Even before the coronavirus pandemic, you may have considered the benefits of offering meal delivery. Delivery can be a great way to diversify your restaurant\u2019s income and grow brand awareness. Plus, the demand for meal delivery has been growing steadily over the past several years.<\/p>\n
But now, with the threat of the novel coronavirus keeping people at home and out of restaurants, meal delivery is playing an especially important role.<\/p>\n
At this point, no one is sure how long this pandemic will affect people\u2019s ability and willingness to sit down in restaurants to eat. So even if your restaurant has been doing OK with offering curbside pickup alone \u2014\u00a0or if your area hasn\u2019t been as restricted by the pandemic \u2014 now is still a good time to explore (or re-evaluate) meal delivery options.<\/p>\n
There are a growing number of technology tools and cloud integrators that restaurateurs can choose from to manage their delivery orders, but you shouldn\u2019t rush into adopting one app or another. If your delivery services aren\u2019t executed properly, delivery could end up losing your restaurant money or damaging your brand.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what to consider when it comes to choosing a restaurant cloud integrator for delivery.<\/p>\n
Plenty of people have theorized about why the demand for meal delivery continues to grow, but regardless of the reasons, it\u2019s worth paying attention to the trend.<\/p>\n
QSR magazine summed up a few helpful statistics on the growth of meal delivery in\u00a0this article analyzing the market share of delivery apps<\/a>:<\/p>\n In the past, you may have hesitated to offer delivery due to legitimate worries like these:<\/p>\n However, the growth statistics we just cited suggest that it might be worth reconsidering those hesitations or finding ways to work around them. Delivery just might be essential to keeping your restaurant relevant in light of new marketplace dynamics.<\/p>\n The biggest decision that restaurateurs have to make when it comes to choosing a cloud integrator for delivery is whether or not they\u2019ll handle the delivery themselves or use a third-party service to deliver meals.<\/p>\n With an in-house delivery system, restaurant managers hire and equip their own drivers and handle orders internally, usually through an existing POS system or specialized cloud-based delivery app.<\/p>\n If you choose to use a third-party service such as DoorDash or UberEats, though, you\u2019ll access delivery data through that service\u2019s app, and completely outsource the delivery logistics to that service\u2019s fleet of contracted drivers.<\/p>\n Some restaurants\u2019 point of sale systems integrates with third-party meal delivery apps so that restaurant managers can see the data and orders directly in their own system.<\/p>\n For example,\u00a0Lightspeed Restaurant<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0TouchBistro<\/a>\u00a0both integrate with the program\u00a0Deliverect<\/a>\u00a0for this service, which allows managers to centralize delivery data and update their online menus and from one centralized location.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether you choose to use your own app or a third-party app for delivery, you\u2019ll want to use a cloud integrator to manage the process. Using a spreadsheet or other kinds of manual tracking is time-consuming, leaves too much room for error, and doesn\u2019t provide as much help for data analysis later.<\/p>\n A good cloud integrator makes the meal delivery process easier for customers, drivers, and restaurant employees.<\/p>\n Here are a few of the features your cloud integrator might offer.<\/p>\n As we mentioned earlier, offering meal delivery can be unprofitable and even hurt your restaurant\u2019s brand if you aren\u2019t careful.<\/p>\n Make sure you have the tools to measure your success and expense so that you can recognize problems early and make the appropriate changes. Your delivery dashboard should shed light on things like profit margin, user engagement, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n If the service starts to seem unprofitable, you can consider pivoting to a new cloud integrator, changing up your menu, adjusting your pricing, or otherwise making changes to your process to boost profitability.<\/p>\n Offering meal delivery can be unprofitable and even hurt your restaurant\u2019s brand if you aren\u2019t careful.<\/p>\n All of this can be a lot for restaurant owners to take on, to say the least.<\/p>\n Deciding to launch a delivery program is a lot of work, especially if you\u2019re also going to finally adopt a cloud-based POS system to run the rest of your restaurant.<\/p>\n If you want to make sure that this work doesn\u2019t distract from the job of running a restaurant \u2014\u00a0and that the software selection and implementation process goes as smoothly as possible \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s a good idea to work with professionals.<\/p>\n At Cloudscape Technologies, we work with restaurant owners throughout the Middle East to identify the best cloud integrators for their unique needs. We then work on-site in person at their restaurant until the software is completely ready to use and the staff is fully trained.<\/p>\n To learn more,\u00a0visit our web site<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0reach out and contact us<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even before the coronavirus pandemic, you may have considered the benefits of offering meal delivery. Delivery can be a great way to diversify your restaurant\u2019s income and grow brand awareness. Plus, the demand for meal delivery has been growing steadily over the past several years. But now, with the threat of the novel coronavirus keeping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[21,24,19],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/featured_meal-delivery-1.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Dhiren Bhatia","author_link":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/author\/dhiren\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudscape.ae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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In-House Delivery vs. Third-Party-App Delivery<\/h2>\n
Meal Delivery Software Features<\/h2>\n
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Reports and Success Metrics<\/h2>\n