5 Insights for Restaurants Pursuing Delivery & Takeout Strategies
Photo by UberEats Canada
Recently, many in the restaurant industry are looking to adapt by offering delivery and takeout or refocusing their energies on their existing takeout & delivery offerings.
At Kitchen Hub, we have built a model around empowering restaurants to open locations that are 100% focused on delivery & takeout. So, we thought it would be helpful to provide our colleagues in the industry with some of the insights and learnings that we have gained.
These can help whether you are brand new to this line of business or have been working with the DoorDash’s of the world and want to optimize your listings.
Maximize your presence
The online world is vast, and your next customer could be looking for food like yours in many different places. Whether it’s searching Google, looking up reviews on Yelp, or opening up their Skip The Dishes app to find their next meal, if you want to succeed at selling food online, you have to be where the eyeballs are.
At Kitchen Hub we advise our restaurant partners to set up profiles on Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google Places, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media. If you’ve already set up all these profiles, great! But it doesn’t stop there, maintaining these profiles with the accurate information is key. Make sure you have your latest menus uploaded, your hours are set correctly, and you are monitoring and replying to all of the feedback customers are providing within 24 hours.
Take an “omni channel” approach
Recent Restaurants Canada research shows that customers order delivery and takeout in a variety of ways: 3rd party apps (30 per cent), over the phone (40 per cent), and on restaurants websites (30 per cent). If you don’t offer one of these channels, you are missing out on a large potential set of customers.
Don’t just partner with one app
Each one of the major food delivery/takeout apps has invested millions in building large customer bases.
Recent estimates show that there is roughly 30 per cent – 50 per cent crossover between the apps. This means that if you are only partnering with one app, you are losing out on at least 50 per cent – 70 per cent of potential customers. Also be mindful that your competitors may not be on all the apps themselves which gives you an opportunity to exist in a place where they aren’t.
Location, Location, Location
Your restaurant isn’t where you are physically located, it’s where you can be found on third-party delivery apps like Skip the Dishes or DoorDash. The apps can be crowded with tons of competing restaurants listed above you.
Finding ways to ensure that you have great placement can be the difference between success and failure. The apps are all monitoring a variety of operational metrics which factor into your placement. Some of these metrics are driver wait times, customer feedback, and order accuracy.
With that in mind, you should focus on having the food ready according to the prep time you have set to eliminate driver waits, ensure you are monitoring customer feedback and making adjustments as necessary, and double or even triple check orders before they go out to reduce accuracy errors.
Additionally, many apps offer ways to promote your brand and these options are generally the cheapest ways to acquire new customers or bring back past customers. Whether it’s setting up a “buy one, get one free” promo on UberEats, or opting for ‘Top Placement’ on SkipTheDishes, these campaigns can prove to be very effective in building and maintaining your delivery/takeout business.
A picture is worth 1000 words
Ever heard the expression: ‘people eat with their eyes’? It could not be truer than in the case of offering takeout and delivery through online channels. Since your customers won’t have a chance to see the food being ordered by other diners, your best bet is to have excellent photos taken. Each of the apps offers photography sessions, most of which are free, so take the apps up on these offers and get as many of your dishes photographed as possible, your future self with thank you.
Kitchen Hub provides turnkey kitchen space optimized for takeout and delivery for restaurants to expand their off-premise sales into new areas. Kitchen Hub provides infrastructure and ongoing services so restaurants can focus on what they do best – COOK!
For more tips and tricks on how to optimize your delivery and takeout, or if you are interested in learning about the Kitchen Hub model, feel free to email us at info@hubsystems.ca
