September 16, 2025•23 min read

Dubai just changed the rules of food delivery. Here’s what it means for your growth.

Dubai’s food delivery market has become one of the most competitive and fast-growing in the world. Restaurants juggle multiple aggregators, shifting commission structures, and constant pressure to offer discounts or promotions. Now, with the government introducing new guidelines for food delivery platform subscriptions and transparency, the landscape is changing again.

These guidelines are meant to bring greater fairness and clarity between delivery platforms, restaurants, and consumers. For operators, that’s a welcome shift but it also raises a bigger question: how do you turn transparency into actual growth?

What the new guidelines require

Published by the Dubai Department of Economy & Tourism (DET), the guidelines focus on ensuring consumers have full visibility into costs and claims made by food delivery platforms. Key requirements include:

  • Plain, clear language: Platforms must use simple, easily understood wording across all versions of their apps and websites.
  • Visible disclosures: All fees and terms must be displayed prominently, equally across web, iOS, and Android. Nothing can be hidden or omitted in ways that could affect a customer’s choice.
  • Clear fee breakdowns: Before checkout, customers must see the full breakdown of charges — including food prices, delivery fees (and whether they vary by location), service fees, and taxes.
  • No hidden charges: Platforms cannot add undisclosed surcharges after payment. Any pricing changes without prior notice are considered inconsistent with the guidelines.
  • Truth in promotions: Terms like “exclusive” must reflect factual, accurate offers. If a promotion is only available on one platform, that must be clearly stated.
  • Subscription transparency: Platforms offering subscriptions cannot pass costs indirectly to restaurants through hidden commissions, bundled charges, or inflated delivery fees.

The real challenge for restaurants

For restaurants, these guidelines are a positive step but they still only address consumer-facing transparency.

Operators still face the challenge of making sense of fragmented performance data. Each aggregator shows a different slice of information. Some highlight orders, others focus on fees, while many don’t reveal how promotions or subscriptions affect overall profitability.

The result? Restaurants are left to patch together spreadsheets or run on gut feel. But when decisions are based on incomplete data, growth becomes a gamble.


Why data-driven strategies matter more than ever

With costs rising and competition intensifying, restaurants need clarity not just for compliance, but for decision-making. That means being able to answer:

  • Which aggregator is driving the most profitable growth, not just the most orders?
  • How do my delivery times, ratings, and pricing compare to nearby competitors?
  • Are my campaigns generating true ROI, or just discount-driven spikes?
  • Do subscription plans actually deliver value, or do they quietly eat into margin?

These are strategic questions. And the restaurants that thrive under the new guidelines will be those that turn data transparency into data-driven growth strategies.

Where Growdash fits in

Dubai’s new regulations make the industry fairer, but they don’t solve the underlying challenge: restaurants still need all their data in one place to make better decisions.

That’s where Growdash steps in.

  • Unified dashboards consolidate performance across delivery platforms like Deliveroo, Talabat, Noon and Careem.
  • AI-powered insights highlight risks and opportunities in real time.
  • Transparent economics let you measure true ROI across sales, fees, ads, and subscriptions.

And with Aisha, your growth co-pilot, you don’t need to spend hours digging into dashboards. You can simply ask:

  • “How did my Deliveroo ads perform this month compared to Careem?”
  • “What’s my ROI on last week’s discount campaign?”
  • “Which branches need the most attention to improve ratings?”

Aisha makes data conversational turning complex analytics into instant answers and clear direction.

The bottom line

Regulations can ensure fairness, but they can’t guarantee profitability. That comes from clarity. And in today’s delivery market, clarity only comes from data you can trust, compare, and act on.

With Growdash you build a strategy powered by transparency and a co-pilot that helps you turn data into growth.