For merchants · Birmingham

Attract Students,
Gain more in-store orders.

StudentMenu puts your restaurant directly in front of the city's verified students — six kinds of promotion, a loyalty card, and a live map. Zero commission on your orders, ever.

Register your business See the toolkit
Verified students only · No commission on orders
PLUS+ · the card in their pocket
PLUS+ Ember card
PLUS+ Aurora card
PLUS+ Onyx Gold card
PLUS+ Royal card
Scan · Earn · Return —
every visit builds the habit.
Why StudentMenu exists

The demand never left.
The doors are closing anyway.

Britain's independents aren't short of hungry customers — they're being squeezed out by costs, and the newest one didn't exist fifteen years ago: delivery commission on every order, with VAT charged on the commission itself. Owners call it the new rent. The customer stays loyal to the app; the restaurant pays for the introduction, every single time.

The money didn't stop flowing. It started arriving through a door that charges you for opening it.
11 / wk
net closures of licensed venues across Britain, year to Sept 2025
−14.2%
fewer venues than March 2020 — 15,800+ gone, independents hit hardest
69,000
hospitality jobs lost between Oct 2024 and May 2025
25–35%
delivery commission on every order — "the new rent", plus VAT on the fee
0%
StudentMenu commission — built in Birmingham to send verified students through your actual door
Source: Hospitality Market Monitor — CGA by NIQ & AlixPartners; UKHospitality.
The problem in numbers

Recover the losses from delivery apps.

The same £24,000 of orders tells two very different stories, depending on whose door it comes through.

Uber Eats Deliveroo Just Eat HungryPanda
Through delivery apps
£18,000
is all you keep — £6,000 gone in fees
−£6,000 fees
£18,000 kept
£24,000 of orders · 25% platform commission
VS
StudentMenu
In-store with StudentMenu
£31,200
yours in full — +£7,200 student growth
+£7,200 growth
£24,000 kept in full
Same £24,000 in-store · zero commission · modelled student growth
Illustrative at a typical 25% negotiated rate. Uber Eats publishes 30% for full-service in the UK (13% self-delivery); Deliveroo is negotiated, typically 25–35% for independents; Just Eat's headline order-only rate is 14%. VAT is charged on commission, so a 30% headline deducts ~36% in practice. Growth figure is a modelled estimate. Third-party logos shown for comparison only.
The audience

A city full of hungry students, every single term.

95,000+ students in Birmingham — five universities within a bus ride of your door, and around 20,000 arrive brand new each September.

University of Birmingham — Aston Webb building 5th largest in the UK
40,025
University of Birmingham
Birmingham City University — Curzon building
31,875
Birmingham City University
Aston University campus
15,000+
Aston University
6,760
University College Birmingham
Birmingham Newman University
2,750+
Birmingham Newman University
● Live now
95,000+
Birmingham
Where StudentMenu launches first
110,000+
Manchester
Two of the UK's five biggest universities in one centre
70,000+
Leeds
One of the highest student densities in the UK
400,000+
London
The largest student population in Europe
HESA 2024/25 institutional data and university published figures, rounded by city.
Be on the map before they arrive

95,000 students are already looking. Are you listed?

Registering is free and takes two minutes — your shop appears on the student map as soon as you're verified.

Register your business Claim your listing
The toolkit

Six promotion types, one system.

Every tool is built around one behaviour: a verified student through your door instead of onto a delivery app. The tickets below are the real elements from the student app — colours, glow and all. This page is the interface.

01 · Student Discount

Your handshake with the city

A clean flat percentage for verified students — 10% by default, redeemed by scanning their StudentMenu ID at your till. Full or partial, it's yours to set.

💳
Student Discount
10% Student Discount
10% off · whole menu
Always on · ID scan at till
Live
Intended effectInstant presence in every student's map, search and deal feed — the lowest-effort way into consideration.
02 · Student Promotion

Your custom campaigns

Built from your own menu in minutes: % off chosen items, 2× loyalty points, bundles and meal deals — scheduled to exactly the dates you want. The engine estimates footfall as you build.

✨
Student Promotion2× pts
Loaded Fries Week
Bundle price · 2× points
Mon–Fri · your dates
Live
Intended effectPush a new item, fill a chosen week, test what moves — and see which campaigns shift the numbers.
03 · Student Hour

Decide when the rush comes

A weekly discounted window on your quiet hours — you pick the days and the clock times. Cafés, bakeries and dessert spots get suggested morning windows (9–11am); everyone else 2–6pm.

⏰
Student Hour
20% off · Tue & Wed
2–6pm window
PLUS+ · ID scan at till
2–6pm
PLUS+ members only
Intended effectPredictable footfall — dead afternoons become your busiest window, on schedule. Make students your regulars.
04 · Student Menu

Make yours THE spot

A dedicated, green-highlighted section of your menu: discounted or student-exclusive items rendered apart from the rest of your listing — priced for students, visible to students.

🌟
Student Menu
£4.50 Student Wrap
Exclusive · own section
Rendered apart, in green
Live
Intended effectThe screenshot feature — exclusivity that travels through group chats and gets forwarded.
05 · Group & Society

Host the whole society

Deals that unlock when a minimum number order together — you set the threshold — or when a certified society from UoB, Aston or BCU redeems with its code. Societies can request bookings directly.

👥
Group & Society
6+ together · 15% off
Society codes accepted
Bookable by societies
6+
Society codesPLUS+ members only
Intended effectStanding group business — one society social pays like a good Friday night, and it repeats monthly.
06 · Scheduled

Ride the seasonal wave

City-wide campaigns run by StudentMenu — Freshers, exam season, Christmas, Valentine's and more. You opt in from your dashboard; the platform brings the audience and the marketing.

📅
Scheduled
Freshers · city-wide
Platform-run campaign
Opt in from your dashboard
Soon
Platform-run
Intended effectBig-moment visibility without building anything — your offer inside a campaign the whole city sees.
All six, from day one

Publish your first promotion today.

No setup fee, no commission, no contract. Build it in the dashboard and it's on the student map the moment you publish.

Create your account See how pricing works
The pricing engine

Your dashboard shows its working.

Everything below lives inside the Admin Dashboard — a transparent engine in three modules: it calculates returns, recommends promotions, and runs your loyalty economics. No black box: you see the reasoning, you make the call.

studentmenu.co.uk/admin — Partner Dashboard
The StudentMenu partner dashboard
Module 01 · Calculated returns

The footfall model, live

Move the discount slider and the exact model from your dashboard responds — diminishing returns made visible, sweet spot marked, over-discounting flagged.

20% discount
~53% est. more foot traffic
sweet spot 20%
CAUTION 25%+ SWEET SPOT 0 10% 20% 30% 40% 5% 20% 25% 40% discount UPLIFT
uplift = 65 × (1 − e−0.085·d) — the same transparent heuristic in your dashboard, sharpening automatically as students order.
Module 02 · Promotions recommendation system

Strategy, recommended

The platform reads your menu composition — cuisine, venue type, price points, upgrade patterns — plus your survey answers, and pushes ready-to-run promotion cards with the reasoning attached. One tap to accept.

Student Hour — 15% in your quiet window
Basis: Spring Week SeasonStudent Hour
Your Tuesdays run 40% below Friday. A deeper cut confined to 2–5pm adds covers in dead hours instead of discounting your rush — capped at your 15% survey ceiling.
Student Hour: moves demand in time. The window must match the venue — takeaways pre-dinner, cafés and desserts in the morning.
Not for usRun this promotion
Recommendations follow the platform's phase — broad and simple at launch, richer structures as the term matures, coordinated seasonal pushes city-wide. Your survey (quiet hours, max discount, goals) is a hard ceiling the engine never crosses.
Module 03 · Loyalty engine

Points, bands, rewards — your rules

You set spend bands and choose which of your own items points unlock. The engine keeps reward food-cost inside a ≤10% guardrail of the spend needed to earn it, and shows every student their progress.

62 pts18 pts to a free side
Free side80 pts
A main150 pts
Your signature250 pts
The exact progress element students see in the app — every visit to your counter moves the bar, and a moving bar brings them back. The behavioural maths is below.
Open the dashboard

See these numbers run on your own menu.

Scan your menu once and the engine reads your price points, cuisine and upgrades — then recommends the promotions worth running, with the reasoning attached.

Get your dashboard Ask a question
Getting started

Live in four steps, most within a day.

01

Create an account

Sign up with your business email — it takes two minutes and costs nothing to start.

02

Make a claim or register your business

Already on our map? Claim your listing. New to StudentMenu? Register your restaurant, café or shop from scratch.

03

Get verified

We check every partner against the Food Standards Agency (FSA) food hygiene rating register and confirm ownership with a photo-ID check, so students know every place on StudentMenu is the real thing.

ID images are used only for the review and deleted once verification is complete.
04

Publish your first promotion

Open your dashboard and launch your first discount, Student Hour or bundle — it's live on the student map the moment you publish. Promotion tools are protected by a manager PIN, so your counter staff can scan without changing your offers.

Step one starts here

Two minutes to an account. One day to live.

Most partners are verified and publishing within 24 hours of signing up — well before the September rush.

Start step 01 I already have an account
The PLUS+ Aurora card
PLUS+ Aurora — one of six card designs students carry.
PLUS+ loyalty card

From impulsive orders to consistent regulars.

Delivery apps create one-off, abrupt orders that never build a relationship. PLUS+ turns each visit into points at your shop — so the same student comes back, brings friends, and becomes a regular.

You set the bandsPoints are earned at your counter on your spend thresholds — not on a platform-wide currency.
Your menu is the prizeYou choose what points unlock, from your own items — a free side, a main, your signature. Costs pence, feels like a gift.
Your data, not theirsEvery scan teaches you your real peaks, best-selling items and quiet days — the same data the promotion engine uses to sharpen your next campaign.
Spend £5+
10 pts
Spend £10+
25 pts
Spend £20+
45 pts
Free side
80 pts
A main
150 pts
Your signature
250 pts
Example configuration — every band and reward is yours to set from the dashboard. Group visits: students open group codes and bring their whole society through your door.

Why it works: the economics of habit.

Modern loyalty programmes run on three well-documented behavioural effects. Here's the machinery — and what it's worth at a specific rate.

Effect 01
The goal-gradient effect

People buy faster the closer they get to a reward. In the classic café-card study, customers accelerated purchases ~20% as the free coffee approached. A visible points bar turns every visit into progress — and progress pulls the next visit forward.

Effect 02
Endowed progress

A head start makes people finish. Cards issued with bonus starter points get completed far more often than empty ones — which is why first-scan bonus points exist in your dashboard. The student isn't starting a card; they're already partway through yours.

Effect 03
Points pressure & breakage

Unredeemed points cost you nothing but keep pulling the student back — and spend gets topped up to reach the next band ("it's £4.60… make it £5 for the points"). A meaningful share of points are never redeemed at all: loyalty you never pay out.

Worked at a specific rate — the platform's ≤10% guardrail
£6.20
avg student spend per in-store visit
2 → 3
visits per month once a live points balance exists (modelled on published loyalty frequency lifts of +20–60%)
+£56
extra revenue per converted regular per academic year (9 months × £6.20)
~£9
reward food-cost on their full ~£168 yearly spend — a 5.3% giveaway, half the 10% guardrail
≈ 6:1
new revenue per pound of reward cost — before word-of-mouth and group visits
Example: bands of 10 pts per £5 with a free side (80p food cost) at 80 pts — a reward roughly every £15–£18 through the till. The engine enforces the ≤10% cost guardrail on every ladder you publish; figures are modelled, and your dashboard replaces them with your shop's real numbers as scans accumulate.
The moment · 17 September – mid-October

This September, win them ALL over.

20,000
brand-new students arrive across Birmingham's universities — no habits, no favourite spot, no loyalty to anyone yet. PLUS+ cards distributed through official university channels.
Freshers marquee at the University of Birmingham Primary · first fair
University of Birmingham
40,025 students · the UK's 5th largest
Welcome fair from Wed 17 September 2026
Aston University campus Freshers week
Aston University
15,000+ students, city centre
Welcome week · late September
Birmingham City University Curzon building Freshers week
Birmingham City University
31,875 students across two campuses
Welcome week · late September
Freshers week
University College Birmingham
6,760 students, food-focused campus
Welcome week · late September
Birmingham Newman University Freshers week
Birmingham Newman University
2,750+ students, Bartley Green
Welcome week · late September
Week 117 – 21 September

The introduction

On-campus launch across the universities — stands, posters, flyers and university digital channels, with partner restaurants at centre stage. For the first time, a fresher opens a map and sees every live student deal in the city. Pre-generated introductory offers run in windows you select.

Weeks 2 – 322 September – 5 October

The momentum

First-week offers continue for the students now active — and the richer structures begin trialling: bundles and meal deals, group offers, and society bookings requested directly through the platform.

OngoingOctober onwards

The compounding

The loyalty card takes over: points balances grow, rewards get closer, and first impressions become weekly habits. Whoever wins a fresher in their first month tends to keep them for three years.

Capture students' attention. Keep the revenue.

Join the Birmingham launch. Set up your first promotion in minutes — no commission on orders, cancel anytime.

Email us
studentmenu@pm.me Call us
07399 131071
Register your business Talk to us first
FK
Fortune Kapeen
Founder · University of Birmingham, BSc Geography — Class of 2026
About me

StudentMenu began as a pet project to help me and my friends keep track of the student discounts in our neighbourhood — we never knew where to eat after lectures. Then one of our favourite places on Bristol Road closed down for lack of customers in-store; 70% of its orders were online, even with amazing student rewards. The problem wasn't the food, the location or the rewards. It was visibility. That's what pushed me to build the platform properly: to put student deals where students actually look, bring more in-store visits to the restaurants around our campuses, and win back the revenue lost to delivery apps.