What makes our Food Ordering Platform different?

Ordering your favourite meal from your favourite local restaurant has never been easier. A few simple clicks of your mobile, tablet or desktop can see tonight's meal delivered within minutes. With such convenience it is easy to see why the food ordering market is predicted to be worth over £9.8 billion by 2021.

However, online food ordering has 2 crucial components, namely the restaurant/takeaway owners perspective and the end customers point of view. When we think of online food ordering, we generally think about companies such as Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats. All too often, we think about the customer side of online food ordering instead of the restaurant/takeaways experience.

In this week's blog we wanted to focus on what makes our Food Ordering Platform different and an alternative to some of the existing solutions in the marketplace.

Existing solutions in the marketplace
Here in the UK, the online food ordering space has been dominated by large scale companies such as Just Eat that have revolutionised the way we order food online. Selecting from thousands of local restaurants/takeaways in one central location makes it very convenient from the end users perspective.

In contrast, the restaurant or takeaway is competing with lots of other similar eating establishments on the same platform for the same customer. In the technology world, platforms such as Just Eat and Deliveroo are commonly referred to as ‘content aggregators’ as they consolidate multiple businesses in one central platform.

While content aggregators help generate new orders for a restaurant/takeaway, they also often eat into traditionally small profit margins. For example, companies like Just Eat typically charge a listing fee of £800 and then commissions of upto 18% per order, it is easy to see why many food and drink based businesses are looking for alternatives.

However, the single biggest challenge for many restaurant/takeaway owners that utilise content aggregators is the fact that the customer data is never released to the business. This makes it impossible for the business owner to build up their own customer database that they can market special offers and promotion to over time.

As a result, many food and drink based businesses are looking to have their own food ordering platform created on their website to reduce their dependence on content aggregators.

Introducing our Food Ordering Platform
If you are a regular reader of our weekly blogs, you will know that we have spent the last 2 years developing our own technology platforms to help us deliver cutting edge solutions to our Partners. Our Food Ordering Platform has been created to help food and drink based business owners reduce costs and have more control over their businesses.

This has been achieved through a solution that is simple to embed on any website and is fully responsive, meaning it can be viewed on desktop, tablet or mobile.

What makes our Food Ordering Platform different?
Well, in a nutshell, we provide food and drink based businesses with more control than content aggregators. Our Food Ordering Platform allows the takeaway/restaurant to capture customer details and start to build their own database that can be exported as a CSV file for future use.

This can provide tangible, long term benefits for the business as they can send out special offers or promotions to existing customers and maximise the lifetime value of each customer.

As you would expect with a modern food ordering system, we support a variety of payment methods such as credit/debit card payments. We have integrated world class payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe to make it effortless for our Partners to develop frictionless solutions to their clients.

One aspect relating to payment processing that we are really proud and excited about is our integration of cryptocurrency as a payment method. With cryptocurrencies growing in popularity and predicted to be widely accepted in the not so distant future, we offer integration with BitPay which means end customers can pay for their favourite meals using Bitcoins.

The final aspect we wanted to highlight was the ability to link our Food Ordering Platform with wireless or thermal printers. As a restaurant/takeaway it is really important to know in real time when a new order has come through as speed is of the essence. Our Food Ordering Platform can link to a wide variety of printer solutions to make the order management system as easy as possible.

You can find out more about some of the specific features of our Food Ordering Platform by visiting our dedicated technology page here.

The commercial case for food and drink based businesses
Now you may be thinking that while it’s great for a food and drink based business to have its own food ordering system, is it really necessary? In our opinion, we believe it is an absolute must for restaurants/takeaways to transition away from content aggregators and have their own food ordering system on their website.

Increasingly, customers are looking for a unique and personalised experience. Building a database of customer details over time can help a takeaway/restaurant tailor their offers and promotions to the needs of their consumers.

Moreover, the cost savings experienced by having your own food ordering system far outweigh the benefits of listing with content aggregators over time. Although companies like Just Eat can bring short term benefits such as increased orders, the fact that the restaurant/takeaway is paying such high commission and admin fees, means it is not sustainable in the long term.

Finally, from a commercial context, having a bespoke food ordering system can help businesses build brand awareness for their restaurant/takeaway and not have to compete with similar businesses in the same platform. This can help business owners build deeper connections with their customers and forge more loyalty.

Summary
As we have seen throughout this blog, there are many benefits for takeaways/restaurants to have their own food ordering system as opposed to continuing with content aggregators. What makes our Food Ordering Platform different is the fact that it provides greater control to food and drink based businesses in terms of cost savings, future proof payments and accessibility to customer data.

To find out more about our Food Ordering Platform and some of our other technology solutions, please contact us today.

Until next time, take care.