Portals … What Are They?
Posted on February 6th, 2008 by david
Portals are designed to facilitate choice for the end users. They offer a multitude of restaurants from which a user can order.
Although a novel concept, I think portals are good for products that have little differentiation … like an airline ticket. Do you care whether you go from place ‘A’ to place ‘B’ on United or American? A typical traveler prefers a cheap ticket from an airline that is on time, serves good food and has polite and good looking staff … (well, now a days a cheap ticket is the most you can expect … if that!)
Anyway,
- Portals are Expedia or Travelocity for restaurants
- A visitor chooses from a list of restaurants.
- The portal gets paid as long as the customer orders from ANY restaurant in the portal.
- Portal stands between YOU and the CUSTOMER. The portal keeps all the customer information
- A portal is interested in traffic to the portal, not necessarily to your restaurant.
- If you are good, customers go to the portal more frequently and you tend to lose your customers
- In my opinion, portals are good for POOR restaurants who benefit from traffic generated by GOOD restaurants
- Typically the customer pays the portal and the portal pays the restaurant at the end of the month. (Especially credit card orders). The portal prefers keeping the float.
Some of the popular portals in the business are Seamlesweb.com, Delivery.com, Menupages.com, Campusfood.com etc.
Filed under: Authors, David Litchman, Portals
David, I disagree!
Portals are not designed to replace or “take away” your customers, they are there to bring you NEW clients and business. for certain, restaurants should have their own ordering options online….. but portals are massive advertising tools! if they bring you only 1 customer that wouldn’t have come otherwise, it’s worth it! what you’re saying about portals is like saying “don’t advertise in yellow book, instead, publish your own book!” that’s nuts! use the tools that others have built and worked hard to develop, to enhance your own business! the fee is very low, compared to almost any advertising mechanism.
Daniel,
I agree with you that portals do provide a benefit to the restaurant as they have the ability to drive new traffic. As a restaurant owner, I subscribe to many portals myself. However, it is critical that I convert the new customer to our ordering platform for future orders. When the order comes through the portal I pay a higher processing fee and I don’t get the customer data. The next time the customer orders, I want them to order directly from me where I can process at a low rate and benefit from the customers data. Also, if the customer wants to order from me I do not want my customers to go to a portal where they can potentially order from someone else. Portals are good ways to acquire new customers and certainly serve a purpose. However, I fail to understand your argument against a restaurant developing its online ordering channel and serving its repeat customers from the restaurant website. -David
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