The Biggest Changes Coming from an Online Food Ordering System
Fear of the unknown is often listed as one of the biggest reasons a person puts off making a decision — they aren’t sure what will be the right decision. Restaurant owners are no different, especially when it comes to setting up an online food ordering system. You know that it’ll make ordering easier for your customers, but may have hesitated because that fear of the unknown was greater than the reward. Did you know that you can expect to see significant improvements and benefits from the system?
Check out the top things you can expect to see improve with an online food ordering system.
Better Seating Space
By offering the convenience of online ordering, you can open up space in your restaurant. You want a full house, with clients enjoying their meal and feeling comfortable enough to sit long enough to enjoy a coffee or desert as they talk. At the same time, you probably have some busy nights when you’d much rather that they eat quickly to get the next table seated so that waiting guests don’t take their business elsewhere. It’s a delicate balancing act. Providing online ordering helps to clear up seating, as some diners would rather get take-out to enjoy at home, leaving space for those that want the eat-in dining experience.
More and Bigger Orders
You’ve probably already heard that people are going to be more likely to place orders once you have your online ordering set up. Customers across the board appreciate the convenience of ordering over the internet, whether they want their evening meal delivered or a professional handle their catering concerns for an upcoming business meeting. Once you’re online, your current customers will find you online — and you’ll more than likely see new customers who want to give your restaurant a try.
In addition, research has found that people are more likely to place bigger orders when they’re able to use the internet to read your menu. True, not all of your customers will start to order more than they did previously — but you’ll see that quite a few others will immediately upgrade in size. This uptick in sales will be beneficial.
Better Employee Productivity
Online ordering has also been found to improve the speed of order taking. Most phone orders take between one and three minutes (on average). Adding online ordering can save workers over two hours a week! This doesn’t sound like a huge time savings, but imagine what they could be doing during their shift with those hours if they aren’t on the phone taking orders. This time can really make a difference, especially for smaller restaurants that don’t have a large staff and time to spare.
Better Customer Relations
A nice side benefit from adding online ordering to your restaurant operations is the reduction that can be seen in frustration from order inaccuracies. No one wants to be that person that took an order down wrong over the phone, and no customer wants to have an order that’s not what they wanted. Online ordering will help to reduce the number of order errors that you’re seeing at your restaurant. Not only will this improve your customer relations, but it will also improve your bottom line, since making new orders can take time and money. While you can’t please everyone all of the time, online ordering is one thing you can do to keep your customers happy.
Tracking Information
One benefit that you may not be aware of when you first implement your online ordering system is the data that you can mine from the information you’ll capture. You’ll be able to view how often customers are coming back to order and see if there are any trends behind when they place their order, such as after a promo code is offered online or a new item is added to the menu. In addition, you’ll be to able to track not only who is ordering, but what they’re ordering. You can identify what’s more popular for take-out, and what’s not as successful.
Knowing this information will help you make business decisions for your restaurant; data can help you decide when it’s time to start ordering more ingredients for your most popular dishes and can help you determine the amount of employees you need inside your restaurant and available for deliveries. The truth is, the information that can be gleaned from your online sales is pure gold for your restaurant. The records that are created will help you to move forward in both sound online menu decisions and overall restaurant decisions.
Start Reaping the Benefits
As you can see, there’s no shortage of benefits to be found when you start using an online food ordering system — and there’s no better time than right now to see these benefits start to build your business. Get your menu in front of loyal customers and new customers alike, and start seeing an increase in your revenue stream. Still worried about the unknown? Reach out today. Orders2.me is ready to answer your questions!