5 Reasons Why You Need an Online Ordering System For Business In Food Industry

If you haven’t made the shift to a reliable online ordering system for business in the food industry, now is the perfect time to do so.

In fact, it’s a little bit late already, but we’re here to take you on a deep dive in some of the benefits of making the switch.

Read On…

What Is An Online Ordering System for Business?

Undoubtedly, an online ordering system for restaurants is a platform where your front-end customers can place their food orders for deliveries. To the notion of fulfilling orders, such ordering systems are equipped with tools and features to support multiple payment modes, delivery options such as;

• Contactless vs. regular delivery
• POS transactions
• Reward programs
• Loyalty programs
• Discounts system with redeem codes
• Integrated rating and review system
• Unified ordering in a centralized location
• Front end and back end dedicated admin access portal for restaurant owners

… and about a bazillion other things are in there. According to a recent survey from folks at ‘Omni Experience’, the restaurant industry has grown in revenue by at least 300% after adopting the online ordering system for business. It’s just a sound way of eliminating different barriers between you, as a restaurant operator, and your potential customers out there.

Two Types of Online Ordering System for Business You Need to Know About

Although, if we look at things from a very technical perspective, there are multiple categories and types of online ordering system for businesses in the food industry. However, we’ll only divide them into two main categories to help you easily understand the basics.

Type 1: Direct Food Ordering and Fleet Management Online Ordering System for Business

Blink Co. is an example of a direct online ordering and fleet management platform where you can sign up for different services.

As a direct food ordering and fleet management platform, Blink Co. facilitates its partners through different key services. Take a look below:

1. White label your online name-brand food business portal with your services so that it’s your branding in front and center, not Blink’s!
2. Multiple and flexible payment processing options to facilitate you and your online food order customers altogether
3. Interactive and powerful Microsoft Bi-powered reports.
4. Integrated marketing solutions, such as SMS, social media platforms, etc.
5. Create and execute restaurant loyalty & reward campaigns
6. Sophisticated fleet management portal to monitor order delivery status, rider status, delivery times, the maximum number of orders delivered, etc.
7. Unified ordering through the front-end food ordering app for your restaurant, your restaurant website, and your social media pages. The latter was offered as part of the new ‘social commerce’ experience.

Here’s the best part. As of right now, Blink Co. is the lowest commission business partner that charges between 2% – 2.5% to new and existing customers. Compared to 3rd party services platforms where commissions can get as high as 45%, our direct ordering services platform takes pride in helping startups to scale without any roadblocks.

Type 2: 3rd Party Food Services Platforms

When it comes to 3rd party food ordering partners, think UberEats, FoodPanda, Deliveroo, etc. These platforms are also effective for facilitating ordering logistics, marketing, and deliveries, but their commissions can easily reach the 40% mark.

High commission platforms mean that you will pay different fees whether you make 100 or 1,000 sales. Whereas, a direct ordering services facilitator will charge a flat fee, regardless of the sales volume.

Therefore, choose carefully and plan ahead of the curve because 3^rd party platforms, or aggregators, kill your prospects of personal branding.

5 Reasons Why You Need An Online Ordering System for Business

Now that we have the basic idea about the typical online ordering system for business models, it is time to see why we need one in the first place.

Let’s take a look below:

• More Orders, Faster Service & Much More

Remember the part where we mentioned that an online ordering system for business eliminates the physical barriers between your restaurant and the customers?

One such example of a physical barrier is an understaffed restaurant on an extremely busy day. As a customer, no one likes to wait in a queue. The orders usually get delayed; food gets cold and vice versa.

With an online ordering system in place, customers can easily browse through your food order menu through a mobile app and order whatever they want. It’s that simple!

According to Upserve, 20% of the customer base is comfortable with placing food orders online because they think that’s it’s way more convenient. As a food business operator, you can handle multiple orders, keep everything on track and see business volume breakdown by any timeline through interactive reports.

What more could you ask for?

• Systematic Operations

Things get way more chaotic during rush hours in brick-and-mortar restaurants. It doesn’t take long for chefs to start yelling while they are pressed for time to cook meals. With busier schedules, things can easily go out of hand.

However, if you were to deploy an online food delivery app, the software keeps tabs on pending orders, dispatch status, fulfilled orders, and vice versa. The extent of such operations goes well beyond the cooking phases. Think about rider statuses while they’re en route to making deliveries; an occasional draft of customer complaints, inventory management, and the sales volume.

In simple words, an online ordering system for business is equipped to centralize and help you drop the needle on such business intricacies without breaking a sweat.

• Better Marketing Opportunities

Direct food ordering and fleet management services platforms, like Blink Co., have different features to market your restaurant services to potential clients.

If you were to pull the sales report by any given time period, you can see which food categories were not performing well. You can bundle those items with high-performing menu items, and then create a dedicated menu to feature your “new meals” at a limited-time discount through your front-end mobile app. That’s just one example.

Another nice example of marketing through Blink’s food ordering app is the ability to store customer contact information, such as phone numbers, and then execute a mass SMS marketing campaign to keep everyone up to date about the latest upcoming food order deals at your restaurant. Think outside the box and you will be able to integrate a million other marketing ideas that aren’t possible due to a conventional process.

• Keep All the Profits

Alluding to the fact that you partnered with a low fee direct food ordering platform, you get to keep all the profit.

As we mentioned earlier, direct platforms do not charge a hefty variable percentage against your incoming food order volume. You only need to pay a nominal flat fee, while the rest of the profit can either be put towards saving or redirected to branding campaigns to bring in more online food order customers.

• Tons of Customization Options

These days, online ordering systems come with plenty of customization options that help restaurant owners to render the perfect iteration of an interactive digital food menu, pricing, appearance, straplines, and much more.

On top of that, you can integrate flexible payment modes, so your customers can pay upfront through their bank account, credit card, or debit card. To make things count towards a delightful customer experience, there are integrated rating and review options where customers can leave feedback about the quality of food and services.

These customizations are a great way of tweaking things through the app backend and optimize the front end facing customer’s online food ordering experience.

Summing It All Up

At the end of the day, an online ordering system for businesses in the food industry is becoming the need of the hour. Developing such solutions from scratch through your own team is a good option, but the price of hiring a developer team and then actually creating a fully functional food ordering platform can easily spike up.

Your best bet is to sign up for a vendor account with an online restaurant services provider. Everything is handled by professionals, while you get to take care of business with full focus and attention.

In case you have any questions, or you’d like to share your positive experience of having a food ordering system in place, feel free to use the comments section below.

Good luck out there!