Simplifying a Restaurant’s life with Online Ordering Solutions

It’s an exciting time for the restaurant industry with some wonderful technologies to look into that can optimize operations and increase profits with an eye towards efficiency. Restaurants today have different challenges to conquer, most importantly to meet the constrictive demands of customers, while retaining their power and control in the industry. To a large extent, customers have come to expect the ability to order their food from the convenience of their homes, and restaurants must fulfill this expectation, regardless.

One way restaurants can achieve these objectives is by implementing online ordering. Restolabs Founder, Bharti Batra says “Restaurants are finally beginning to adopt online and mobile ordering and according to our research it’s becoming a must.” In fact, restaurants have experienced great success with online food ordering systems. These platforms are designed to give more control to restaurants and give customers the convenience of ordering food online. Perhaps the move toward online ordering is not a small feat, but there are many compelling reasons to do so.

For starters, it ensures accuracy. The ability to expand without worrying about errors and delays is one of the key objectives that online ordering platforms achieve. When a customer self-selects the food, the scope of errors is greatly reduced versus the staff taking orders over the phone and manually entering them into the system. In addition, online ordering platforms don’t just give your customers the ability to order food online, but also give you the ability to reach the right people.

Restaurants need to be in the online game because that’s where the customers are going.

In a nutshell, with online ordering for restaurants, customers can browse the menu at their own pace, customize orders as per their preferences, and pay for meals as per their convenience. Upselling and cross-selling options are also present that encourage customers to order more — it’s a win all-around.

Benefits of Online Ordering Systems are Immense….

Here are some important benefits of partnering with restaurant online ordering platforms:

Customizability: Customers don’t just buy because of the taste, more often than not, they buy from their eyes! Online ordering software for restaurants are optimized to help restaurants drive revenue and best connect with their customers. With platforms like Restolabs, it is easy to maintain brand continuity and integrity. With an in-house online ordering system, you can make instant, real-time changes to your design, menu, categories, pricing, and promotions. Adding images of your food will make your brand more appealing to your customers.

Operational efficiencies: By integrating online ordering, you can avoid a plethora of operational hassles that include everything from miscommunication to wrong order, long waiting hours, and disappointed customers. Online ordering systems for restaurants make the food ordering and delivery process entirely automated. In addition to it, every step is monitored and there’s no room for errors and delays. Because online food ordering integrates directly into POS, there’s no need to waste time transcribing orders from an email into your POS system. This increases the productivity and staff can focus on other important matters like customer service and food quality.

Effective Online Promotions: Having an online presence exposes your restaurant to try out simple, cost-effective promotional tactics that may not be possible offline. Implementing digital marketing strategies in your marketing plan will help develop a strong new customer base that will benefit both online as well as offline presence. In fact, online ordering also allows Facebook ordering that can give your customers quick access to your restaurant and food menus while engaging with their friends and family. Establish yourself as someone who listens to their customers and remembers their preferences — just one of the many reasons that they will like ordering from you over and over again.

Know Your Customers: In order to fight the competition, you must know who your customers are. Where are they coming from? What are their preferences and what kind of deals they are looking for? All this information can only be obtained from analytics. Online ordering systems provide powerful analytics that will help you understand your customers and their needs better. Unlike food aggregators, in-house online food ordering systems allow you to record customer information for every transaction that you can use to create a more customized guest experience online.

Bigger Check Size: Pirate Pizza reported that the average cart value is 15% higher for online orders than non-digital orders. This is because websites and mobile ordering allow restaurants to personalize their upselling and cross-selling items to entice customers to order more. In addition, since customers don’t have to rush through the orders, they feel more inclined to explore all of their menu options and even end up adding extra items to their cart.

Improved Customer Interactions: One of the strongest indicators of online ordering success is enhanced interaction between customers and the brand. This leads to a more satisfied and engaged customer experience that automatically adds to the brand’s credibility. Online ordering integration ensures that your staff is able to focus on tasks that improve customer service and deepen the relationship. If anything that you achieve from such efforts is customer loyalty and positive word of mouth marketing — and both these aspects can have a beneficial effect on your business’s bottom line.

Online ordering business is slowly becoming more and more significant for restaurants

As restaurants provide ordering and delivery options to their customers, it becomes critical to partner with companies that can provide heavy on features solutions, including the ability to upsell, develop loyalty programs, integrate with POS, social media ordering and artificial intelligence algorithms.

How to choose the right online ordering platform for your restaurant

There are a lot of online ordering systems on the market, and this means that one needs to do a careful analysis of each to ensure that it is able to cater to the business’s specific requirements. Not all businesses are the same, and thus, when looking for an online ordering system, one of the first things that should be considered is the customization ability of the platform.

Restaurants should also take into consideration the experience of the company in this domain. What is included in the package? Is it just online ordering, or does it offer mobile ordering and other tools to engage with customers?

Final thoughts

I strongly believe, online ordering is going to continue to grow. It is a hassle-free way to order food and most importantly, it saves time.

Anything that offers these two elements becomes more relevant to people these days. In the end, it is all about building a sustainable business by maintaining a good database, service quality and relevance. The technology available today holds a lot of benefits for both customers and restaurant owners.