How To Prepare Your Restaurant For Enhanced Delivery & Pickup

When the pandemic first emerged, restaurants experienced many difficulties maintaining their operations. With limited on-site dining services and multiple government restrictions, most businesses faced a severe decline in sales and revenue. This Article aims to inform restaurant owners how they can adapt and prepare their business for Enhanced Delivery & Pickup. 

 

These setbacks meant that restaurant owners faced immediate financial issues regarding rent, payroll, and taxes they struggled to resolve, ultimately leading them to shut their doors permanently. 

 

Now that the world has grown accustomed to the new norm, more restaurants are turning to enhanced delivery and pickup services. This guide will help you understand it as a concept and teach you how to prepare your restaurant for this approach. 

 

What is Enhanced Delivery and Pickup?

Enhanced delivery and pickup are common strategies modern restaurants use to take advantage of the changes brought about by the pandemic. The concept relies on allowing your restaurant to take orders from different delivery apps and fulfill those requests as you receive them. 

 

By adopting this approach, your restaurant can scale down physical stores and reallocate resources to focus on delivery operations. You can also gain the following benefits as well. 

 

Attract more customers

Setting up a food delivery app puts you in the line of sight of more potential customers looking for restaurants near them. With these types of businesses growing more popular, you can generate sales across more demographics than your usual customers. 

 

Meet customer demands and expectations

Millennial and Gen Z customers are becoming the major consumer groups of today. Providing delivery and pickup services answers the demand for convenience that they expect. It also offers instant accessibility, which more younger consumers prefer over costs. 

 

Improve brand visibility and online presence 

Some third-party food delivery platforms provide built-in marketing tools to help advertise your brand. This not only enables you to boost your online presence, but it also acts as a convenient way to cut costs on your marketing efforts. For example, DoorDash offers promotions that let you customize your target audience based on your business goals. 

 

Tips and Tricks for a Successful Food Delivery and Pickup Service

Food delivery and pickup services have provided a way to gain a steady stream of revenue with modern consumers. Hence, this rising trend has become a necessary strategy for improving your brand awareness and overall operations. To learn how you can make your approach more effective, here are some tips and tricks you can use. 

 

Establish a platform for online orders

Using an online platform makes it easier for your customers to browse through your menu and place their orders. By partnering with a third-party service provider, you can also cut down on additional expenses from building your own platform and put more focus on handling orders & food preparation. 

 

Build a clear and concise online menu 

Many restaurants offer a menu exclusively for delivery and pickup. Establishing this helps your team simplify certain preparations and food packaging choices. Choose popular items your customers love but won't get too soggy or melt during transport. You can also offer online exclusives to encourage more people to order through the app. 

 

Establish a good relationship with other food couriers 

Working with a third-party delivery service can be challenging if you do not establish clear communication with one another. Since you share the goal of getting delivery orders out to customers as quickly as possible, connecting and relaying information correctly is necessary. An easy way of doing this is by designating a team member to handle these tasks accordingly. 

 

Assign orders and keep track of deliveries 

Apart from taking care of online orders, you can take advantage of technology by tracking orders once you dispatch them to a courier. 

 

This process will help ensure that your customers receive their orders correctly and that your delivery partners perform efficiently. You may also use different types of management software to optimize delivery routes and gather analytics. 

 

Prepare the necessary delivery supplies 

Before opening your delivery and pickup services, stock up on supplies that will help improve your service. These include reliable take-out containers, napkins, disposable cutlery, and packaged condiments. While some items may seem readily available at the customer's home, offering this convenience can be a plus for many. 

 

Create a standardized delivery procedure

Partnering with a third-service delivery provider can affect your service efficiency. To better ensure your restaurant performs well, you can establish a standard procedure that assigns specific tasks to kitchen staff and delivery personnel. It can involve anything from food preparation to handling food during transit. 

 

Offer exclusive deals and discounts 

Exclusive deals, and promotional discounts can grab your customers' attention more quickly. Discount coupons and free delivery deals for a minimum fee are some of the most common offers people love to see. You can also plan out your promos to sell items that aren't as popular and combine them as a set with your best sellers. 

 

Designate a space for deliveries and pick up

A designated area for your deliveries and pickup orders allows you to separate the types of customers you get at your physical store. Couriers and customers coming to pick up orders can quickly bypass any lines at your storefront without experiencing any inconvenience. 

 

Designated spaces also act as a way to keep your operations efficient as different teams manage their tasks accordingly without getting in the way of each other. 

 

Deliver Your Brand to Success 

Modern businesses are adopting all types of technologies into their strategies to keep up with changing consumer habits. But even as the world slowly moves towards a post-pandemic state, most customers rely on online services to get their essentials. Because of this, opening food delivery and pickup services has become an essential part of growing your brand. 

 

While there can be many advantages to using an in-house delivery service, partnering with delivery apps may benefit you in the long term. They have helped many restaurants survive the pandemic and grant you more visibility to potential customers around your area.