I’m struggling to increase revenue for my brand.
How can I grow my sales without overextending my staff?
How do we become more accessible to our consumers?
For many quick-service and fast-casual restaurant brands, it is sink or swim time. In the wake of 2020, brands are now searching for any competitive advantage to stay afloat, grow, or pivot in the digitally forward consumer landscape in which they operate. With off-premise dining now part of our new norm, online ordering is center-stage as restaurants examine how digital solutions can help their business survive and thrive in a post-pandemic world.
This raises the question, “how are you using online ordering to drive new sales for your restaurant?”
In this article, we will explore online ordering’s value to generating new sales and 5 ways you can use it to increase your brand’s revenue.
What is online ordering?
Online ordering is the process of purchasing food from a restaurant brand’s website or mobile application.
Food is typically prepared ready to eat, which you purchase from a restaurant or ghost kitchen or can be packaged to prepare at-home to eat in the form of DIY meal kits or frozen meals.
Digital ordering has skyrocketed over the last five years, most notably in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic where online ordering soared an astonishing 124%. With no slowing down in sight, restaurant brands now see more digital adoption as a must to effectively meet and interact with their targeted consumers.
Is online ordering better for your restaurant brand?
Simply put, yes. Online ordering is an efficient tactic to reaching more of your consumers without overextending your in-house staff. It also provides a more convenient, relaxed ordering experienced for your guests. With the ability to browse your menu without feeling rushed or pressured, they tend spend more time on your site or app and become more connected to your brand.
In fact, customers who place orders online with a restaurant are 67% more likely to make an in-person visit, demonstrating the stickiness online ordering has with consumers.
Ready to get started with online ordering? Contact us today.
Why do guests like online ordering?
First, consumers expect restaurants to offer online ordering. In a digitally forward world, technology and being online is the norm for consumers around the globe. Patrons expect they should easily be able to access a restaurant’s menu whether it’s from their desktop or mobile device. From our most recent industry index study, 70% of consumers expect brands to provide a form of online ordering to its guests. The percentage is even higher for mobile apps, with 76% of consumers reporting they expect a brand’s mobile app to offer online ordering.
In addition to consumer expectations around digital accessibility, the convenience online and mobile ordering presents is highly attractable to customers. From working professionals to parents on the go, the ability to seamlessly re-order or place an order ahead of time and not interfere with daily schedules or planned events is a competitive advantage to attract new and returning customers. Convenience and ease of use are two relevant tactics that are driving brand allegiance in the modern QSR and fast-casual industries.
5 ways online ordering help increase a restaurant’s sales and revenue
1. Target customers more effectively
Online ordering enables you to create a digital paper trail that provides you the ability to learn where and how you attract consumers most effectively to your brand. Understanding the channels and methodologies that entice and encourage engagement with your menu and ultimately lead to orders will enable you to target your ideal customer for fewer dollars and effort across your digital channels and platforms.
Targeting customers applies not only to attract new visitors to your brand but also to marketing and upselling menu items that fit your customers’ unique digital fingerprint. As customers engage with your online and mobile ordering systems, you begin to understand their ordering behavior. Patterns begin to emerge such as re-orders, selected add-ons, promotions, and coupons, all of which equip you with data that can be used for marketing and sales tactics to increase order sizes, gain more referrals and improve brand loyalty.
With the right online and mobile ordering solutions in place, you can gain better insight to attract the right customers to your brand and increase the lifetime value of your consumers in the process.
2. Streamline operations for your staff
Want to reduce your costs to serve, improve order efficiency and free up more time for your in-house staff? Online ordering is the best way to elevate your operations to a higher operating standard. Once integrated into your POS, you can direct orders straight from your customers to your POS then your kitchen, simplifying the management of incoming orders to your restaurant. By streamlining the process, you reduce the time and labor needed to manually take orders, freeing up more hours in the day to complete respective tasks.
Along with lowering your overall costs to serve, you gain valuable data insights from your customers. With the ability to view and analyze information such as preferred items, upsell and cross-sell promotion success, you can make the necessary pivots based on your data to increase your average customer order value.
3. Increase order size
Along with lowering your costs, online and mobile ordering is one of the most effective tactics to grow your average order size. For some restaurant brands, they’ve seen a jump as much as 46% in their average order value by incorporating online and mobile ordering solutions.
How?
The convenience and ease of use for consumers allow them to spend more time on your digital menu to browse items and construct their ideal order. Without feeling pressured or put on a time clock to make decisions, they can evaluate your menu list in its entirety, not just one section, and piece together an order that fits their personal preferences, social setting, or any other variety of factors as they see fit.
Second, digital promotions play a pivotal role in online and mobile ordering to increase your order value. Leveraging your customers’ buying data, you can strategically market higher value items or loyalty offers to entice guests to add a little something extra to their order. And without having a staff member “force” the purchase, they can thoroughly assess the item and spend more time on your menu, increasing the likelihood they will add it to their cart.
4. Make more data-driven decisions
Ready to take the guessing game out of your ordering operations? Digital ordering is your best ally when it comes to making informed, positive decisions for your restaurant. Unlike in-person, manual ordering where it can be difficult to measure the effectiveness of operational or marketing strategies, website or mobile app analytics are always on and readily available to pull for analysis. Finally, a 360-degree view of your customer is attainable at the click of a button, making your hard dollar decisions a bit easier with the right data at the foundation of it all.
5. Keep guests coming back with tailored brand experiences
Every customer of yours is unique, but your brand experience should remain constant across all your digital platforms. From website to mobile, it is imperative your customers feel connected to your brand and can interact with it in a consistent fashion that will keep them delighted. For your customers, there is nothing more frustrating than choppy, disconnected user experiences that make it difficult to place and track their orders with your restaurant(s). Without a seamless interaction that makes the user(s) feel special to your brand, it is difficult to attract and retain digital business. Consider the UI/UX customer journey and continually assess if you have made it simple and easy to engage and interact with your restaurant. With a customer-centric approach, you can craft user experiences that will open the door to new revenue and retain customers for years to come.
Need a UI/UX partner? Contact us today to receive a FREE consultation.
Who is online ordering for & how can you get started?
Regardless of size, online and mobile ordering suits restaurant brands of all sizes. However, we have seen exceptional success with digital ordering in small to mid-tier brands looking to scale. From 50-300 locations, online and mobile ordering solutions can accelerate a brand’s growth with the right tools and strategies in place, even with little staff to oversee the day-to-day activity.
As a leader in the space, with Tillster, you get the support and guidance you need to become successful.
So how can you get started? First and foremost, setting business objectives and examining how digital ordering will play a role in achieving your goals needs to be crystal clear and aligned across departments. Next, examining the buying behaviors of your current customer base to identify buying patterns needs to follow suit. Without an in-depth understanding of what your customers buy from you and why the road to online ordering success can be murky.
If all these tasks seem overwhelming, don’t fear, we have your back.
Reach out to Tillster today to schedule a FREE consultation to speak to a digital specialist about how online and mobile ordering can help your restaurant brand. Your brand is unique, and we take great pride in partnering with some of the most notable brands in the quick-service and fast-casual industry to deliver tailored solutions that fit your business to stand out amongst your competition.
Drop us a line today to learn more about how Tillster’s digital ordering solutions can help your business thrive in today’s market.
