As a restaurant owner and operator, have you resisted the urge to offer your goods to customers online via an app? Increasing numbers of people are using food delivery services and it’s fast becoming part of the normal way of arranging one’s daily meals. Restaurants now want to get a restaurant and takeaway order app in order to get a piece of this growing action.
If you are still skeptical about offering online orders to customers either for pickup or delivery, then here are a few reasons that might convince you.
Reason 1: It’s Increasingly What People Want
Reliable data strongly suggests that younger generations are turning to use food delivery services to get restaurant-quality food delivered to their door. Cooking isn’t a big priority for Millennials and Generation Z, and that’s why in 2020 more than 37 percent of this demographic has used food delivery within any given 3 month period. That’s up from 24.3 percent in 2018.
Going to a restaurant invariably means waiting to be seated, waiting to order, waiting for food to arrive…but when the customer orders online they are more in control. They can place orders in time for when they finish work and arrive home, or can order while they’re working on something else so there’s no feeling of constant waiting.
Reason 2: It’s an Upgrade to Phone Ordering
For those restaurants offering delivery but only by phone order, a takeaway app can greatly increase the efficiency and accuracy of your service. When you leave things between customer and employee on the phone, things inevitably go wrong as things are misheard or otherwise miscommunicated. Orders that come through online are totally clear and unambiguous, and can thus reduce mistakes. What’s more, the order goes right to the kitchen, which saves time.
Reason 3: You Reach More Customers
When you offer online ordering, you’re essentially expanding your restaurant capacity by a huge degree. Where a typical restaurant’s daily profit is limited by the number of tables and customers that sit at those tables, offering an online ordering service means you are then serving a whole slew of customers at home, too, on top of the ones you serve in-house. Those who try and like the food will also become regular customers both online and offline.
Reason 4: Online Ordering Can Boost Promotions
Online platforms where people are focusing their eyeballs for a daily food order are far more likely to see and take advantage of any specials or promotions that you’re having than if you just put it on a sign at your restaurant or rely on your servers to tell the customers. You can make promotions very visible by placing at the top of the online menu, highlighted and starred for greater attention.
What’s more, you can tailor your online menu to work better for your restaurant, for example by only listing the most popular items on there. This keeps the menu small and dynamic, and easily allows customers to see everything on offer instead of scrolling endlessly wondering what else there is on offer. You can also leave out items that are difficult or impossible to sell online for logistical reasons, such as the food losing quality in transit.
Reason 5: It Makes Business Easier
As a restaurant owner or operator, you know very well that there’s a rather dull but essential part of the working day, which is looking over the day’s sales and seeing what kind of takings there were. This is made a lot easier with an online ordering system. If you couple the online system with a digital ordering system in-house, and a digital stock-taking system, then you can see at the click of a mouse what your daily income and expenses are.
