Why restaurants profit from in-house delivery services

Restaurant owners know that food delivery was a lifesaver during the first year of COVID-19. How else could they keep their cash registers ringing with dining rooms closed and most customers hunkering down at home? In fact, between February and December 2020, the number of delivery transactions per month almost doubled, according to a study by Edison Trends.

But all those food deliveries came with a cost. While hungry customers were digging into their freshly delivered pizzas and burritos, restaurant owners were cringing at how much money DoorDash, Grubhub or other third-party delivery apps were grabbing from each order. The cut these apps take from each order varies, but it can easily reach 30%. That means a $50 dine-in order generates just $35 as a delivery order. So while the restaurant experienced the same food costs, same preparation labor and same overhead, it realized significantly less revenue.

The rise of in-house food delivery apps

One solution to this cash drain is for a restaurant to establish its own online ordering capability or mobile app. In fact, customers favor this. According to a survey by Sense360, 63% of consumers prefer to order directly from a restaurant. Some customers have read about price gouging from third-party apps and want to help their favorite dining establishments survive. And many diners simply like the comfort of dealing directly with the restaurant, especially one they regularly patronize.

In addition to more revenue, a restaurant that offers in-house food delivery services also benefits from:

·  More direct contact with its customers, which means if a customer has a special request or a problem arises, the restaurant can manage it better.

·  More control of its customers’ data, making the pursuit of repeat orders much easier.

·  Access to useful analytics, such as trends in menu item popularity and customer price sensitivity.

·  Hardware and operational cost savings, because restaurants don’t need additional hardware, tablets and printers to keep everything in order. With talech POS solutions, online orders are organized in the same software as in-person orders.

Many restaurants favor a hybrid online food ordering solution

Despite customers’ preferences to order directly from restaurants, third-party apps dominate the food delivery market. That’s unsurprising, given that the apps market themselves effectively, customers are familiar with the apps and they’re typically easy to use.

The solution for many restaurants, then, is a hybrid model in which they develop an in-house system while maintaining relationships with third-party apps. This allows restaurants to take advantage of the marketing power of the apps for some orders while collecting more revenue from other orders. talech customers with multiple locations can add third-party software plug-ins to their POS systems.

The four characteristics of successful online food ordering services

A restaurant that wants to succeed with its own food delivery system must match the appeal of third-party apps. Here are a few characteristics of successful online ordering systems:

1. Food delivery apps are easy to use. The user interface is clean and intuitive, the menu is front and center and customers can place orders through obvious clicks and familiar payment options, immediately receiving an order confirmation. On the restaurant end, the system seamlessly integrates with the POS.

2. Food delivery apps work hand-in-hand with the restaurant’s social media. The ordering system is accessible through the restaurant’s social pages, as well as its website, making ordering easy regardless of how a customer interacts with the restaurant.

3. Interacting with the restaurant is simple. If a customer has a question about the menu or an order, they can get a quick response.

4. Food delivery app analytics are readily available. An online ordering system integrated with a talech POS gives management useful information on sales trends, inventory requirements and customer preferences.

In-house, online food ordering and restaurant delivery services aren’t going away

Online food ordering is definitely here to stay and is likely to continue to grow. Restaurants that enable in-house food delivery services will benefit from more revenue and higher customer satisfaction.