The online food ordering system is rapidly reaching to newer heights with the help of modern technologies and applications. With the wide variety of benefits, the restaurant app offers convenience to its customers, restaurants and the third party platform. This has been a huge advantage of the online food ordering system.
The global economic conditions have changed post-pandemic. While many businesses have been affected due to COVID, a few have still managed to earn profits. One of the best examples that has survived in this situation is the restaurant business. They have smartly moved to online food delivery to provide food to everyone at their doorstep.
The rise of online food ordering system projects has opened a lot of opportunities to provide customers, and the restaurants profit. According to Statista, the profit in platform-to-consumer business has an increase of 6.76% CAGR with the market value around USD 79,608 million.
Despite the fact that online food delivery has grown rapidly, it is highly competitive. As competition increases there is a range of initiatives also to sustain in the market. Let us discuss the dynamics of restaurant business online and how to stand out in the market.
Let us first learn the challenges.
Challenges Faced in Online Food Ordering System for Restaurants
Along with the challenges, we give you the solution to follow. Read them all carefully.
1. Pricing Model
Setting up the pricing model drives business revenue. But these prices can fluctuate and that becomes challenging as people might not like to order if the prices are high. The rising competition and the volatility of food items has made it difficult for the restaurant owners to set the pricing strategy. Many startups prefer to keep a low margin initially to survive in this industry. However, there is no guarantee that decreased prices will give more revenue or attract more customers. Customers may also look for offers and discounts even if you have kept a low margin. There are multiple other factors that motivate your customer to order food online, consider them too.
So, what’s the solution to this?
The ideal solution to prevent the difficulty of changing the pricing model is to keep a check on what the competitors have planned their item prices. Setting the pricing model that includes online food market trends will balance the customer demand and your profit. Analyzing a customer’s behavior and optimizing the price strategy will help you create a profitable pricing.
2. Difficult Engagement and Retention
Due to the increase in the number of SMBs the food delivery sector has now engaged in building stability for customers and that is not an easy job. There are nearly 90% of app users that remain active on using online food ordering applications. If there is nothing in the app that keeps the customer engaging they are likely to uninstall the application.
How to retain them?
Customer engagement will improve if you run a referral program and provide the newbies a minimum first time order discount. You can also create an appealing UI for hassle-free order and navigation. Keep the app simple without any complications and organize the features with advanced search options, listing of new items on the top, popular recommended food items, and a better browsing experience.
3. Difficulty to Handle Logistics
Below are the few issues faced by the restaurant owners while managing the logistics. If you are a startup, it surely becomes difficult to manage it all.
- Selecting particular areas to provide restaurant online food ordering systems.
- Managing the influx of order requests from various locations at the same time.
- Prioritize the incoming orders to provide timely delivery.
- Allocating the right number of delivery boys according to the locations.
- Maintaining hygiene during delivery.
- Identifying the routes and providing the best training for delivery to the customers.
When it comes to managing logistics, delivery boys are the center point. Managing them well will solve the logistics issues. Let’s check some of the solutions.
- Online food ordering platforms should integrate outstanding features like real-time tracker, location GPS, BOPIS, geofencing, router, and scheduler. For example, geofencing will help the restaurant owners to set a virtual boundary for the food delivery zone.
- A daily router would give a detailed view of routes and the staff who are out to reach the destination in time.
- Organize training sessions on how to behave with the customers and how to manage the food en-route to delivery. Also, check on their work performance on a regular basis.
4. Partnering with Experts to Develop the Best Online Food Ordering System
What is an online food ordering system – it is as simple as presenting your business digitally. So, creating the application by selecting the right process to find the food delivery application partner requires hefty time and effort. Collaborating with the right mobile app development for your online food ordering solution is crucial but partnering with the right professionals will increase the brand image and list your app or website on the top page. With countless restaurants in the food industry, companies find it difficult to hire experts to create a robust solution.
How to overcome these difficulties?
Hiring a restaurant online food delivery software partner is the best option to solve these challenges. The developer team will play a significant role in building on-page activities to boost your business website and support the restaurants throughout the process.
5. Maintain the Food Quality
People might fear receiving the quality of food while ordering online compared to the food served at the restaurant. To overcome this challenge is challenging to most of the restaurants. Delivering the food at the right time while maintaining the quality during the transit irrespective of the weather conditions is a challenging task for the restaurant and the delivery drivers.
How to provide fresh and quality food?
Filling the gap between the quality of food at the doorstep delivery and customers eating inside the restaurant is another biggest challenge to overcome. Restaurant business management can keep an eye on the packaging to avoid any mishap during the delivery and follow the guidelines to deliver fresh food to the customers. Restaurants should use the best packaging to keep the food fresh and unaltered during the transit.
For example, online food delivery giants like DoorDash and Postmates use quality bags to deliver food that is reliable for any weather.
6. Find The Best Advertising Models
Even if you have created an online presence with the help of mobile applications, you need to have elusive and impressive features that attract the users. Initially it is difficult to get more audience to order food online from your website or app. You need promotional activities to constantly cater to customer demands and understand their behavior patterns towards online ordering.
Do you know the best advertising plan?
Restaurant owners should decide the best advertising plan that includes digital marketing strategies, social media platforms, and who their target audience is. Apart from creating the plan is it important to connect with the marketing companies to enhance the off-page activities to solidify the brand.
Essential Features To Add In Food Ordering Delivery App
What is the importance of an online food ordering system if you do not have the right kind of features needed in application?
Well here’s the list of features that should be included in the application for your restaurant business. It would enhance your business as the customers would like to use the app every time they think of ordering food online.
- Delivery – Safe Items
- Multiple Delivery Options
- Payment Options
- Offers and Discounts Notifications
- Awareness Notifications
There are multiple other features for the driver app panel, customer app panel, and admin panel.
Conclusion
If you are planning to start an online food delivery business, you need to take care of the above challenges and manage the business as per the given solutions.
Startups or established restaurants must combat these challenges to survive in the food industry market. As the market is growing rapidly, the competition also increases. It is the right time for the new players to enter the food industry and set up online food delivery apps to enhance the business and stand out in the market.
In order to do it quickly and in a short span, you should know the tips to choose the online ordering system for your restaurant. Find the right online software in the market and get the application or online food ordering system now.
Foodiv, can provide you the best and robust online food ordering software that comes with the ready-made portals. They provide you with a reliable app for merchants, drivers, and the users with all the features that can make the app hassle-free to use.
These app portals allow the entrepreneurs to sustain well in the food market. The methodology of the online food ordering system should be right. If you are to enter the market, you need to understand that there are multiple giants like Amazon, GrubHub, DoorDash, etc., so your app needs to be smarter than these.
Ideate and discuss your app idea with Foodiv for your online food delivery business now.