7 Ways That Online Ordering Helps You Beat the Competition

Often in our blog, we’ve talked about the ways that integrating an online food ordering system into your business can help you stay competitive. But for some of our readers, the idea that a business innovation as simple and straightforward as online ordering for restaurants could have a huge effect on competition just doesn’t quite make sense. The truth is, adopting online ordering can do a whole lot to keep your eatery competitive with other businesses in your area, and can help you rise above the competition and establish your restaurant as a local business to contend with. Here are 7 ways that online ordering keeps your business competitive.

1. It Levels the Playing Field
As is so often the case with business technologies that become widespread quickly, adopting online food ordering for your business will help you remain competitive because it will assure that you haven’t been left behind. More and more restaurants are including online food ordering as a staple of their business, which means that more and more customers are considering online ordering for restaurants a standard feature and taking the innovation for granted. That means that unless you want your business to look dated, you will need to consider adopting online ordering to level the playing field.

2. It Keeps Your Business Close to Where Customers Spend Their Time
These days, your potential customers spend a huge portion of their time on their mobile phones and computers. And by adopting an online ordering system for your restaurant, you bring your food and brand close to where these potential customers spend so much of their time. Online ordering digitizes your restaurant in a big way, allowing your most tech friendly supporters to connect with your business in a way that feels comfortable and natural. A website is important these days, but an online ordering takes your business’s web presence to the next level.

3. It Raises Your Average To-go and Delivery Ticket Prices
Higher ticket prices means higher profit margins for you, which obviously helps your restaurant compete with other players in your area. And a big way to increase your ticket prices for delivery and to-go orders is to adopt an online ordering system. Online ordering makes it easy for you to optimize your menu for higher ticket prices, and most systems come with standard features that will boost your average ticket rates. That means more profit for you, and a competitive edge for your restaurant.

4. It Takes Stress Off of Your Wait Staff
If you think that online food ordering will only have a big effect on the customer experience of your to-go and delivery diners, you are dead wrong. By adopting the technology, you make it a lot easier for your wait staff to focus on the dining experience of in person customers, as they won’t be constantly pulled away from their tables to answer phones and take to-go orders. By relieving this stress from your wait staff, you directly improve the experience of in-person diners. Which means a more refined ambiance and higher level of service in your eatery.

5. It Provides Your Business with Unparalleled Online Promotional Opportunities
Once your business integrates an online ordering system into it’s web presence, a whole ton of unique promotional opportunities will become available to your restaurant. Instead of just promoting your restaurant in general on social media, you can promote specific dishes that customers can buy with a click of a mouse. Instead of promoting dishes with just pictures and abstract descriptions, you can promote your menu as a flexible and interactive tool taht your fans can actually order from directly.

6. Online Ordering Will Bring in an All New Revenue Stream
Saying that online ordering will change the entire way your restaurant does business might seem dramatic, but when you consider the fact that online creates an entirely new revenue stream, big statements like that don’t seem too extreme. Online ordering will allow yourself to market to entirely new customers. It will allow you to broaden your relationship with existing fans who love your food and want new ways to experience your menu. And by doing so, it will bring in profits from a whole new area that you could never realize otherwise. New revenue is always a good thing, and will allow your business to compete with other restaurants head to head who have already benefited from this new source of income.

7. Online Ordering Makes Customers Happy
There a reason that online ordering for restaurants has grown so quickly, and it’s not just because smart business owners see how much opportunity the technology provides for profits. In the restaurant business it’s all about your customers, and online ordering makes your customers happy, plain and simple. If happier customers doesn’t lead to a competitive edge, we don’t know what does.