Why You Need Online Ordering

January 23, 2019

Delivery technology is growing at such a fast rate, but what about online ordering? If more customers want delivery, can we not skip a manual step and have them order digitally?

The future of the restaurant business lies squarely with online ordering. With new meal delivery services popping up each year, restaurants are going to have to jump onboard. Offering online ordering and delivery puts you in front a whole new customer-base than just walk-ins, which will increase your revenue and breathe new life into your business.

Grow orders & accessibility
A study commissioned by GrubHub, an online and mobile food ordering company, found restaurants using the online-ordering service were able to grow their takeout revenue by an average of 30%. This is no coincidence. There are a couple psychological effects going on here, including judgment, but one are we want to focus on is: when given the entire menu, customers will order more.

In fact, one in five restaurants doubled their takeout revenue. Between changing consumer behavior and the relative ease of implementing online ordering through platforms like GrubHub, being digitally accessible is now more important than ever for restaurant success.

Been trying to reach out to millennial customers?

To millennials, even if a restaurant is right around the corner, it’s virtually invisible if it’s not easy to access online. And being truly digitally accessible includes the ability to take orders online. According to the National Restaurant Association, 60% of adults say they’d likely take advantage of delivery to their homes or offices if limited-service restaurants offered it.

Become more efficient
Being more convenient for consumers is important, but it’s just one of the many benefits to online-ordering platforms. The research found that GrubHub’s order technology was able to cut order-processing time by more than half, which provides a huge benefit to restaurants’ internal operations.

Research shows 75% of phone orders take more than a minute, and 30% take longer than three minutes. When added up, every 100 takeout orders received each week on online platforms, saved restaurants 2.5 hours of workers’ time. With customers entering their own information, online ordering can also improve accuracy.

Showing the biggest benefit to moving to online ordering were smaller restaurants; they typically see a 50% increase in takeout revenue after joining GrubHub or other services like it.

Build a database
If you’re like many restaurant owners, you’re building an email database of your customers. This lets you market and communicate with them in the future by sending specials, loyalty information, coupons, links to blog posts, interesting tips and videos.

You rarely get an email address from your in-house diners. And, you almost never get an email address from a phone order. But, you always get an email address from your online orders.

Because of online ordering, you know exactly when and what your customers order. Using this information lets you know which menu items are the most popular and which are lacking. You can then adjust, add or remove menu items based solely on what your customers are eating.

This also allows you to send personalized promotions to your online ordering customers because you know detailed information about their spending habits.

For example, let’s say Bob Smith ordered from you once in January, but from your analytics you know he hasn’t ordered in six months. You might send him a targeted promotion to get him to come back. You might also send him a survey to find out why he hasn’t returned. This can provide you valuable data on how to engage customers, just like Bob, to come back.

If you have been thinking about adding the capability to order online, do it. This will give you added flexibility, grow revenue, reduce costs and reach more customers than ever.

Serious about updating your POS? Check out the Northstar POS system to improve the power and effectiveness of your restaurant!