For centuries, restaurants thrived on patronage from foot traffic alone. When the telephone became something everyone had access to, restaurants updated and began taking delivery and take-out orders by phone. However, the vast majority of venues have been less than snappy about adapting to the digital age. Restaurant websites alone are few and far between, much less adaptation to mobile apps and the latest smart home integration. Needless to say, this is creating an enormous striation between those who are completely on-the-ball in terms of digital presence and accessibility and those who don't even have a website yet. Along the spectrum are restaurants with nothing but a Facebook page, those with a beautiful website that only really contains an online menu and phone number, those with an integrated online ordering system, and those whose online ordering is only through commission-heavy marketplaces.
The Importance of Online and Mobile Ordering
No matter where your restaurant currently is on the spectrum between zero online presence and having your own restaurant smart home skill, there's one thing that simply cannot be denied: Online and mobile ordering is incredibly powerful. This is the culmination of a recent significant shift in our society, population, and preferences as consumers.
Millennials
To start with, the younger generations are notorious for hating to talk on the phone. Millennials and Gen Z massively prefer online order forms and chat conversations rather than having to relay their order over a telephone and they will often completely skip a restaurant that doesn't let them peruse the menu and order online.
Professionals
Next, there are modern busy professionals who don't have time to cook and often couldn't even get home long enough to do so. When a programmer working late craves a hot bowl of laksa, when an executive really needs a chicken parmigiana between their evening meetings, and when a floor manager gets home too exhausted to cook, that's when the laptops and phones come out to place a quick online order.
Everyone Else
Finally, there's the fact that online ordering has simply become a part of the modern lifestyle. From parents debating with their kids which family dishes to order to groups of friends deciding what pizza toppings to get, the simplest solution is to hop online and build your order through the restaurant's portal. Oops, the restaurant doesn't have a portal? Let's pick another one that does.
Having an online interactive menu and ordering platform isn't just useful, it's practically vital to maintaining modern business. These days, the number of people who order take-out or delivery are starting to rival people who want to go into a restaurant for the whole experience. In other words, if you don't have online ordering, you're losing customers.
How Online Ordering Marketplaces Gouge Restaurants
The vast majority of modern restaurants know about the necessity of online ordering and many have eagerly jumped on the bandwagon as soon as it became easy to do so, with online ordering and delivery marketplaces. Often advertised and primarily accessible through mobile apps, these marketplaces like Ubereats and Menulog are also notorious for taking as much from the restaurants they deliver for as they can get away with. Under the guise of 'commission', they sometimes take up to a full 35% of the order and almost never below 10% for 'sourcing' the online orders for you through their marketplace and app.
These apps may be great for bringing in more business but once you have a repeat customer ordering through the commission-heavy app, you're losing money instead of gaining customers. Some of the apps even come with delivery. At first, it seems like a good business plan to gain access to the mobile customers and get a delivery service to boot. However, many restaurants realize after no more than a month or two that the new customer traffic does not balance out with the new cost.
Unfortunately, by taking so much, the online ordering platforms are also making it much harder for the restaurants they 'partner' with to make a profit and keep their clientele. Raising prices to compensate for the lost commission is bad business but, in reality, dealing with these marketplaces in general seems to be bad business and many restaurants are already pulling away. But they still need a way to take online and mobile orders. The question is: how to you fill the gap where your online and mobile orders used to come from?
The Commission-Free Takeaway Solution
Fortunately, you don't have to program your own online and mobile ordering system because we've already done it! Having spent 5 years running a modern restaurant, the team that eventually formed Takeaway Solutions was astounded at how much it costs to be a part of the popular online ordering platforms. With commission fees up to 35%, even for repeat customers, we realized that the entire restaurant industry would be better off with a commission-free online ordering platform and that we had the resources to make one.
Takeaway Solutions was built on the idea of allowing restaurants to build their own online menus and give customers access to a convenient online ordering platform without taking a huge bite out of every sale or forcing restaurants to raise their prices. Instead, we're offering a much-improved software solution for a small monthly subscription along the lines of the SaaS model of business software rather than buying a ticket to a theme park where you also have to pay for every ride. With Takeaway Solutions, you'll be able to give your customers a quick and convenient online ordering platform for web and mobile without paying an arm & leg for every order. Finally, the profits from every order are entirely yours to keep!
If you're fed up with paying commissions for delivery apps that only make running your restaurant more of a hassle, despite the increased business, then it's time to make the switch. Leave the mobile marketplaces behind except as a way to snatch a few first-time customers and channel everyone else to your website, app, and Takeaway Solutions online ordering portal. It slices, it dices, and most importantly, it allows you to take mobile and web orders without paying that hefty commission.
If you'd like more information about our commission-free online ordering platform, please contact us today!