Running a restaurant in this day and age is no easy feat. You are faced with immense competition from all sides, paired with dine-in difficulties due to the pandemic and numerous other factors to overcome. Ensuring your restaurant continues as a profitable business that offers people delicious and high-quality food can be a difficult task with all of these challenges to overcome.
Fortunately for you, there is a way to overcome most of your troubles with increasing sales and attracting new customers. The answer lies in an online ordering system for takeaway and deliveries! IBIS World reports that there has been a massive increase in the market size of online food ordering platforms in 2021, with a current value of £1.8 billion. This resulted in a growth of 39.7% per year for the food business, which is faster than even the technology sector!
When you put your restaurant online, it opens doors to an impressively high number of sales. New customers from across the city gain access to your food without having to travel, which automatically puts you at an advantage over your competitors.
If you’re thinking of investing in a restaurant ordering system for your food business or already have one but want to improve it, you’re at the right place! Here are some expert tips on how to improve your online food ordering system for better and quicker services. Let’s dive right in.
Tips to Improve Your Restaurant’s Online Food Ordering System
1. Get Your Restaurant Registered at ChefOnline
If you’re new to the online food ordering system, it is best to avail the services of a well-established platform like ChefOnline. ChefOnline allows different restaurants across the UK to partner up with them and incorporate online sales into their system.
Restaurant owners often wonder whether they should opt for a third-party platform or just create their own restaurant ordering system. But, the fact is that installing, managing, and delivering it all on your own will put a tremendous weight on your staff. It includes a lot of additional work that requires more resources and a larger workforce. Therefore, restaurants prefer outsourcing their online ordering systems for better, quicker, and easier services.
ChefOnline brings you a way to offer your customers takeaway, delivery, and restaurant online reservation services. With a minimal fee, you can benefit from our expansive customer base, who regularly browse the website for new restaurants to try out. Additionally, we carry out quick deliveries and ensure a smooth booking experience for your customers’ utmost satisfaction.
Register with ChefOnline today and open new doors of revenue for your restaurant!
2. Simplify Your Menu
Once you have the online booking system for your restaurant ready, the next step is to work on where your customers are going to start. Before placing their order, customers will always go over the restaurant’s menu and see what you have to offer. This process is rather simple when people are eating in the restaurant, as they can always ask their server for recommendations or to explain what a particular dish contains.
However, when ordering online, this becomes rather difficult. The customer is left to understand your menu and order by themselves without any help. So, if your menu is overly complicated or contains names of dishes without any description, it will overwhelm the customer and might even drive them away.
Your online restaurant ordering system should have a simplified menu with details or descriptions of each dish. It should be arranged in an easy-to-read and scroll-through manner to increase accessibility. Additionally, you can add professional photos of each dish to further help the customers understand what it is.
3. Optimise With High-Quality Images
Now that you have made efforts to offer an online ordering and restaurant reservation system, you will want to place your focus on increasing sales. The best way to do this is by attracting new customers to try out your food. Once they’ve had a taste, they will surely come around for more!
Your menu has already been simplified for easy ordering. Why not make it more attractive by adding high-quality images that instantly capture the customer’s attention? Good food photos don’t just tempt hungry customers to order; they can make your customers hungrier for an even bigger order!
Moreover, these photos will give the customer a hint of the ambience and atmosphere of your restaurant. They set the right expectations, so your customers know exactly what food they are ordering or the reservation they are booking. Therefore, there are lower chances of causing any disappointment, which could be translated into a bad review online.
Here are some tips for taking the most stunning and aesthetically pleasing pictures of your food and restaurant space:
- Use indirect or natural light for better images.
- Pay close attention to the tableware used.
- Add garnishing to your soups and stews for a fresh, clean look.
- Make sure the background is neutral, so the food stands out.
4. Organise the Restaurant’s Workflow
Like most other restaurateurs across the UK, you are probably working with limited resources and a small workforce. Many restaurant owners think they simply don’t have enough employees to handle a takeaway ordering system online along with the usual dine-in setup. The fact is that you don’t need additional employees or other resources for the online system; you just need to organise your workflow better!
An optimised restaurant workflow will streamline your current system and allow you to tend to online orders without any problems or interruptions. Since you already have a limited workforce, it is best to integrate online ordering through a third-party platform like ChefOnline. This platform will allow you to ensure a smooth ordering and reservations process for your customers, facilitate your deliveries, and even take more orders for better revenue.
For a minimal percentage of your total earnings, your business can easily reach out to a larger customer base and fulfil orders faster for continued success. All of this can be done while you continue to run your normal restaurant operations smoothly!
5. Outsource Your Deliveries
One of the major reasons restaurants get bad reviews is because of late deliveries. But, the major factor in understanding is that the deliveries aren’t late due to slow preparation in the restaurant. They are mostly delayed because of a large influx of online orders! Most restaurants don’t have enough delivery rides to cater to all of the orders within an appropriate time frame. It results in customers receiving their orders late, and the cold food only makes this situation worse.
Therefore, when you incorporate an online ordering and delivery system into your food business, you will need to be extremely cautious in this regard. Either you can hire more riders to carry out the deliveries promptly, or you can outsource this task to a professional service provider.
There are numerous third-party platforms that offer to carry out your restaurant deliveries for you. They charge a certain amount per delivery and take complete responsibility for the food reaching your customers on time. Similarly, you can also opt for food ordering platforms like ChefOnline that bring complete ordering, reservations, and delivery services on one platform. All the best in bringing online delivery and takeaway to your business!
