A research study by Technomic for the National Restaurant Association recently uncovered that up to 60 percent of restaurant occasions are now off-premises. This means that most people who decide to eat out would rather have it to go, order by drive-thru, or order remotely. From the study, it was noted that 79 percent of restaurants’ orders were delivered. Of these, 53 percent used third-party delivery services.
The study revealed that young adults, in particular, would instead prefer to use a third-party app to order a meal than begin searching for the restaurant’s website to engage them directly. Therefore, it will be to your advantage to make your restaurant’s offerings available on the likes of UberEats and GrubHub.
- Pro: Easy For Customers
The convenience of third-party food delivery apps cannot be argued with. If you’re an Uber user, you can quickly become an UberEats user without re-registering your details. Pulling out your phone and swiping to an app for your order beats searching for a restaurant’s contacts to call for delivery. Even if you have your app, you may not be able to promote it and the Ubers, Postmates, and GrubHub. Customers are more likely to find you through those apps than through your website or app.
- Con: Expensive
Most third-party apps will charge your customer a small fee for the delivery services. This can be a little off-putting to potential dinners as they will have paid for the meal and will probably want to tip the delivery guy. Some customers may opt to go to another restaurant close by if they don’t find the extra expense justifiable, leading to lost sales.
In addition to this, you will need to spend quite a bit to get set up with these third-party providers. You will pay somewhere in the region of $400 for setup and still have to fork over a percentage of each sale.
However, the increased visibility of your restaurant is bound to boost your sales, justifying, to an extent, the outlay for engaging a third party. You also eliminate the cost of having a part-time or full-time delivery driver or rider and the cost of purchasing, fueling, maintaining, and getting insurance for the delivery vehicle. You even won’t have to worry about buying the outer packaging that keeps the food warm.
- Pro: Discoverability
Engaging third-party delivery services has the dual benefit of bringing convenience to your customers while marketing your brand to a broader audience. Third-party apps allow users to search for restaurants by the kind of cuisine they’d like to eat. Therefore, there is a high chance that you will get several orders from people who love the type of food you serve but didn’t know about you.
If you want to increase the chances of being found on such searches, you can take advantage of the third parties’ promotional services. For a slightly higher commission, they can place your restaurant higher on their listings and feature your meals in their promotional spaces.
- Cons: Competition
You won’t be the only restaurant in your locality, offering the kind of cuisine you specialize in on the third-party app. Every chance that your regular customers could discover one of your competitors through UberEats and begin directing future orders there. When users of the app search, they will find your offerings, but they will find them alongside similar restaurants that may beat you on pricing.
- Pro: New Business Models
Going the third-party delivery route frees you up to focus more on your core business. You may even decide to focus solely on preparing the tastiest experience for your customers. You could do away with sitting spaces and deliver your meals to dinners from a ‘dark kitchen restaurant‘ or ‘ghost kitchen.’ Your restaurant will, more or less, turn into a kitchen to prepare meals sold solely by delivery, helping you make potentially huge savings on rent.
Ride Into the Future
Today, more than a third of the world’s population owns and uses smartphones. As long as people’s dependency on smartphones for virtually every aspect of their lives continues, leveraging the technology to increase your business is recommended. Take full advantage of it to lower your operational costs while enhancing your reach.