You are living in a fast-paced digital world where Millennials and gen Z want everything to be instant and quick. By everything, understand that it’s inclusive of food.
Domino’s Pizza was savvy enough to embrace this expectation of the springtime folks. Its innovative measure leverages Twitter as a delivery channel, where its consumers need not text their orders, but can simply tweet pizza emojis to place their orders and get them delivered at their doorsteps.
You might wonder how the company can dispatch the right kind of pizza to the right place, with just an emoji.
Well, let’s enlighten you!
Before placing an order, consumers ought to create their pizza profiles on the company’s online delivery service hub. Then, they can save their default orders, known as Easy Orders. By linking their Twitter accounts to their pizza profiles, they can place their orders in just five seconds.
The good news?
Domino’s boasts an enterprise value of $18,849 million as of the fifteenth of May 2020!
Truly Domino’s had its fall, but its comeback powered by digital is just marvelous. If Domino’s was able to see such skyrocketing growths, so can yours!
Let’s walk you through some of the interesting and upcoming Chicago food delivery trends, to scale your restaurant massively.
Your Food Delivery Innovations on the Go!
1. Develop Your Web & Mobile Applications
This would be a proprietary platform. In simple words, by being technologically empowered, you can directly control pickups, delivery, and payments. If you choose this Independent platform, your restaurant can roughly save up to 30% of your sales commission, which food delivering third-party companies will charge.
But by having your own application, updating your restaurant menus, and communicating with your consumers become a whole lot easier. Another remarkable advantage if you go independent is that you can have greater control over the delivery speed and over the quality of food you deliver.
Nevertheless, choosing to be tech-powered requires heavy investment and technical expertise, which many small restaurants won’t be able to afford. Payments for delivery drivers, arranging and maintaining vehicles can turn out to be a huge back-breaking burden.
And the worst part is, consumers might still end up using third-party services if your application does not perform well! And here’s where certain restaurants visualize it as a win-win to partner with third-party platforms.
2. Shake Hands with Delivery Partners
Contrary to being independent for delivering food, partnering with third-party platforms like Uber Eats can make your delivery processes facile. But friend, there is a small fare that you would have to pay to leverage their services, which, of course, is totally worth the value you’d gain.
Let’s apprise you further.
These third-party partners work as your aggregators to create a market place for your restaurant. Well-established delivery partners would address all components of food delivery, right from coordinating pickups to delivering at the doorsteps and obtaining the payments on your restaurant’s behalf through their own delivery application systems.
This is a great win for you, as you would have access to a larger consumer pool.
Into the bargain, this decision would relieve your restaurant from capital expenses that would be required an in-house delivery system. The third-party company would offer its labor, hardware, and software.
And all you need to do is just prepare your delicious meals, pay a little fare, and get your food across to your lovely consumers!
3. Collaborate and Conquer
Another popular trend to pursue is a hybrid delivery platform. Simply put, this is the collaboration of your in-house delivery services with a third-party delivery partner.
So, you would have to develop a delivery app for your restaurant, that would see to the placement of orders, payments, and all communications. And your delivery partner would buckle down to the delivery processes.
Forging such partnerships gives you room for specialized functions like speed delivery. That’s how MC Donald’s operates, with a tie-up with Uber Eats, MC Donald’s endorses quick deliveries to its consumers, while they can place their orders on the company’s application.
Similarly, you can also fall in step with MC Donald’s. Since you will be handling the technology part, you can update your consumers with new dishes, improve order accuracy, reduce wait time, and keep them aware of their order status.
On the other side of the spectrum, you could cutback on delivery costs because, unlike other platforms, your third-party’s functions are limited.
Now, that’s a huge value earned for a little money spent!
4. Fly Your Orders with Drones
While the aforementioned strategies are the most trending delivery methods, let’s not forget that technology is ever-evolving.
That said, let’s introduce you to a dynamic delivery approach by Domino’s Pizza.
In 2016, Domino’s made history by delivering pizzas via drones to a New Zealand couple, in less than five minutes.
“They can avoid traffic congestion and traffic lights and safely reduce delivery time and distance by traveling directly to customer’s homes. This is the future.”
– Domino’s Group CEO and Managing Director Don Meij.
Doesn’t that sound marvelous! Imagine sending a luncheon order for fifty to the consumer’s place in a jiffy, avoiding all delivery and fuel costs. Aren’t you on edge to leverage such technology?
You should!
Although it might cost you a fortune, let’s remember that it’s a one-time investment for your business, which reduces all other expenses. There’s the promise for a greater ROI!
Additionally, these modern delivery options like drones, robots, and parachutes can be put to the best use, during times of pandemics like the COVID-19.
Play Up with Modern Delivery Trends
In the end, it all comes down to these four points for your restaurant to have a successful delivery program. Champion these points, and you’d be second to none!
- Assuring exemplary consumer experience through high-quality food and on-time delivery
- Responsive technology to enable you and your customers receive and place orders easily
- Endorsing good in-store operations to avoid inconveniences to in-store customers while catering to delivery orders
- Upscaling supply chain, packaging, and delivery operations to improve customer satisfaction and retention
You really have a lot on your plate to choose from now.
But you don’t have to struggle to make the right choice.
Just like how your consumers order their main dishes with well-complementing side dishes, you can welcome your right delivery method with well-complementing fiscal packages.
Take a simple look at your pocket; you’ll know if you should develop your app or partner with Uber Eats, or fly your deliveries with drones.
