Is Your Restaurant Using Too Many Food Delivery Apps?
Over the past year, food delivery apps have been a saving grace for many restaurants. With lockdown orders in effect and occupancy limits on restaurants, people have been using these apps more than ever before. Statista reports that overall food delivery revenue has doubled since 2017, and projections show revenue will reach $97 billion by 2024.
Although demand for delivery will continue to grow, businesses can be hurting themselves by using too many food delivery apps. From high fees to collating orders from each service, several factors can affect your success.
How many is too many?
Food delivery apps are highly beneficial for restauranteurs. They introduce your brand to new audiences, simplify the ordering process, and help you build a large digital presence.
However, you should review the following items to ensure these services are not affecting your profit margins.
Consider the costs
Apps make it easy to sell online, but they charge several fees for this convenience. With margins already being so thin in the restaurant industry, every penny counts.
To see these high fees in effect, look at how this restaurant only earned $376.50 from over $1,000 in food sales. Grubhub said this incident was an outlier, but they did admit that they take 25% on average from net sales.
On top of these sales fees, some apps charge merchant fees to use the service and one-time setup fees. A few food delivery services also provide tablets and other hardware, but these come at a cost. Grubhub reportedly charges around $119/month for their hardware rentals.
By reducing how many apps you use, you can avoid some unnecessary fees. Consider reviewing your statements from each service and determining which provide the most sales. Calculate all fees and see if cutting one or two apps can increase your profitability.
Look at POS integrations
While you can opt to use the app’s provided hardware, the ongoing rental costs harm your business. For the same price, you can buy a modern restaurant point of sale system that integrates with these apps.
Additionally, integrating your food delivery providers with your POS speeds up service. You spend less time running orders to your kitchen and don’t have to manually add sales numbers. Instead, all delivery sales can be recorded on your terminal and easily exported to your accounting software. You will have fewer headaches when it comes to bookkeeping, and you will reduce your labor costs.
How big is your service area?
Your location also plays a major role in choosing apps. First of all, some apps may not have a large presence in certain areas. But more importantly, you might not need to be on more than one or two apps depending on the size of your area.
For example, if you live in a small town, the chances are that most people know about your business. Since you do not need to heavily market your restaurant, getting your name on every app isn’t necessary. Instead, you can tell your customers that they can only find you on certain programs. Even better, you can offer your own delivery service through your website to avoid added fees.
On the other hand, restaurants in big cities will want to be on multiple apps. Although this will come at a higher price, the fees will be worth the increased brand awareness. Large urban areas are full of competition, and you will need these apps to stay top of mind.
That said, establishments in large cities should still offer their own ordering service. By collecting orders on your restaurant website, you can offer lower prices than on delivery apps and draw in more customers.
Epos Now Order & Pay - The app-less online ordering platform
Considering all the costs that come with food delivery, it makes sense to offer all services in-house. To help satisfy this demand, we’ve created Epos Now Order & Pay.
Our new app-less platform gives you full control over your online ordering. From order collection to delivery, you get total oversight of the process.
Epos Now Order & Pay is designed exclusively for Epos Now systems Your customers can browse your menu, order online, and pay for pickup or delivery right from their mobile phones. They can even choose their desired pickup time if they are ordering takeout.
All orders go through your POS system, so your back office financial records automatically update. Delivery requests go directly to your receipt printer or kitchen display screen, streamlining operations. On top of this, each order will be tracked against your inventory so you get up-to-date stock levels at all times.
What Can Epos Now Do for You?
Epos Now provides hardware and software for all types of restaurants. Our systems work on touchscreens PCs, tablets, and handheld devices, and all data is safely stored in the cloud.