Restaurateurs who barely gave a thought to to-go and delivery before this year are now relying on them to help their restaurants produce any kind of revenue approaching historical norms.
For that to happen, though, customers need to perceive your to-go and delivery as fast, efficient, accurate, and safe – from easy online ordering to flawless curbside delivery.
The quality of your to-go or delivery experience allows you to do as many transactions as possible directly with your guests who love and want to support your restaurants.
Cut out the dreaded middleman and make more money by avoiding the huge tax third-party delivery platforms place on the orders they process.
That massive controllable line item on your P&L – third party delivery commissions – is one like you’ve never seen before. It will begin to decrease, boosting your ability to survive.
Audit Your To-Go Division
To make your restaurants and staff better, guests happier, and revenue higher, you consistently assemble incredible amounts of powerful information.
Can you imagine how much information you could gather by sitting in your own restaurant’s dining room and enjoying a meal without anyone knowing you?
When it comes to your to-go and delivery business, you can do the next best thing (and it’s something my best clients do): Just place a to-go order and watch what happens when your people cannot see you.
You’ll get to experience exactly what your guests do.
And you’ll get to become an undercover boss without the crazy wig and makeup…and wearing your own clothes.
In the past six months, my household has placed a ton of orders to support our local independent restaurateurs.
I’ve even ordered from restaurants in my neighborhood that don’t count amongst my favorites, just to help keep them alive.
The Good, Bad, and Ugly of To-Go
Often I order seamlessly on an easy, intuitive platform that takes my payment and then dispatches me to a curbside experience where someone (who I assume is wearing a smile behind their mask) places the order in my car wherever I ask them to.
Other times I shake my head at home pages with unclear ordering instructions, or at restaurants that still force me to call in my order, or at curbside where servers walk around a parking lot auctioning bags of food, or, even worse, restaurants with no curbside at all.
One restaurant even put me in a line of non-socially-distanced people in order to receive my order after someone else had handled my credit card.
It’s 2020 – customers shouldn’t have to phone in their orders, deal with clunky user interfaces, deal with non-socially-distanced payment lines, or handle someone’s credit card any more than you should have paper guest checks going to your kitchen, a cash-only policy, or be doing your payroll or tip-out manually on a spreadsheet.
Those days are gone.
Your to-go and delivery division has proved to be more important than you ever imagined back in the “old days” at the beginning of this year.
Like everything else in your healthy restaurant company, the to-go and delivery process must always continue to improve.
Over to you. The next time you feel hungry, order from your own restaurant and use that experience for either massive improvements or a confirmation that you are the best at to-go and delivery.
