In 2019, the total value of food delivery worldwide is estimated at $ 107 billion (ref: Statistica) and about half of that will be delivered by third-party delivery apps. Some of these third-party platforms are showing astrophysical YoY growth like DoodDash in the United States, which recently expanded its revenue by an astonishing 216% annually. They are two staggering statistics that point to a future where more restaurants will earn more revenue for delivery orders than for dinner orders. That’s something few could have imagined a few years ago and, unless you always run pizza or Chinese food, is the biggest change the restaurant industry has seen in decades.
When restaurant owners are considering putting their business in one or more of these apps, there are some obvious questions they need to ask themselves:
- Is it economical?
- Do we have the ability in the kitchen to meet additional needs?
- What will the customer experience be when our food arrives at someone’s house rather than a table in our restaurant?
- What, if any, will the impact of deliveries affect the customer experience?
Customer experience factors to consider when using the food delivery apps
If you’ve used a delivery app to place an order, you can expect to see customer feedback about the app being business-oriented because they regularly ask for reviews and ratings. However, that is not the case.
Most, if not all (are there any exceptions?) delivery apps will not pass this feedback on to the restaurant. Usually the only way to access it is to log into the app as a consumer and review your reviews from the customer’s point of view. Distributed applications closely protect their user data because they know its value. That means it’s up to your restaurant to figure out what works in the context of delivery and / or find your own way to get feedback. The following questions will help you get there.
What food should you provide for delivery?
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This is the first question any restaurant should ask before getting started with GrubHub, Deliveryoo or Doordash, etc.
Different dishes are more or less suitable for delivery for a variety of reasons, such as food packaging.
What packaging should you use for delivery?
When you serve a dish indoors, you usually serve it on reusable plates and bowls while the food is hot. It is not the case that delivery and packaging choice can create or disrupt the delivery aspect of your business on both a financial basis and a reputation basis.
Some businesses have taken the packaging impact on customer experience to a whole new level.
For example, Zume Pizza has redesigned the pizza box to prevent it from bouncing around during transportation and also reduces the delay of the pizza base when delivered (the surface on which the pizza is uneven). This is important if the delivery driver decides to pull a wheel on the way to your house (that happens), which will result in your pizza being a lot less delicious. The fact that customers tend to blame the restaurant for problems more than the delivery company should make it even sharper.
Other factors may be related to the amount of packaging needed to deliver a particular dish (especially relevant when items need to be added to another dish such as bread) and of course. , always consider sustainability. Do you really want to be a restaurant where customers order a meal and then fill a bucket with a disposable plastic box?
If you do not receive the packaging right away, your food may arrive at a customer’s table that looks extremely uncomfortable. No matter how good something is, the appearance will have a big impact on what people say about your food. Instagram is a double-edged sword!
How does delivery affect dinner customers?
There are two separate issues to consider here.
Does delivery demand affect restaurant service time?
Few, if any, would tell their employees to prioritize delivery drivers over those in their restaurants. Dining customers will often spend more and no commissions will be paid. However, if your kitchen spikes in delivery orders and is not equipped to deal with it, your dinner customers will suffer some degree and this is a very real danger. delivery of delivery apps (think Valentine’s Day or similar). The option is to simply stop taking orders, but the ideal scenario is to have the flexibility built into your operation both in person and space / equipment. Modern kitchen design is taking this into account.
Do you have a suitable waiting area for delivery drivers?
It is not just the kitchen that needs to be considered when it comes to delivery capabilities. Most restaurants are arranged to accommodate as many tables as possible with a small pedestrian area and / or customers waiting for their tables to be cleared. If you have strong delivery needs, you can have four or five delivery people waiting at any time.
The customer experience of your dinner guests can be adversely affected by a wet sweat procession beside them during a romantic meal. In some cases, it may take a table to accommodate shippers but it will be another line in your financial analysis of the profitability of the shipping side in your business.
Track the impact of delivery apps on customer experience
The only way you can be sure that the customer experience of your delivery is good and not ruin the dinner experience is to follow it in both contexts.
You can rely on a combination of consumer reviews in the delivery app and TripAdvisor restaurant reviews. However, because the sample size is small (few people feel the need to post a public review) and it is difficult to manage data across multiple locations, this is not a very reliable method and can lead to decisions. poorly given.
There are many ways to capture feedback in a restaurant. Delivery is a bit more difficult, but our customers are seeing a good interaction when using survey bots on popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger.
An additional benefit of capturing customer feedback is that it gives you the opportunity to capture emails and marketing rights. The delivery app does not identify who the customer is, so you do not know if the 12345 order is for a new customer or your oldest and most loyal customer. When you have their details, you can then try to convert them to your own app / distribution service or entice them to visit your facility next time, thus reducing sales. lost for future commission.
To sum up, there is no doubt that delivery applications will play a major role in the food service industry in the near future, so most restaurants should at least consider using them as a channel. But they certainly don’t suit every restaurant or even every dish, so be sure to do your research before jumping in.
Some people may think that there is no downside to listing these applications for a short time to “check water or food”, but that is not entirely true. When you list on one of these apps, you’re doing two things that could have a long-term negative impact on your brand if you later delist:
You have given a lot of data to the application, so if your food is popular, for example, pho vietnam, the app might find a way to replace your product with a similar one to fill it up. fill in the gaps (in some cases it may be a branded product controlled by the app itself). That could lead to permanent loss of market share.
There is also a good chance, some (or more) of your core customers will use the app to order food from your restaurant during the test. Inadvertently, you may have opened your eyes to a whole new world of options reducing the frequency they order from you. This is a good reason to think twice about sticking that sticker on your door.
Hopefully, this post does not appear as an anti-distribution app as it is not intended. A lot of food service businesses will be much more profitable due to their presence on these apps. However, this will not happen for some restaurants and in such cases it is probably better not to get involved in the first place.
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