8 Reasons Why You Need an Online Ordering System

What’s the most important thing to run a successful restaurant business? Taste? Quality of ingredients? Quality of service?

Undoubtedly, these factors affect your business’s prosperity, but what matters most these days is convenience. The convenience of being able to order food from anywhere and anytime. The convenience of bringing your services to their doorstep. The convenience of relishing a fine dining experience from the comfort of their couch.

And what better way to add the element of convenience than a restaurant online ordering system? It’s the perfect way to eliminate all the physical barriers between your restaurant and the customers, and consequently, make it easier for them to order food from your business.

Online food delivery systems have grown by 300% regarding penetration in the restaurant business, and one can’t afford to hop late on this bandwagon. The pandemic turned out to be a great boost for online food ordering systems, and there can’t be a better time to invest in a restaurant’s online ordering software.

However, FOMO shouldn’t be the only reason you need to get a food delivery system in place for your business. It brings a ton of benefits that help you nurture customer loyalty and improve the bottom line in the long run. This article will discuss the game-changing benefits brought to the table by restaurant delivery management software.

But before we get into any of that, let’s develop a better understanding of online ordering systems.

What’s an online ordering system?

Online ordering systems allow restaurants and food businesses to serve their customers through a mobile app or a website. Businesses can accept orders, offer discounts, accept payments, manage menu items, and take care of a whole bunch of other operations using these interfaces.

There are predominantly two kinds of online food ordering systems.

The first ones are marketplace offerings based on multi-restaurant delivery software. Uber Eats, Foodpanda, and Zomato are some of the examples of these offerings. They allow customers to order food from all or most of the nearby food outlets.

The obvious advantage of aggregator models is that they bring a lot of eyes to your business and give you a fair chance to compete with other food businesses, big and small, in your area. The cons would be that you won’t have personal branding, which is key to nurturing long-term customer relations, and you’ll have to share some of the profits with the service provider.

The second way is to build your own food delivery app. Unlike a multi-restaurant ordering system, you won’t have to part your profits with anyone. And you get to develop a brand image that gives you loyal returning customers.

While there are good reasons to hop on both of these models, we suggest you get your own online ordering system since it has a better ROI in the long run. Let’s now look at some of the key benefits of having one:

It Brings in Bigger Orders

When you build a restaurant website or an app, you get to present items in the most mouth watery way possible. And if you can get the hungry customers to drool over the images of the food you offer, you can easily get them to place bigger orders. In fact, 20% of customers confess that they spend more while placing orders online.

Apart from those savoury images, the couch comfort also has a role to play in this. With an online food ordering system, customers don’t need to think of the person next in line or care about any social dilemma they face while getting the food directly from outlets. They can take their own sweet time to decide what they feel like having.

Finally, since you can always let them know about the delicious add-ons you have before they get to the payment page, there is always an opportunity to boost the revenue with a restaurant online ordering platform.

Streamlined Operations

Who doesn’t like the hustle and bustle of a restaurant business doing well? The waiters and delivery guys shout orders from an end while chefs yell even louder on completing their orders. However, there is a very thin line between industriousness and chaos. As your business gets bigger and busier, things can easily get out of hand.

But you can prevent such situations by investing in food delivery app development. A food delivery dispatch software keeps everything organized and updated. Since it provides a central hub for all your operations, there won’t be instances of missing orders or having some customers wait unnecessarily long.

You’ll have a clear idea of how many orders are in the pipeline, which ones have been dispatched, how many have been delivered already, who’s been assigned the delivery, and everything else you need to know about operations.

Amplifies the Brand Voice

One of the biggest drawbacks of a multi-restaurant ordering system is that you need to share the space with your competitors. Everything on the platform is dictated by someone else, and you don’t get to have much say in how others perceive your business.

On the other hand, if you get a personal restaurant online ordering system, you can let everyone know what your business is all about. You can showcase class and quality if you own a fine dining restaurant, or you can have a jollier brand appearance if your food outlet is all about having fun and good times.

The Profit is All Yours

At the end of the day, it’s all about making the bottom line meatier. All the efforts and traffic would mean nothing if your business doesn’t make money. When you get on aggregator food apps, you need to share some of the profit. Some aggregator apps even get the restaurant owners to lower the prices or give discounts on occasions.

But that’s not the case with an in-house food delivery system. You get to keep all the profits for yourself. So even if you make slightly fewer sales, you might end up with a heavier pocket.

Easy to Customise

It might take some time before finding out what works best for your business. There might be many iterations before determining the perfect combination of layout, pricing, appearance, and everything around your business.

An in-house restaurant online ordering system allows you to stay flexible and modify things quickly on the go. The aggregate app models don’t usually give you access to the backend, limiting your ability for what you can do on the platform. So whether it be modifying the branding or changing the pricing of food items, online ordering systems bring many customization options to you.

Roll Out Personalised Offers and Discounts

Customer data is precious. People who have already ordered food from your restaurant are highly likely to return if they had a pleasant experience the first time. But the marketplace is highly competitive, and sometimes you need to give customers a little nudge.

If you have the customer data, you can roll out personalised offers to gain some loyal customers. You can let customers know that their favourite meal is available at a discount or give them suggestions based on their history.

Customers always appreciate it when you take care of their preferences. Personalization to such an extent is impossible on anything but an in-house online food ordering system.

Better Customer Support

Since the restaurant delivery system gives you more control over the operations, you find yourself in a much better position to deal with customer grievances. It gives you access to all the information you need to determine what went wrong and address the issues.

Customer support is a key element of the industry. Happy customers can bring your business into the limelight overnight. On the other hand, a few grumpy customers can make a big dent in your bottom line, a lot bigger than you expect. So leverage the capabilities of a restaurant’s online ordering software and surround your business with happy customers.

Gives You an Edge Over Competitors

The pandemic turned out to be a great proponent for online food ordering systems. Restaurants and food businesses worldwide showed a lot of interest in going online, and it has now become almost a necessity.

However, a lot of businesses still don’t have in-house online food ordering software. They might be on an aggregator platform to keep up but haven’t gone the extra mile. By creating a food ordering app for your business, you can put yourself ahead of most of the competition out there.

There is no doubt that you need to deploy food delivery dispatch software as soon as possible. But how? Developing such a solution from scratch can be costly and doesn’t make much sense.

But worry not. Yelo has got you covered. It’s an online marketplace software from Jungle Works that can get you started in no time. From automated dispatch to payment gateways, it takes care of all your needs. And if you aren’t much sure of it, then there is a free 2-week trial available. Can it get any better? We don’t think so.

So get started with setting up your online food ordering system, and experience these benefits yourself.