Blog For Restaurant Owners

Portals are aggressively marketing themselves and generating online orders to restaurants … For every order that comes from the portals, the restaurants (i.e. you!) pay a hefty fee (%10 - 15% of the order amount). Of course the justification for the high fee is simple: “Its the portal customer, who would not have ordered from (your) restaurant if it were not for the portal!”. After a while, you recognize that it is smarter to take orders from your website and promote your own website to all customers, especially to customers coming from portals.

So, you get your website and get the “Order Online” button on your website … and hope that online orders will start pouring in from your website. Attractive as it may be, often things don’t move this way. There is one last (important) step missing for your online business to take off ( before you book that ticket to Tahiti). You have to MOVE YOUR CUSTOMERS ON-LINE i.e. market your website to your customers!

Here are a few simple steps to move your customers online:

1. Tell Your Customers About Your Website: When customers place orders, they look at your menu and most of the times they see a phone number to place an order. If you really want them to order online, then the first thing they should see along with your phone number is a big message saying “ORDER ONLINE AT YOURRESTAURANT.COM”. (Simple stickers on your carryout-delivery menus do the trick until you publish the next batch of to-go-menus with your website address on them!) Now your customers know that they can place their orders online.
2. Give Them Incentives For Ordering Online: Recognize that online orders are a HUGE win for you in many ways. Operational efficiencies, larger average order ticket, fewer mistakes etc. Taking an online order from YOUR website also eliminates the higher fee that you other wise pay to the portal. The good online ordering systems have simple promotions like “First Order 10% OFF”, or “First Order $5 OFF”. These are very effective and small investments to acquire new online customers.
3. Give incentives for Repeat Orders: Sure, you say, but how do you recognize repeat orders online? The good online vendors have simple systems in place that allow for loyalty programs. If you can offer a loyalty program, such as “$5 off every 10th order” you will have placed a good reason for your customer to come to your website over and over again.

If you execute well and deliver a positive service and quality experience to your online orders, you will move your customer online permanently. In so doing, you will reap huge benefits. You will have less mistakes, employees will have more time to do other things, your average ticket will go up and most importantly you will enhance your customers experience and see sales rise…(remember, you need this to buy that ticket to Tahiti!)

Filed under: Portals