Own your customers – own your data to continuously serve them and retain them.
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Your story
You have a vision! You want to start a food (hospitality or restaurant) business. You have the desire, skills and resources to start and run a restaurant serving good,hygienic and mouth watering tasty food people would love to eat.
You are passionate about food, or you love to serve good quality and tasty food. Or you have been to a lot of restaurants and you have bad experiences about their quality, taste and customer service.
And you think and you are sure, you can do better and serve the best food than the next hospitality business.
Your Vision
You have this vision to serve a better quality, best tasting food and can give the food lovers a nice and comfortable place to have breakfast, lunch or dine in providing a great eating out experience for them.
Maybe your restaurant is already profitable, but the growing population of eating out or online ordering customers are not increasing and your foot traffic is not growing the way you expected.
You are certain what you serve will make them love your food and they will be come back for more.
What’s more you are certain they will share “RAVE” reviews and highest star ratings on their network.
If you want to build the business you love and grow to multiple branches or give franchise, you should develop a digital commerce strategy. You have to reach, promote and market your business wherever your potential customers spend their time.
Your restaurant brand should be on your customers mind, when they are thinking of eating out or order the food online. Not the third party delivery businesses who gives a platform to browse, order and deliver the food you serve.
Online food order – the fact
Did you know, according to an Economic Times article dated:02-01-2022,
“Online food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato hit an all-time high in sales volumes on New Year’s Eve 2021, as people stayed indoors owing to a surge in Covid-19 cases”.
In the same article it mentioned, “they received around 7000 orders per minute”.
wow! what an interesting trend!
Covid-19 factor
Before Covid-19 Pandemic, fast foods like Burgers, Pizza and Chinese food items were popular on the food delivery platforms.
After the Pandemic hit the world in an unprecedent way, food delivery picked up like wild fire. Covid-19 kicked off online order of food delivery service tremendously and still going strong.
Because of the pandemic, people are forced to keep physical distance and adapted online food order.
Rise of food delivery business
To capture the customer orders and deliver it quickly needed a lot of technical savvy and delivery resources. Most of the restaurants or other food businesses lacked the suffiecient resources to execute the orders in a timely manner.
Third party delivery companies have already had the resources and a war chest to spread their wings nationwide with capital pouring like rain.
These tech enabled giants garnered most of the business.
They were becoming essential for independent restaurants. Or they are led you to believe so.
The independent restaurant owners do not realise the original benefits or the risks they are taking by handing over their reigns to these third party businesses.
It is a choice or a chance the independent restaurant owners have to take.
Let me point out the 5 important things you should take in to your consideration.
1.Brand building
2. Owning customer data
3. Growth and Profit Maximization
4. Brand Reputation
5. Why Your Own Website or an App
1.Brand building
Your restaurant brand should be on your customers mind, when they are thinking of eating out or order the food online.
Not third party apps or their logo or their brand image..
From their (customers) perspective, they browse third party apps to order their menu, receive order confirmation and delivery. So their brand will be nailed on customers mind.
Whoever provides the platform will be on top, front and center of their the customers mind.
2. Owning customer data
Data is the new currency. Whoever owns the customer data will reap rich rewards in a particular category.
Armed with customer name, phone number, email address and their order history, a restaurant will get rich insights to reach them all the time and promote and market their products or services continuously.
Email marketing is still the powerful tool to personalize and reach the customer any time to incentivise to make them aware of your offers, special events or inform the new menu etc., to make them loyal and come back for more. Increase order size.
A phone number is the simple and instant communication and messaging tool to inform customers about your offers and discounts.
With customer data you can think of thousands of ways to attract them and increase your sales.
Remember data is king
3. Thin margins
The mushrooming competition will offer third party delivery businesses more commission to attract your customers and the independent restaurant will see decrease in order size.
It is not feasible for a restaurant to increase their commission to these third party businesses and compete with others, while they already run their business with razor thin margin to stay on the business.
Every man for himself is still the rule.
Third party delivery companies have no incentive to promote your business without getting highest commission.
Every independent restaurant need to develop their digital commerce system and delivery network to stay profitable and not to lose the margin to middlemen.
4.Brand reputation
In these digital economy, customers tend to view the ratings and reviews of a business before making a buying decision.
Feedback is the most important thing for a restaurant should collect to improve the menu taste, customer experience and address the customers concern.
If there is any bad remark, an independent restaurant can address the problem and solve it immediately.
5.Why Your Own Website or an App
In order to grow and generate consistent revenue in this digital economy, every business need to get online and promote and market their business. It is the fuel to run the business engine.
Do not let others capitalize on your own hard earned success.
A Restaurant businesses is a local establishment. A website is their online business face.
It is the number one hub for your customers to land and know about the business.
Here you can tell your story. Why you started the business, your passion or interest.
Showcase your special recipe. Introduce your chef and staff.
Share everything about your business the customers need to know.
Order their food easily or reserve a table.
Information about today’s offer, special event promotion and collect the most valuable data with incentives by palcing a newsletter signup form.
Importantly distribute the valuable content the customers will be interested to know about your business on social media and online advertisements to drive traffic to your website and turn them in to buyers.
A chance to build your brand online to attract new customers, attract investors, grow to multiple branches or franchise your brand.
Only on your own online business website , you can give the customer a great experience to be a loyal customer and share that experience to others to grow more.
Only your own strong brand image and consistent revenue will be the business you can be proud to own.
To achieve that position you have to start to build your own digital commerce and delivery network.
Remember the rhyme “Every man for himself is still the rule. If you don’t believe it go to school”.
Here is our all in one Traditional Vegetarian and non-vegetarian website optimized for food menu and growing a restaurant business online and generate continuous profit.
