Best Practices for Growing your Restaurants’ Online Ordering Business
According to top Food Industry Analyst and Vice President of the NPD Group, David Portalatin:
“For the restaurant sector as a whole, we don’t expect much growth in 2019. But you will see individuals succeed because they’re taking part in digital strategies, and experience differentiation.”
More than ever before, restaurant owners are feeling the pressure of growing online sales in the most convenient way possible for their valued customers. Finding the perfect mix of favorable business costs for delivery and the ultimate guest experience for online ordering is a true challenge. Until recently…
Companies like Say2eat have taken notice, and exist for the sole purpose of solving these issues. By extending online ordering into channels such as Facebook Messenger and Instagram, Say2eat has solved the convenience issue for the customer. On the delivery cost end, Say2eat has solved the issues of working with third parties for delivery, by providing a commission-free delivery service.
This arrangement leads to a significant increase in online sales, as customers complete orders on mobile, at a rate of 40–60% on average via channels such as messenger, compared to just 20% on mobile with traditional website ordering. As far as alleviating delivery costs and pain points, the aforementioned commission-free delivery service that Say2eat provides, allows restaurants to grow their delivery sales in a healthy way. This is how it should be, and this is how it always should have been from the very start. It is not rocket science, and nobody is re-inventing the wheel here. It is all a matter of letting the numbers and results speak for themselves, and being open to change! Change for the betterment of your restaurant business for years to come..
Below are some additional best practices for growing your restaurants’ online business, to position them to be sustainable well into the foreseeable future:
1. LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS! BUILD YOUR ONLINE ORDERING AROUND WHAT IS CONVENIENT FOR THEM, WHERE THEY NATURALLY SPEND THEIR TIME
If you ask your customers to download anything at all, or fill out a frustrating registration page, when all they want is to place a fast and simple food order, you’ve lost them. 95% of customers abandon the ordering process when asked to download and/or register.
Conversely, Americans are phone obsessed! We check our phones an average of 200 times per day, no matter where we are, no matter what we are doing. When we check our phones, 90% of that time is spent only on messaging and social media channels such as Facebook Messenger and Instagram, where over half of the US population is naturally spending their time.
Meeting and transacting with customers on their favorite, frequently used channels is a win-win situation, resulting in convenience to the guest, and an increase in sales due to increased ordering completion rates because of that very same convenience to the customer.
2. FIGHT FOR YOUR CUSTOMER DATA! THEY ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS AFTER ALL
The restaurant industry is slowly starting to wake up and smell the roses. Third party delivery giants have been hijacking the branding, customer data and relationships from right under the noses of restaurant owners. Not to mention margin killing commissions to boot!
The sad part is that many restaurants did not even notice anything but the commissions that third parties charge. There are now companies that have come to existence to counteract these pain points, giving restaurant brands back full control of their online sales, customer data, branding, and valuable relationships with their customers.
3. STREAMLINE YOUR ORDER RECEIVING OPERATIONS TO GROW ONLINE SALES AT SCALE MORE EFFICIENTLY
Why would anyone want a POS system that refuses to integrate with their various online ordering platforms? Does that show that the POS wants to help your operations run efficiently or are just fine with you being a paying client?
Too often, restaurants stay married and complacent with POS systems that simply “refuse” to integrate with online ordering services, because it is just not “the way they do business.” Staying with a POS that doesn’t streamline your operations and integrate with all your online ordering systems, is like staying married to a woman who has cheated on you and refuses to change even though you decided to stay with her.
Instead of staying stuck with a stubborn POS company, there are POS systems out there that actually want to help streamline your operations with valuable online ordering integrations which they promote. They actually want to reduce “tablet hell,” and help you position your restaurant business to run as efficiently as possible as technology increasingly enters the fray.
4. IF CUSTOMERS CAN’T TRACK THEIR DRIVER AND CONTACT THEM IN REAL TIME, THEN YOU ARE NOT DOING RIGHT BY YOUR CUSTOMERS
What if there was a way to offer this to your valuable customers, while paying 0% in commissions for a single order? Is that something you might be interested in? Speak with Say2eat today about doing right by your customers, not to mention your bank account. Pay no commissions while offering simple delivery ordering via your customers most frequently used channels. Let your customers know exactly where and when their food delivery is, with real-time order tracking and driver contact at any time.
CONCLUSION: DON’T JUST BLINDLY COMMIT TO THIRD PARTIES WITHOUT KNOWING THE COST, WHICH GOES MUCH FURTHER THAN JUST MONEY
Your customers prefer ordering directly from you, they like YOUR food, not THE APP of some third party that promotes itself while burying you in a list of hundreds of other restaurants.
Let your customers order directly from you and only you, on the channels that are most convenient for THEM, such as Facebook Messenger. This is where they are, and this is where they naturally spend so much of their free time.
Now, combining this convenient, direct, online ordering approach with a commission free delivery service is a match made in heaven. Making convenience to the consumer reign supreme, while promoting healthy, sustainable delivery growth without all the deception and data/brand hijacking that occurs behind the backs of restaurants that are supposed to be “valued clients” of these deceitful third party delivery giants. At the end of the day, you are just a “surrogate kitchen” for them (As stated by Noah Glass, CEO of Olo), as they juggle you and all their other restaurant clients within their shaky balancing act.
Well, the jig is up! Restaurant owners are slowly realizing that they have given up the entire farm and then some just to offer delivery ordering that is not even through them. Enough is enough, can i get an AMEN??
At the very least, let’s talk about delivery that makes sense both for you and your valued customers!
To book a demo or get started, visit say2eat.com or call 470-Say2eat!
