Prepped by Jeff's. Delivered by Jeff's.

Jeff's did not start as a website. We are a butcher's shop in Hall Green, Birmingham, and long before jeffshalal.co.uk existed our customers were already travelling from the other side of the city, and a lot further, to buy from us. The same request kept coming up at the counter: "Can you deliver?"

So we set out to build a delivery service. When we pitched the idea to friends and family, most of them came back with the same question: "Why not just put it on Uber Eats?" It was a fair question, and our answer to it became the foundation of how the whole thing works. There were two reasons, and neither has changed since: the cold chain, and the price.

What delivery apps really cost

Delivery apps do not work for free. A business selling through Uber Eats typically hands over a commission of up to 30% of every order. The customer then pays a service fee on top, and often a delivery fee as well. None of that money makes the food any better. It is simply the price of the middleman.

No food business runs on margins that can quietly absorb a cut like that, so prices on the apps go up to cover it. That is why the same meal costs noticeably more on the app than at the counter. Or at least, it used to.

Here is the quieter problem. Businesses have noticed that people will pay the inflated app price, so many have stopped keeping two price lists altogether and now charge the app price to everyone, including walk-in customers who have never opened the app. The middleman's markup has leaked into the whole high street, and everybody pays it.

Even the supermarkets stopped sharing

Look at what the biggest grocers did next. Tesco built Whoosh. Sainsbury's built Chop Chop. Rather than keep handing a slice of every basket to an aggregator, they decided the only way to protect their prices was to run delivery themselves. When companies of that size reach that conclusion, it tells you everything you need to know about what the app model really costs.

Raw meat needs a cold chain, not a courier bag

Price was only half of our answer. The other half is the one we care about most as butchers: delivery apps were built to move hot food across town in an insulated backpack. That is fine for a pizza. It is not fine for fresh raw meat.

UK food safety law requires chilled food to be kept at 8°C or below. A courier's bag has no refrigeration, no temperature control and no record of how warm your chicken got on the way over. A proper cold chain means the meat is kept cold from the moment it is cut to the moment it reaches your kitchen, with no warm gaps in between. That is not something you can bolt onto an app. You have to build the whole operation around it.

Packed cold. Delivered cold. Stays cold.

So that is what we built.

Every order is prepped and packed cold by our own team, straight from our cold room. For nationwide delivery, your order travels with DPD in insulated packaging with special coolant gel packs that hold it below 8°C for up to 49 hours. That is roughly double a standard next-day window, so even if your parcel is the last drop of the day, it arrives fridge-cold with hours to spare.

Closer to home, local orders are delivered by Jeff's own drivers. The same hands that packed your order are responsible for getting it to your door cold.

Delivery you can actually follow

Running our own deliveries means we control the whole experience, not just the temperature. Local orders arrive in windows we have deliberately kept tight. We launched with wider windows, listened to our customers, and narrowed them to 12 to 3pm and 4 to 8pm.

Your order comes with live tracking too: you get an hour's time slot, an even more accurate one when you are the next drop, and a map where you can follow the driver to your door. We are constantly working on this feature, because it is ours to improve. When delivery is outsourced, so is any say in how it feels to receive it.

What this means for the price you pay

Because no aggregator sits between us and you, there is no commission hidden in our prices. The price you see is the price of the meat and the work that went into it, not a middleman's cut passed down the line. We would rather earn your repeat order with quality and a fair price than quietly charge you someone else's fees.

Prepped by Jeff's. Delivered by Jeff's.

Cut by us, packed by us, kept cold the whole way to your door. That is the whole idea, and it is why we said no to the apps.

Shop the range, or read more about halal meat delivery across the UK.

Jeff, Founder