Why Just Eat says your restaurant does not deliver to an address you cover

Just Eat is the only platform in this set that publishes a hard number, and restaurant operators can act on it the same afternoon. Self delivery partners manage their own coverage in the Partner Hub under “Management” then “Area”, and Just Eat states the bounds outright: “You can set your mile limit between 0.5 miles (min) and 7 miles (max).” Beyond that you have to ask. Partners using Just Eat’s own couriers get a different screen entirely, one that lets them view the delivery area and the postcodes it covers.

The split runs through the whole help article. One section is headed “View your delivery area (Just Eat Delivery Partners only)” and the next is headed “Manage your delivery area (Self-delivery Partners only)”. Before anything else, establish which of those two headings applies to your store, because they describe two different products with the same name.

What can a self delivery partner actually change on Just Eat?

Postcodes and a distance limit, without asking anyone. Just Eat says “In almost all situations you can now manage the postcodes and distance limit yourself, without having to call us and request a change”, and gives the steps: go to “Management” then “Area” to set and manage postcodes and the distance limit, set the mile limit between the published minimum and maximum, and “Tap on a postcode to add or remove.” It adds that “Changes are saved automatically”, which is worth knowing because there is no save button to forget.

Two things make this unusually operator friendly. The unit of coverage is the postcode, which is the same unit your drivers, your customers and your delivery data already use, so nothing has to be translated. And the limit is a published number rather than a platform secret, so you can tell in advance whether the district you are arguing about is even reachable under the rules. If you want more, Just Eat tells you what to do: “To set it any higher, or to include postcodes beyond 7 miles, please contact us.”

Why does Just Eat encourage a smaller area rather than a bigger one?

Because it frames the whole feature around cancellations and food quality rather than reach. The article opens with the claim that an accurate area “means no more cancelling orders because they’re too far to deliver to, plus orders get delivered faster and arrives warmer, so even more positive reviews and higher ratings”, the grammatical slip being Just Eat’s own. Then it gives the advice most operators skip: “We understand you want to reach as many customers as possible but remember if you get too busy, you can reduce the distance – you have control over the postcodes you cover.”

That is a peak hour instrument handed to the restaurant instead of held by the platform, and it is genuinely different from how most of this category works. Elsewhere the platform contracts your area when its couriers are stretched, and you find out afterwards. On Just Eat, if your own drivers are stretched, contracting the area is your move to make, in your own hands, saved automatically. Just Eat spells out the reasoning as well: “Select the longest distance that you want your drivers to travel to. This helps avoid long journeys and lack of drivers, which means you can get more orders out to customers on time.”

What if your store is on Just Eat’s own couriers?

Then the area is not yours, and the tool reflects that. Just Eat describes the improvement it made for those partners as being able to view the delivery area in Partner Hub “so you have visibility over the postcodes you cover”. Visibility, not control. There is no mile limit to adjust and no postcode to tap on and off, because Just Eat’s own network decides which postcodes your store serves.

For a chain running both models, and many do, this is the single most important distinction to get straight before anyone escalates anything. Two branches of the same brand, ten miles apart, can have completely different answers to “why did this postcode stop ordering”, and the answer depends on a delivery model rather than on anything about the food, the menu or the kitchen. Ask which model the branch is on before you ask anything else.

Where do Just Eat delivery charges fit into a postcode area?

They are a separate screen with separate permissions, and Just Eat is explicit about the asymmetry. A self delivery partner can see what they charge by going to “Management” then “Charges” in the Partner Hub, but changing it is not self service: the instructions are to go to “Support” then “Contact Us”, “Select ‘Delivery Areas & Charges’ as the topic and send us a message.” The article repeats the point in its own aside, “Contact us if you need help with changes to your Delivery charges.”

That matters for coverage because a postcode you can reach at a price nobody will pay is not really covered. If you extend the area to seven miles and the charge stays flat, the far postcodes will convert badly and you will conclude, wrongly, that there is no demand out there. Reading availability and price together at the same addresses is what stops that misreading, and it is why a coverage record should carry the quoted delivery cost and time alongside the yes or no.

What does a Just Eat customer see from outside your delivery area?

Nothing about you. This is the constant across every platform on this subject and Just Eat is no exception: a customer whose postcode is outside your area does not get an explanation, they get a list that does not contain your restaurant. No order is attempted, no complaint is filed, and no row appears anywhere in your systems. The only party who could tell you is the customer, and the customer has no reason to.

That is why the checks worth running are the ones you initiate. Take the postcodes you believe you cover, look up what a customer there is offered, and compare it against the postcode list in the Partner Hub. If the two disagree, you have found either a stale setting or a platform side change, and either way you have found it before the quarterly numbers did.

How do you keep a Just Eat area honest over time?

Review it on a cadence rather than after a complaint, because the area is a setting that ages. Drivers leave, a new competitor opens on the far side of your seven miles, roadworks change what a journey costs you, and the postcode list you tapped out eighteen months ago quietly stops matching the business. Just Eat has made the change cheap and instant, so there is no reason for it to be a once a year decision.

Then verify from the customer side, because the Partner Hub shows what you set and not what a person in that postcode was shown. Repeating that reading at fixed postcodes, at the hours those postcodes order, and keeping the history so a busy Friday and a lost postcode look different, is what Kitchain (kitchain.co) does with Coverage. Our broader profile of the platform sits at https://kitchain.co/aggregators/just-eat/.