Deliveroo advert banned after receiving 300 complaints

The now banned commercial, which first aired in September this year, depicts a woman diving into a delivery bag to retrieve multiple food orders from operators including Wagamama, Pizza Express and Burger King.

According to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the advert received 300 complaints and has subsequently been removed from screens because it implied "customers could order food from different restaurants to be delivered together".

This is the second time this year that the ASA has taken action against a Deliveroo ad.

In September, an advert suggesting the company could deliver food anywhere in the UK under the tagline "order what you want; where you want; when you want it", was banned on similar grounds​​.

Responding to the latest ban, Deliveroo said the advert clearly stated on screen that "separate orders must be made for each restaurant" and had offered to make this clearer.

However, while the ASA noted that there was on-screen text to clarify the nature of Deliveroo's service, the regulator concluded: "The overall impression [was] that customers could order food from different restaurants to be delivered together.

"Because that was not the case, and because the ad did not state that a delivery charge would be applied to each order from a different restaurant, we concluded it was likely to mislead."

A Deliveroo spokeswoman told the BBC​​​: "This advert underlined the huge choice of great restaurants available on Deliveroo. This is growing each day. For the record, you can't actually dive into your Deliveroo bag, however hungry you are."

The ASA also announced today (4 December) that both a poster and press ad by KFC, which received complaints for appearing to substitute an expletive with the word “cluck”, have also been banned.

The US-based fast food chain responded saying it did not agree with the claim and that the phrase “what the cluck?” represented the customers’ response to a great value KFC deal.