Online Ordering
The technology for handling deliveries is growing at a rapid rate, but what about online ordering? If more customers want their food delivered, should we not skip the manual step of taking the order & allow them to order digitally?
With this in mind we could surmise that the future of the restaurant business lies with online ordering.
With new meal delivery services popping up each year, restaurants are going to have to be onboard with an effective solution if they want to avoid paying high commissions and losing direct contact with their own customers.
Offering online ordering & delivery puts you in front of a whole new customer-base than simply relying on walk-ins or phone, which in turn will increase your revenue & breathe new life into your business. On top of this, as you are servicing your customers yourself rather than relying on a third party, you maintain control of your data allowing you to conduct direct marketing services.
Grow orders & accessibility
Recent studies have found that restaurants who use an online-ordering service were able to grow their takeout revenue by an average of 30% & suggests that when given choice of the entire menu, customers will order more.
By changing your customers behaviour & implementing online ordering through platforms like Andromeda, being digitally accessible is not only easy but more important than ever for restaurant success.
To many modern consumers, even if a restaurant is right around the corner, it’s virtually invisible if it’s not easy to access online as their food purchasing habits are fundamentally different to the traditional customer. In fact, around 60% of adults say they’d likely take advantage of delivery to their homes or offices if restaurants offered it.
Become more efficient
Being more convenient to your customer is important, but it’s just one of the many benefits to embracing an online-ordering platform.
Using an Online Ordering Website from Andromeda, integrated into your POS & kitchen management system, cutting your order-processing time by more than half, which provides a huge benefit to your internal operation.
Research shows 75% of phone orders take more than a minute, & 30% take longer than three minutes. So when averaged for a week, every 100 takeout orders a week on online platforms, saves the restaurant 2.5 hours of workers’ time. And because customers enter their own information, online ordering can also improve accuracy & therefore reduce wastage from errors during order taking.
The biggest benefit to moving to online ordering is reported to occur for smaller restaurants who can typically see a 50% increase in takeout revenue after joining an online ordering platform such as Andromeda.
Build a database
With the increase the digital world, the successful restaurant owner also needs to build an email database of their customers. This allows you to market & communicate with customers by sending special offers, loyalty information, coupons, links to blog posts, interesting tips & videos.
You rarely get an email address from your in-house diners. You almost never get an email address from a phone order. But, you always get an email address from your online orders.
While many businesses use the services of a third party aggregator to handle their online ordering, it is important to remember that these customers are in fact customers of the third party aggregator & not actually customer of yours, even though you are sending your food to them. Their loyalty is to the ordering platform & without the ability to market to them directly, you have a limited chance to gain a regular and loyal customer.
If you don’t employ a team of drivers & do not wish to offer a delivery option, your online ordering website can simply offer a Click & Collect option. This provides the benefits of speeding up service & reducing input errors while also allowing your customer to pay online & speed up the collection process. This is a popular service especially in cities with customers walking or driving past their favourite restaurants on their way home from work. With future timed orders, they can easily order for collection at their desired time.
Andromeda also partner with a third-party delivery service, which enables you to offer a delivery option* without the need to run your own drivers. This partnership provides all restaurants the tools required to offer their menu to their customers without the added expense & time required to run their own deliveries. Likewise, it also offers existing delivery operations the ability to ‘bulk’ up their driving team in peak times without the need to employ additional staff.
* Service is not available in all Postcode, please ask for more details
To find out more about Andromeda & how our systems can assist in growing your business,
Visit our Online Ordering page or contact our sales team