you would like to edit this discount, please use the Help button to raise a request”, so a campaign built during a cooldown workaround cannot be quietly corrected later.

Why does a Glovo discount show up smaller than the one you set?

Because in several European markets the displayed discount is calculated against a regulated reference price rather than your current one. Glovo explains the rule in its own partner FAQ: the Omnibus Directive “requires businesses in EU member states to display the lowest price a product had in the last 30 days before applying any discount”, and spells out the consequence, that where “a product’s price was lowered recently (including past promotions), the discount will be calculated from the lowest price in the last 30 days, meaning customers may see a smaller discount.”

The third clause is the one that catches scheduled campaigns: “If you schedule a promotion and the product’s price changes before it starts, the displayed discount may adjust accordingly.” So a 30 percent campaign set weeks in advance can go live showing something less, without anybody editing it, purely because a price moved in between. This string is scoped to Glovo in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal and Croatia.

Why does a Glovo promotion cover one store and not another?

Because Glovo requires the campaign to be built per store, and says so in its own partner FAQ: “This promotion only applies to this establishment. If there are multiple establishments/branches, the action must be created for each of them separately.” The same answer adds two more limits, “The campaign will run for a maximum period of one month” and “Multiple different actions cannot be set for the same time period for the same vendor.”

The portal enforces the single scope in the builder too, with “For now, you can only create promotions for a single brand at a time” and “For now, you can only create promotions for a single vendor at a time.” Overlaps are refused rather than merged, with “You have another promotion running in the same time period”, and where two do reach a customer Glovo states which wins: “the most valuable discount will be shown to the customer at the time of check-out.” An unavailable item stops the whole thing, with “We couldn’t create your promotion because some items or menus are unavailable in the selected restaurants.”

Who pays for a Glovo campaign, and where does the cost appear?

The partner does, and Glovo names the line on the invoice. Its terms state that “the Partner shall be solely responsible for the payment of the cost of the Campaign’s budget”, and that payment is made “by deducing the amount that has been spent by the Partner for each Campaign from the invoice(s) issued by Glovo to the Partner”, adding that “The corresponding concept inscribed on the invoice shall be ‘Marketing Promotions’ or similar.” The Glovo scoped FAQ puts it more simply: “you will only be absorbing the cost of the discount when a customer makes an order that is eligible for your promotion”, with commission “charged based on the discounted price of the order.”

Budget does not stop cleanly at the cap. Glovo reserves the right to halt a campaign at “90% of the total agreed cost or budget”, and states that if the budget is exceeded anyway, “the difference between the initial budget and the final effective amount spent will be charged to the Partner”. Spent budget is not refundable. The portal also carries co funding controls, “Platform co-funded” against “Vendor funded”, plus “Platform funding ratio” and “{platformFundedPercentage} co-funded”, though these belong to the shared Delivery Hero portal rather than to any published Glovo commitment.

What stops a Glovo promotion once it is running?

Approval, exhaustion, or an overlap. The portal’s status list includes “Pending approval” alongside “Active”, “Upcoming”, “Paused”, “Completed” and “Cancelled”, so a saved campaign is not automatically a live one. Glovo’s terms describe acceptance loosely: “Once the Partner has placed a Campaign in the Tools, the Campaign shall be accepted by Glovo; this acceptance may take place automatically.”

Because Glovo blocks the tool by tier, blocks it again after a price change, recalculates the displayed discount against a regulated reference, and requires a separate campaign per store, a chain’s real promotional coverage on this platform drifts for reasons that never surface as a failure. Kitchain (kitchain.co) records the discount rendered on each Glovo store page daily and flags the stores where it stopped, which is the only place a Rewards tier block and a price cooldown become visible as the same thing: a missing offer.

For Glovo itself, its markets and what else we watch on its listings, see our profile at kitchain.co/aggregators/glovo/.