The world is constantly changing and along with that, the industries are changing as well. They have to meet the customer demands, after all. Businesses try their best to ensure that everything is faster, cost-effective, and easily accessible.
If you think a few years back, it was no less than a dream to think of food, clothes, and medicine, being delivered to your doorstep within just a few hours of ordering. However, times have changed and food delivery is a sure-shot winner when it comes to leading the race of the on-demand landscape.
From that old style of dining in restaurants, today people’s inclination is shifting towards these on-demand food delivery platforms, which made lives a lot easier by also offering the option to pay online in just one single tap. This way digital technologies are constantly changing the food delivery industry, and as it comes to online food delivery services, exponential growth is registered in the food industry.
The Growing Market for Food Delivery
The food ordering and delivery market worldwide is approximately worth €95 billion or say one percent of the total food market and four percent of food sold via restaurants & fast-food chains. The culture is growing rapidly in most countries and it has an overall annual growth rate estimated at 3.5 percent for the coming five years.
As per PYMNTS.com, 6.6 percent of all restaurant orders today begin with an online experience. Today consumers desire flexibility, and added flexibility can present several challenges for the restaurant operators, IT departments, and their ability to deal with added orders, says Dee-Ann Durbin of AP News.
Now even though the companies are constantly embracing the idea of third-party delivery, some view this service as just an unnecessary risk. The firms that have established business models, the outsourced delivery just disrupts the basic customer expectations. Some executives have voiced their concerns over outsourcing, and intent to never go that way. Hence, it is vital for restaurant managers that before they decide on whether to use third-party food delivery apps, like Uber Eats, they must consider existing challenges and prepare a plan to overcome them.
Failure to Integrate With the Third-Party Delivery Apps
It has been for decades restaurants enjoy busy lunchtime, and lately, the dinner service has increased as per the location & consumer expectations. Keeping this in mind, firms focus on offering experience and service. These days as we are living in the era of online food delivery, customers are expecting delivery from any restaurant of their liking, however, hiring in-house delivery drivers leads to added costs. And now as peak ordering times are changing, more and more firms are expected to turn to third-party food delivery service providers. However, this move would present another challenge – i.e. failure to integrate the third-party delivery applications as that will ultimately result in losing customers. Having a simple online food ordering platform via your site is not enough. Rather it is important to integrate your business with third-party applications, among the other food delivery channels, comprising of the off-premise as well as on-premise ordering, for survival.
Rising Food & Labour Costs
This is yet another challenge in terms of third-party delivery & digital food ordering experiences. With businesses reaping the benefits of increased customers, there will certainly be a natural rise in labor & food costs, and this means hiring more employees to work during the peak volume hours, purchasing more food, storing it, as well as training the staff. Not just this, but the restaurant may even require adding new fryers, grills, and other equipment to meet the increased demand, by preparing more food faster & delivering with no errors. The food delivery service will also lead to increased congestion in the restaurant, so one needs to deal with that as well.
Increasing Regulations also affect Food Handling & Delivery
This again is a challenging part of third-party food delivery service. As the food industry is constantly evolving, the legislation is in the process of developing new rules for the companies providing third-party delivery & food handling. Now to keep up with these regulations, restaurants are bound to place trust in the delivery services to also maintain compliance. This way the popular apps will now gain more prominence and your business is required to work with them integrating these orders and ensuing data into the POS (point-of-sale) system, to not miss any order from the third-party delivery applications.
Rise in Competition from the Delivery-Partnering Firms
As more firms have started working with third-party delivery services, there is a further increase in the competition. Now it is not enough to just offer delivery the experience provided must be extraordinary. If the apps fail to properly integrate into your POS and the experience with online ordering platforms is not satisfactory, then it will certainly lead to bad experiences, and looking at the fact that the customers are not present in your restaurant or food joint, it is not possible to immediately work on the issue.
Unable to Manage the Delivery Services
It is essential to control the delivery experience to keep the costs under control. The third-party food delivery services charge somewhere around 20%-30% as per the distance. The restaurant business is a low profit-margin industry where managing the delivery decides the maintenance of profitability. Still, the customers expect it, and thus the only solution can be to reduce the costs wherever possible while maintaining transparency with the costs to deliver via apps. Usually, the labor costs increase the most when the operators employ numerous channels to order food. Operators reduce the requirement for augmented staff numbers during the peak ordering session when a third-party food delivery application is integrated into a POS. In that way, there is no requirement to re-key the orders manually, and via reconfiguration of the store footprint for handling the third-party deliveries much more efficiently, the staff levels are easily optimized.
Why is it essential for restaurants to partner with the right expert in digital ordering & third-party delivery app integration?
The customers’ expectations to have the food delivered from any restaurant of their choice are constantly increasing and soon your brand’s longevity and success will depend on the ability to offer food delivery. In case you are unable to deliver to a large serviceable area, then it is best to join hands with the third-party food delivery services straightaway. You can begin by choosing a partner that very well knows how to best exploit the power of online ordering & third-party integration into the POS to work wonders for you. Once it is done, there is no looking back at all.
Octal IT Solution is the best food delivery app development company that offers custom and robust food ordering app solutions. Hire dedicated food delivery app developers and increase the sales of your restaurant business.
