There’s a great chance that your restaurant business or enterprise hotel already leverages the power of delivery apps. But are you maximizing their full potential? From the time that hungry consumers scroll through your menu to the moment you finish fulfilling their orders, delivery apps can play a major role in restaurant operations. 

In our complete guide to delivery apps, we’re going to discuss everything you need to know. From the many reasons why they’re must-haves to strategies to boost delivery sales, we’ve covered it all. Now, let’s dive right into it!

Restaurant Food Delivery: 6 Reasons Why It's a Must

Are you looking for a one and done tactic for restaurant success? Offering food delivery services may be your best bet. Not only is it very simple to implement, but it’s a very profitable restaurant business decision. After all, it’s innovative, and restaurant tech and innovation go hand in hand. 

If you want to implement product differentiation and surpass competitors, begin offering delivery now. But first, let’s take a closer look at why delivery services are necessary. 

The Reasons Why Food Delivery Is Necessary

Are you trying to maximize profits in your restaurant? Or, are you attempting to enhance the overall customer experience? Either way, the following reasons are why food delivery is so essential in this day and age. 

1. Once restaurants are available on delivery apps, they can reach a much broader audience. 
2. Business owners can utilize restaurant automation tools to streamline order management and fulfillment. 
3. With a lesser need for hosts and servers, prioritizing food deliveries can reduce a restaurant’s labor cost. 
4. By offering food delivery services, restaurants can enhance customer satisfaction by offering diners the ultimate convenience. 
5. Customers can have more control over their buying decisions thanks to customization features. 
6. Kitchen staff, including various types of chefs, can be much more efficient with the ability to prepare scheduled orders in advance. 

Delivery Great Results With Delivery Services 

As you can see, food delivery services are just as valuable to businesses as they are to customers. Add them to your strategy, and quickly notice the increase in customers, sales, and operational efficiency.

The Uses of a Multi Restaurant Food Delivery App

Any business within the restaurant industry can benefit from a multi-restaurant food delivery app. The software will simplify order management and various app integrations will improve the experience on the customer’s end.

The Top 10 Reasons to Use a Multi-Restaurant Food Delivery App

Are you and your team struggling to decide whether using a multi-restaurant food delivery app is right for your business? Let us help you make a decision with the following ten reasons why they’re so beneficial.

1. Restaurants are able to reach all of the customers within their geographic area who use a particular app. 
2. Delivery providers employ their own drivers, which means that restaurants can reduce the cost of labor in this department. 
3. Business owners don’t have to stress about the brick and mortar restaurant’s location, since customers won’t have to locate the business. 
4. Many customers prefer contactless payments over in-person transactions, which can take place on a delivery app. 
5. Customer reviews are available to view on delivery apps, which can help a restaurant’s reputation as well as the customer’s buying decisions. 
6. If a restaurant stays open longer than its competitors, it’ll be sure to stand out as one of the only available options after hours. 
7. On delivery apps, customers can schedule future orders far in advance. Doing so gives the kitchen staff ample time to prepare and perfect the order. 
8. If restaurants have multi-payer options built into their online ordering system, group ordering can be much easier for large parties. 
9. Digitizing all the menu types makes it significantly easier for restaurants to update their offerings, descriptions, and prices. 
10. Many delivery apps automatically have cross selling and upselling techniques built into the checkout process, which in turn boosts cart values across the board.

Multi-Restaurant Food Delivery Apps Lead to Multiple Benefits

In this day and age, it’s almost impossible to maximize a restaurant’s order volume with the use of a multi-restaurant food delivery app. Therefore, it’s safe to say that using them positively impacts all areas of a restaurant’s infrastructure. 

The Best Food Delivery Service Providers

If your restaurant is in need of some innovation, look no further than partnering with delivery service providers. Once your food and drinks are available for delivery, you’ll quickly see a surge in orders. Plus, these sales can counteract the restaurant expenses associated with this kind of investment. 

Availability across online ordering apps isn’t a new concept in the hospitality industry. So, let’s consider all of the best partners in the market.

The Top 5 Delivery Service Providers

Hospitality software companies may appear to be similar on the surface. But once you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that there are some distinct differences from one to the next. Here’s some information on several options you can utilize.

1. DoorDash

As one of the most popular delivery providers, DoorDash offers more than just restaurants. Instead, customers can purchase goods from places ranging from grocers to pet stores. The following list provides a quick overview of what the app has to offer:

• Speedy delivery service
• Numerous types of stores and eateries
• Enticing rewards and discounts
• User-friendly GPS tracking
• Accurate order updates

2. Uber Eats

Uber Eats is a very popular choice for restaurants in major cities like New York and Los Angeles. This is primarily due to the popularity of the original Uber brand for on-demand car service. For those who utilize its food delivery provider, they can expect to reap the following benefits:

• Quick pickup and delivery timelines 
• Safe payment processing methods 
• Restaurant loyalty program features 
• Accurate live order monitoring integrations

3. GrubHub

If there’s one platform that puts the customer first, it’s Grubhub. We say this mainly because of their frequent discounts and promotions. Some of the other perks that customers and restaurants can expect to see include:

• A massive array of available restaurants
• Numerous opportunities to receive discounts
• Increased brand loyalty thanks to rewards
• No delivery fees on certain restaurants
• Straightforward order monitoring

4. Postmates

For quick service restaurants that can offer customers fast turnaround times, Postmates is ideal. Plus, they partner with other types of businesses, such as convenience stores. Some of their best features that set them apart from other service providers include:

• A wide variety of stores
• Operates 24/7/365
• Flat delivery fees
• Fast delivery

5. Caviar

Unlike some of its competitors, Caviar delivers food and drinks only. However, they tend to partner with restaurants that fall within a niche market. So, if your restaurant is a differentiator in your area, Caviar might be a good place to offer delivery services. Some of their most valuable features include:

• A quick and simple account set-up
• GPS order tracking integration
• User-friendly app for the customers
• Multiple secure payment methods
• Order scheduling tools for customers

Order In Progress…

Once you partner with the right delivery service providers, your restaurant’s success is bound to soar. After all, it can be just as profitable as it can be convenient.

The Most Valuable Features Across Food Delivery Apps

Over the years, food delivery apps have changed the dining experience for customers just as much as it’s changed restaurant operations for business owners. Once the restaurant landscape began its digital transformation, new features and innovations constantly hit the market. Continue reading to learn about seven of them.

7 Valuable Features Across Food Delivery Apps

So we’re all aware that food delivery apps make it easy to buy and sell items from a menu. But what more can they do? Check out seven innovative features below:

1. Simple menu browsing functionalities allow customers to filter their search and find exactly what they’re in the mood for.
2. Real-time GPS tracking that allows customers to view their order status, resulting in fewer phone calls to the restaurant. This tool is extremely useful for understaffed restaurants. 
3. Built-in restaurant payment technology with secure data encryption. Customers can even include a tip for their driver on the app. 
4. Flexible restaurant promotions that the staff can set up through the online ordering platform. 
5. Customizable upselling features based on each customer’s purchase and browsing history. For example, the app may suggest past purchases upon checkout. 
6. Customer rewards program that the restaurant staff can design themselves in the backend of their system.
7. Text marketing for restaurants and email marketing strategy tools to further promote the restaurant to past customers.

Order On the App!

So which features are you going to utilize first? With the right implementation plan, you can take your restaurant to the next level in no time.

The 5 Benefits of Offering 24 7 Food Delivery

Have you ever been in a position where it’s late at night or early in the morning and you were able to order food? Pretty convenient, right? Offering such flexible delivery services to customers is one of the best things you can do to stand out from the crowd. Luckily, innovative restaurant technology firms offer the tools needed to do so. But first, it’s a good idea to learn about the many benefits that coincide with 24/7 food delivery.

Benefits of 24/7 Food Delivery

If you’re the business owner or restaurant major searching for ways to improve your business, progress may have nothing to do with your food and drinks. Instead, you might be able to find results by changing the restaurant’s hours of operations. Now, let’s go over five benefits of keeping your eatery open 24/7:

1. Making your restaurant available on delivery apps expands your overall reach. So, you can imagine how many more orders you can capture when you’re open around the clock. 
2. As usual, restaurants can take advantage of upselling tactics to escalate the total value of each order. However, restaurants can further increase cart values by discounting certain menu items in between normal operating hours. 
3. If you allow customers to dine-in 24/7, you’ll likely see an increase of overhead expenses that negatively impacts your business. But if you just opt for delivery services, there’ll be many operating expenses that you won’t incur, like high utility bills and wait staff salaries. 
4. If you’re unsure of how to attract steady business, create perks that are only valid after-hours. These promotions can include things like a percentage off the total bill between 11 PM and 6 AM. Or, you can offer 2x the points for every dollar spent during this time window. 
5. Ensure that contactless deliveries are offered through your delivery partner. For one, many customers who live with other people may not want a delivery driver ringing their bell late at night. Plus, they might not want to venture outside to meet the driver during quiet hours. Giving them the option to retrieve the takeout bag at their front door promotes safety in every sense of the word.

Offer More Than Just Midnight Snacks

You might be surprised by the number of people who purchase food via delivery throughout the night. Once you update your hours, you’ll quickly dominate the market during a timeframe when most restaurants aren’t even open. If you ask us, that certainly sounds like an easy way to earn loyalty from locals.

Strategies for How to Increase Food Delivery Sales

Digital apps and storefronts are already two realms that make it easy to increase the restaurant profit margin. However, there are many restaurant marketing strategies and app integrations that can exponentially increase cash flow.

7 Ways to Increase Food Delivery Sales

There are many growth opportunities that exist when it comes to increasing food delivery sales. Whether you begin by taking a close look at restaurant data metrics or dive right into something like restaurant SEO, your options are vast. But if you’re unsure of where to begin, the following ideas will help increase sales sooner than later. 

1. Send out promotions such as discounts and freebies that can only be applied to orders placed for delivery. 
2. Send out biweekly campaigns to your restaurant email list discussing delivery-only promotions mentioned in the previous idea.
3. Leverage free social media accounts to promote delivery services organically. Or, invest in paid ads to place content directly in front of your ideal customer profile.  
4. Find out which delivery apps are most popular in your region and use those. If you find that there’s an even balance across the board, connect to the ones with the best pricing model. 
5. Create an app-exclusive loyalty program. As people earn points from app purchases only, they’ll form the habit of only placing orders online. 
6. Check customer reviews and ratings on a weekly basis. This way, if there’s any room for improvement, you can take care of it quickly and efficiently. 
7. Conduct menu engineering on a quarterly basis. By reviewing best-sellers in your restaurant POS platform alongside the cost of each dish, you may be able to save some money by updating the menus.

Ready to Fulfill More Delivery Orders?

Launching a profitable restaurant can be quite the challenge. But once you discover what works between your business and its customers, you’ll be able to sustain long-term growth. Just remember that it can require a lot of trial and error. But once you have it sorted out, you’ll be golden.