Today online food ordering is more likely a trend than a need that many are willing to follow. As the pandemic reinforced certain limitations, people were bound to confine themselves to the boundaries of their houses. An online food delivery system acted more like a rescue to their food cravings. The idea of getting restaurant food delivered at doorstep without stepping out of their houses is a very enticing concept for a millennial stuck to create a work-life balance. The online food delivery industry has shown a substantial rise of 20%. As per Forbes the food ordering and delivery is soon to be a $200 billion industry by 2025.
Before we actually come up with the technicalities of building your online food ordering system, it’s very important to understand why you need it. You might have doubts like, your business is already going well and though you take orders on call, it’s giving results. Now, let me ask you a question. Are you satisfied with the current food ordering scenario knowing that the world has revolutionized, and you might have a fair chance to compete in the food industry by launching a website for your business? If not, then an online food ordering system is just the answer to your questions. It will be enlightening to know that the annual growth rate of a business using an online food ordering system is about 15-20%.
Let’s have a look at the benefits of having an online food ordering system.
Customers are always looking for something unique, if a restaurant is successful in catering to the needs of a vigilant customer it gives a substantial push to the restaurant’s ranking. Having an online food ordering system provides an edge over your competitors.
Online food ordering systems have revolutionized the food supply chain. Customers can choose to order from the comfort of their couch, having the list of food items displayed on their mobile screen waiting to be added to the cart with just a click. It provides features like advanced search, food tracking, order history, and secure payment methods.
Bringing your restaurant live will definitely give you an edge over others. It will upgrade your brand value and increase your customer base. It gives the restaurant a way to personally reach out to its customers by giving discount coupons and gift vouchers. Eventually providing loyalty programs helps retain your customers. A step-by-step approach will help build the trust of the customer in your restaurant. Good feedback from such customers will prove a windfall for your restaurant. Feedback and rating features in an online food ordering system for your restaurant will come in handy at this point.
Imagine that there are orders pouring in your restaurant. It does feel good right? Now, imagine waiters shouting orders to make them audible in the kitchen and the chef shouting even louder to acknowledge whenever an order is ready. Does that feel good? I am quite sure it doesn’t. All this can be easily organized and well managed by an online food ordering system. The current orders are queued in the system and can be managed easily. Similarly, the acknowledgment of the orders ready for pickup can be notified in the app. This will not only make the work environment systematic but also give a sense of relief to the staff.
An online food ordering system gives you a feature that helps you retain the history of orders made by a customer. Customers feel better served as it makes it easy for restaurant staff to know their choice of meal and dining hours. It’s convenient for the customer to repeat the last-placed order rather than browsing the entire menu, saving a lot of time.
Bringing a restaurant live can be done in 3 ways:
Bringing your restaurant online can be a tedious job if you take up all of it yourself. It can begin from finding a developer who could design a website as per your demand, that fits the market needs and patterns. Though time-consuming the better way would be to choose from various templates available online. Templates can be helpful but they require some skill set and a basic level of knowledge. A step by step journey to building your own website can be as follows:
An even better solution would be to go for a white label solution. It provides a readymade online system for your restaurant. All you need to do is to rebrand it. It is already aligned with the market and gives you a good stand with your competitors. Yo!Yumm is a market-ready online food ordering solution. It comes with a package including 5 web platforms and 3 apps – customer app, restaurant app, and delivery app, making it a seamless experience for you. This is just what you need when planning to bring your restaurant live. A few steps you need to follow are listed below:
Choosing this method can be an easy way to increase the visibility of your restaurant online. A third-party food delivery system like Uber Eats and GrubHub provide a platform for various restaurants to share online. Although a restaurant might not be able to do personalized branding and would be in constant competition with other restaurants listed on the platform, there are still perks to this system, for instance, it need not bother to organize its own delivery.
A few steps you need to follow are listed below:
Also Read: POS For Restaurant To Grow Your Business
It’s Google and it’s free. What could be a better way to increase the visibility of your business than a free business profile on Google? Listing your business whereabouts allows your business to appear on Google Maps. It further allows customers to review and follow your business.
Social media presents a pool of opportunities to boost your business by cracking your way into the crowded minds of hungry customers. Posting drooling pictures on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can increase your business followers manyfold. Collaborating with food bloggers and other youtube personalities, organizing a live question-answer session on social media platforms, and using weekly special menus to promote your restaurant can prove to be game-changers.
Loyalty programs have proven their worth ages ago, and are still the most powerful tool to retain a strong customer base. Everyone likes to be rewarded. This two-way structure gains benefit to the customer and brand loyalty to your online food ordering system.
Investing in search engine marketing to improve the visibility of your business can be achieved by SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements. Using elements like keywords and metadata can improve the online presence of your online food delivery system. Using a relevant content strategy for both on-page and off-page SEO helps in enhancing performance of the website. Using high-quality backlinks and tools to analyze competition increases organic traffic and ranking of the website. Local listing through SEO can increase the visibility of your restaurant.
Read related post on Tips to Make Your Online Food Delivery System Succeed
By now, you would have had an idea of how an online food ordering system can be a boon for your business. Moving forward in a business without any idea of competitors and top market players could be misleading. So, just to share the tip of an iceberg, a few leading names in the online food ordering industry are listed below:
Yo!Yumm provides an answer to most of your queries. All you need is a willingness to bring your restaurant business online and we are here to pave the path for you. Yo!Yumm is a white label online food ordering system. A few key features are as follows:
It comes with a package that includes three mobile apps for restaurant, customer, and delivery. All-in-all providing a seamless food delivery experience.
Features like geo-fencing and GPS tracking makes it easy for customers to track their orders
Yo!Yumm is a completely customizable solution. You can change the look and feel of the app as per your choice.
Staying in business, when there is a long list of competitors waiting to steal your thunder, isn’t a cakewalk. There is no doubt that customers would always choose a restaurant, where they find good food, along with comfort. But they would choose a restaurant that is more visible, has better ambiance, and can easily become a part of their social media status. An online food ordering system gives you that edge. By now, it must be clear, having an online food ordering system can increase your restaurant business manyfold and also provide it a much-needed organization. It is the need of the hour and it’s here to stay.