If you are an owner of a restaurant and don’t have a system for online ordering – make haste, as the future is now. More and more restaurant owners turn their heads to such systems, as they bring countless benefits to your business.
In the age where everything is just a few clicks away, convenience is key for your restaurant to thrive among your competition. Implementing an online ordering system is crucial to boost your sales, popularity and overall happiness of your customers. It makes orders much easier and more comfortable for your visitors at little cost for you.
As much as 60% of customers say they order food for delivery once a week, 31% at least twice. Those are numbers that are real and can give you an idea of the scale of advantages an online food ordering system can give you.
What is an online food ordering system?
An online food ordering system is a software dedicated to take orders from your customers and manage them. You don’t need any external portals’ participation to implement the system or pay any commission from the sales.
There is also a possibility of launching your own mobile application through the online ordering system. This helps with making the orders more user-friendly and again – more comfortable.
The other side of such systems is the management panel. While making the orders more convenient for the user – it also makes control over the restaurant much easier, more intuitive and mistake-free. It also provides lots of data for you to analyze so that you can improve your approach to certain things about running your business.
Top benefits it brings
There are several upsides of implementing a restaurant ordering system, here are, among others, some of them.
More orders due to convenience
Right now, people are busy – why not make their lives easier? Online ordering systems offer much improvement in terms of convenience and comfort of getting meals. When customers have those requirements fulfilled, they are more likely to come back to your restaurant.
Such systems provide platforms to increase the number of sales through applications. You immediately appear more up-to-date with technology to the more tech-acquainted demographic. Such presence is invaluable, as people prefer online ordering over traditional methods such as calling the restaurant themselves.
Marketing opportunities
Those systems have lots of tools that can help you with online marketing. In the age where the internet is the most popular medium of advertisement, this is certainly an immense asset to have.
You don’t need any marketing specialists for the applications – you can manage them yourself. You get to see a database of all your customers, what they ordered, how much they spent and if they are regulars. With that you can easily offer discounts, send emails with coupons to the regular customers and promote your new menu positions with the mobile app.
Automation
With an online ordering platform, you don’t need to have a dedicated team member to take all the orders. This cuts costs and allows for better management of meal purchases. All of your staff members gain the access to online orders through the mobile app – they don’t need to go to one specific person to get them. This also reduces the possibility of being misheard.
You can also automate the promotions and coupons you send to your customers. For example, establish upon which visit the customer becomes a regular, and then send them a coupon automatically.
Error reduction
With the automation of the orders, a possibility of a mistake or an error in the order gets reduced significantly. Such errors are quite costly to fix and they hurt your brand’s name. Fixing mistakes is one of the largest causes of losses and waste in restaurants.
This is invaluable, as with that you boost the turnover and you get to build your name as a restaurant that’s reliable with their orders. There’s a lower chance for a negative review and with that a lower threat for your reputation to be hurt.
Boost to conversion rate
If you have such a system implemented, you mostly reach visitors who are ready to place an order. This improves your customer conversion rate by a significant margin, as they don’t have to go through the whole process of phoning your restaurant, possible errors and other inconveniences. All they have to do is tap or click a few times and their order is placed without any hassle. This converts even better than a landing page!
Better customer-restaurant communication
The communication between the customer and the restaurant is improved, as they don’t have to go through calling you to find something out. They can just write to you through the platform and get almost instant answers for their questions from real people, not machines.
You can also notify your customers about upcoming deals and promotions through push notifications, email or SMS. It’s an easy way to make communication effortless and convenient.
Conclusion
An online food ordering system is an all-in-one solution for you to get the edge over your competition. The scope of the features is very broad and all of them help you with managing and leading your business into a success.
You get to be up-to-date with other restaurants, you don’t slack off and you have the opportunity to best them more easily.
