NetWaiter Releases White Paper on Strategy for Restaurant Online Ordering

Posted by Tim on September 16, 2014
REDLANDS, CA - NetWaiter, the premier restaurant online ordering system, has released a white paper entitled Online Ordering: Multi-Restaurant Portals vs. Individual Sites.

The free white paper discusses why restaurant owners choose one or both of these platforms for online ordering at their restaurant.  “The information will help restaurant owners formulate their own online ordering strategy so they can maximize their revenue, minimize costs, and provide customers the best online ordering experience possible,” said Jared Shimoff, Senior Director at NetWaiter.

The paper also discusses why restaurant owners should ultimately offer online ordering from their own website, for reasons that include greater accuracy, increased profits, and better relations with their customers. The white paper also reviews the principal features restaurants should look for when selecting an online ordering system.

This white paper is immediately available and can be downloaded as a PDF from NetWaiter’s website at www.netwaiter.com/restaurant-online-ordering-whitepaper.

NetWaiter offers restaurant online ordering to independent and chain restaurants nationwide.  The NetWaiter System, including the NetWaiter Management Console, provides restaurants the ability to manage and control every aspect of their online business.  This includes marketing capabilities, such as an integrated promotional system, email marketing, Facebook connectivity, individual QR codes, and a very robust customer reporting section.


For more information, contact NetWaiter at 1-866-638-9248, or logon to their website at www.netwaiter.com.

The Benefits of Catering Online

Posted by Tim on August 22, 2014
For restaurants that do a lot of catering, online ordering can be a boon.  NetWaiter can make the process easy for both restaurants and customers - allowing them to look through your menu and easily place large catering orders.

Here are some considerations for running a successful online catering operation:

1.    Let people know you cater.  Mention catering in all of your advertisements – you can even include the information in your on-hold message.  Highlight your catering business on your website so customers can read about it and so it gets picked up by search engines.

2.    Add a catering link to your website.  A recent article in Restaurant Hospitality pointed out that this serves two purposes. First, those looking for catering can find it quickly. Second, the link serves as a reminder to regular visitors that you offer a catering option.

3.    Offer a full catering menu.  Some restaurateurs treat catering as an afterthought, offering the menu as a PDF.  With NetWaiter, however, you can automatically turn your catering menu into an interactive online ordering site.  NetWaiter’s built-in controls let you set minimum ordering quantities for particular items, preset specific portions, and you can indicate the specific amount of advanced notice needed for each order.

4.    Think about rewarding the person who orders.  Selecting a restaurant for an office catering job isn’t often the boss’s decision, but somebody in a support position.  Think about rewarding them with a discount (or tasty dessert) for choosing your restaurant.

5.    Catering orders can be critical.  Every order is important, but catering orders are often for special events or business meetings.  It gives your restaurant the opportunity to impress a lot people.  On the same note, it can be really bad if something goes wrong.  Make sure you follow through to ensure everything is prepared properly.

Don’t Send Online Customers Away!

Posted by Tim on August 22, 2014
Restaurants that link an online ordering portal to their website are turning business away and paying to do so.

If you have an online ordering link to a portal showing on your restaurant’s website, you are sending customers from your site, where they are completely focused on you, to a place where they can order from a variety of restaurants.  You are essentially inviting them to order from one of your competitors.

Within the overall marketing strategy of your restaurant, the purpose of a portal is to bring you new customers, not the other way around.  When you point customers to a portal to place an order at your restaurant, you pay extraordinary fees for that business.  If you’re sending repeat customers to place orders through the portal, it’s even worse.

The average portal fee at Grubhub/Seamless is about 14% of each order.  With your own, individually-branded online ordering site, like NetWaiter, you would pay a small fraction of those fees.

Customers come to your website because they are interested in your restaurant.  Don’t send them to a portal where you will either lose them to a competitor, or pay the portal’s huge fee.  Keep them on your site, accept their order directly, retain all of the customer information, and save money while doing so.

Increasing Loyalty and Other New Data About Online Ordering

Posted by Tim on August 1, 2014

A piece in PMQ Pizza Magazine reveals some new data about online ordering.  It’s good stuff to review: 

  • Online ordering has an average customer return rate of 95%.  This means you can boost customer loyalty with minimal effort, other than implementing an online ordering system.
  • The younger generation (i.e. millennials) is much more comfortable online, compared to talking with someone.  That’s how they’ve grown up.  It’s not hard to imagine why they flock to online ordering. 
  • Some restaurants report that a popular promotion to drive customers to their online ordering site, and keep them coming back, is a weeklong offer of deep discounts; 25% to 50% off a high-profit menu item seems to do the trick.
  • According to one restaurateur, twice-a-week email blasts from your NetWaiter Management Console to customers with a special offer is another way to generate more business.  NOTE: Be careful with this type of customer engagement, you don’t want to alienate customers by emailing them too much. 

Word-of-Mouth Has to Start Somewhere

Posted by Tim on July 18, 2014
Ask any independent restaurateur what brings in the most new customers and they will likely tell you word-of-mouth.  People telling other people about your restaurant, by most estimates, brings in seven to eight out of every ten customers.

What they don’t say, because many haven’t thought about it, is that word-of-mouth conversations don’t just start out of thin air.  They happen because of the things you do to wow customers and catch their attention.  You have to give them something to talk about.  Here are a few examples:

Special Events – We know a Spanish restaurant that regularly holds special events focusing on specific aspects of their cuisine – tamale making, menudo sampling, etc.  The events normally have a nominal charge.  For instance, their tequila tastings are $30/person and they are regularly sold out.  The word-of-mouth these events create is priceless.

Team Sponsorships
– Is sponsoring a local Little League team worth it?  You only reach maybe a dozen or so families?  Think again.  You’re reaching many more when you consider the larger organization includes hundreds of kids and their families – all in your area.

Outstanding Online Ordering
– Yep, that’s another word-of-mouth builder.  With NetWaiter, the simple act of using Facebook when ordering online can help generate word-of-mouth activity for your restaurant.  After logging in with their Facebook account on NetWaiter, the customer’s friends are automatically notified (with permission) that they just ordered from your restaurant.  The average number of friends someone has on Facebook is now 338.  If only 10 people used Facebook to login, an additional 3,380 people could potentially learn about your restaurant (and even click to place an order for themselves).

Word-of-mouth is not a random thing that happens.  What are you doing at your restaurant to spark a conversation?

NetWaiter’s Dine-In Option

Posted by Tim on July 18, 2014
Last month, we reported that NetWaiter now offers the option for restaurants to accept Dine-In orders.  Customers can select the Dine-In option when completing their online order and then come to the restaurant to have their meal served to them.

What’s the importance of this?

Let’s look at a simple statistic that was recently released: Google reported that 50% of consumers stated they prefer self-service to full-service in retail environments.   It’s faster, more accurate, and with today’s technology, can be more tailored to their needs.

Faster, more accurate, and tailored to their needs.  In other words – convenient.

We often hear anecdotal reports of customers who order meals well in advance of their arrival because their time is limited.  Rather than wait at their table for a waitress to take their order, they call in advance to save time and have the meal waiting for them upon their arrival.  With this new feature, they can forget the phone and simply place their order online.

With a limited amount of time, employees can still get out of the office for lunch – by ordering in advance, they can get back to work on time.

Again, it all comes back to convenience, even in a Dine-In situation.

Enabling the option for customers to place Dine-In orders is easy through the NetWaiter Management Console.  The updated Reporting section and the new Sales Dashboard also include the Dine-In order statistics.

NetWaiter Releases Integrated Birthday Marketing Feature

Posted by Tim on July 16, 2014

REDLANDS, CA — NetWaiter, the premier online ordering service for restaurants, now offers restaurants the ability to send customers a Happy Birthday message with a tailored promotion.

NetWaiter automatically triggers the promotion, emailing it to each customer before their birthday.

The promo can be a simple discount or something more complex and pre-configured to expire at a specified time.  The best thing about the system – restaurants can “set it and forget it.”  NetWaiter manages the promotions and redemptions automatically.

“NetWaiter allows customers the option to provide their birthdate the first time they use the system,” said David Liebers, a Lead Developer at NetWaiter.  “Once this information is captured, restaurants have the ability to wish them a ‘Happy Birthday’ and offer them a promotion.  It’s a great feature to recognize your customers and build more customer loyalty.  Plus, it’s always nice to hear Happy Birthday.” Hundreds of thousands of NetWaiter users have entered their birthdate and restaurants can leverage this data to increase sales.

NetWaiter provides restaurants, nationwide, the ability to accept online and mobile orders.  Highlighted NetWaiter features include the NetWaiter Management Console, which provides restaurants the ability to manage and control every aspect of their online business, and includes great marketing capabilities, such as an integrated promotional system, email marketing, Facebook connectivity, individual QR codes, and a very robust customer reporting section.
  
For more information, contact NetWaiter at 1-866-638-9248, or logon to their website at www.netwaiter.com.

Mobile Web Visits Dominate Traffic

Posted by Tim on June 20, 2014
The number of smartphone users now rivals desktop users, says a recent report.  Online visits from smartphones, however, are nearly twice the number of desktop visits. 

If you doubt this, think about how many times you check things on the Internet using your phone while on the go.  It makes sense, huh?

Mobile is often the only tool used for making buying decisions when it comes to restaurants.  Even better, restaurants have the highest conversion rate from a search to a purchase/visit – it’s a whopping 80%!

Here are some more head-turning numbers:
•    50% of restaurant searches are done on smartphones.
•    When asked about the most important medium for making a buying decision, 42% say it is their mobile phone.
•    51% of mobile users use their device at the start of the purchasing process and nearly half of those rely on their mobile device all the way through the purchasing process.
•    When it comes to restaurants, a mobile customer is a hot lead.  Two-thirds of those looking for a restaurant plan on making a purchase the same day (or within minutes).

With NetWaiter as your restaurant's online ordering service, you don’t have to worry about your mobile site – we’ve handled it for you because we realize how important mobile is in today’s competitive restaurant business.  Make sure your customers know they can visit your online site with their mobile device!

NetWaiter Adds New Features

Posted by Tim on June 19, 2014
NetWaiter recently released several new features for its restaurant online ordering service, aimed at giving customers more convenience and choices, building loyalty, and making your restaurant marketing efforts more refined and targeted.  Here’s a summary of the features:

Birthday Promo System – Configure a Birthday Promo for customers and NetWaiter will automatically trigger the promotion, emailing it to each customer before their birthday.  The promo can be valid for a pre-determined amount of time after a customer’s birthday.  The Birthday Promo System allows you to recognize your best customers with a ‘Happy Birthday’ wish and continue to build their loyalty.  The best thing about the system – your restaurant can “set it and forget it.”  NetWaiter manages the promotions and redemptions automatically.

Dine-In Option – Rather than offering only Takeout and Delivery options, you can now provide customers the option to place Dine-In orders.  This is ideal for the customer that wants to order in advance, but eat at your restaurant (and it saves you money on takeout packaging).

Delivery Driver Alerts – Send incoming delivery orders straight to your delivery driver/company.  If you want to notify a third-party delivery company of a new order, you can send them the order information, in full, including when the order will be ready at your restaurant and when the order is scheduled for delivery to your customer.

Enhanced Reporting Section – The new Menu Stats page is located in the Reports section of the NetWaiter Management Console.  The Menu Stats page allows you to sort through the most popular categories and items during a particular date range, using an assortment of variables, including: Pickup vs. Delivery vs. Dine-in, day of the week, and the time of day.

End-Of-Day Reports – The new End-Of-Day reporting feature allows managers to see an order summary and a list of all orders that were sent throughout the day.  The order summary includes information such as: Pickup vs. Delivery vs. Dine-in, mobile vs. non-mobile, and paid online vs. paid-in-person.

Snacking and Online Ordering

Posted by Tim on June 11, 2014
It’s not uncommon for some restaurants to get a surge of takeout orders in the afternoon.  While some may be late lunch or early dinner orders, they aren’t always full meals.  A lot of the time it’s a snack-type order.  A recent report reveals that about 50% of eating occasions are snack related.  Experts attribute this largely to busy lifestyles, but there are other contributing factors: 

  • 73% of snacking is physically driven – combatting hunger (44%), nutritional support (15%) and the need for a sudden burst of energy (12%), which explains the late afternoon aspect. 
  • 36% is emotionally driven – 23% of the people in this category use snacking as a time-marker in their day. There is also boredom alleviation (13%) and those who use snacking as a way to reward themselves (6%).
  • 28% of snacking is socially and culturally driven, including people who are bonding around food. 
  • Then there is something called ‘aimless snacking’ (27%), which is attributed to the constant availability of food and beverages. 

The numbers add to more than 100% because there is a good deal of overlap in consumer motivations for a snack. 

What does this mean for restaurant online ordering?  1) Make sure your appetizer and snack selections are listed on your online ordering menu, and 2) consider adding items that are both ideal for an afternoon snack and are a sure bet for takeout popularity. 

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