Your restaurant should want as many customers as possible to order online.  Here are 5 simple reasons why:

•    You capture valuable information.  You can see ordering frequency and ordering habits.  You also get customer contact information such as email addresses and phone numbers.
•    Online orders are larger than phone orders by as much as 45%, although the average is around 20% larger.
•    Reduction in errors.  How many times have you given a credit to a customer because their order was wrong?  Also, you free up employees from all that time on the phone.
•    Customers order more frequently.  Once they experience the ease and convenience of online ordering, they keep coming back.  NetWaiter online ordering takes good customers and makes them better.
•    Customers are happier. Online ordering is quick, it’s convenient, and customers love being able to order from anyplace, at any time, and know their order will always be right.

5 simple reasons why your customers prefer to order online:

•    It’s convenient.  How many people have memorized your telephone number, let alone know your current menu?  With NetWaiter, your customers can view your up-to-date menu and not worry about speaking to anyone.
•    It’s quick.  With just a few clicks on their mobile device or laptop, their order is complete.
•    Their order is accurate.  Order accuracy gives customers the peace of mind that items won’t be missing from their order.
•    They can order from anywhere—as they’re leaving the office or on the soccer field in the final minutes of their kid’s game.  They also won’t feel rushed by an employee on the phone.
•    The ability to use discounts and promotions is much easier online and they can pay in advance.

Good waiters and waitresses work hard to upsell dine-in customers - to gently suggest they add items to their order, whether it’s a side of sautéed mushrooms with their filet mignon or an order of breadsticks with their pizza.

Does this same upselling occur with phone-in orders?  Probably not.

Why?  The employee taking the order is multi-tasking three other jobs simultaneously and the customer placing the order is more concerned that the employee get it right, rather than add more items.

NetWaiter, however, guarantees each customer ordering online from your restaurant will be properly upsold, netting larger orders and greater profits. This upselling happens in two phases.  The best thing – both are done in an unobtrusive way to generate larger orders, without slowing down the customer’s ordering process.

The first phase allows a customer to select additional options while customizing an item.  This can be done with any item.  If someone is ordering a sandwich, you may need to ask which type of bread they want (along with their topping choices).  You can also upsell the sandwich with additional suggestions, such as adding “Extra Turkey” for $1.50 or a “Bag of Chips” for $1.25.

The second phase tracks which categories a customer has ordered from and prompts them to add items from categories that haven’t been selected.  NetWaiter highlights the three or four most popular items from a suggested category and allows a customer to make a selection after adding any item to their order.  The specific categories are set based on a hierarchy configured by the restaurant. 

As mentioned in a recent blog post, appetizers, desserts, and beverages are the most overlooked items for takeout.  The hierarchy of categories for upselling can be set with this in mind.  You should set appetizers and desserts towards the top of the hierarchy.  Other categories at the top should include those with high profit-margin items and items with price points that make them an easy add-on to any order. 

The next time you update your online menu, make sure the categories in your upselling hierarchy are optimized to maximize online sales.  If needed, a NetWaiter Success Specialist can help you with your configurations.

Social Embarrassment, in connection to a restaurant order, is a term that refers to a customer who holds back and doesn’t order everything they want - the extra toppings on a pizza, for example, or chili fries rather than regular fries - for fear the employee will judge them for their selections (unhealthy or otherwise).  If you remove human interaction from the ordering process, customers will have no shame ordering the high-calorie, and often more expensive, options.

For example, a regional pizza chain that implemented online ordering quickly noticed a shift in the nature of orders coming from customers who previously called in.  Social embarrassment seemed to no longer be a factor.  Customers loaded on additional toppings, spending an average of 61 cents more per order.

Although social embarrassment is surely a factor in human interactions at a restaurant, there is another, and perhaps more significant factor, at work here.  It deals with the social embarrassment of stumbling through a phone order with an employee who is also doing three other jobs.  Add in the background noise of ringing phones, other customers, and the kitchen and the result is a customer who feels pressured to keep their order simple and fast.  It’s not worth the hassle.  They will forego the double cheese and the sun-dried tomatoes on just half of the pizza (those are extra toppings and extra profits).

NetWaiter online ordering, though, takes this out of the equation because customers have full control of their ordering experience, without any pressure.

The other social embarrassment alleviated by online ordering is the pressure on employees who just don’t like to sell.  Most restaurant owners will agree that extra profits are lost because employees don’t always (or properly) upsell customers. NetWaiter, however, does this automatically.

People criticize the ever-increasing trend of taking human interaction out of business transactions.  It turns out, though; there are more benefits (for everyone involved) than downfalls when it comes to online ordering for restaurants.

The studies and research all agree.  The biggest attraction for ordering online is customer convenience and control.  Whenever we make changes and upgrades to the NetWaiter system, we always put them through our ‘convenience filter’.  Above and beyond our recent Group Ordering release, other upgrades have been made to improve convenience for customers.  Here’s a recap:

Group Ordering

As discussed in our last newsletter, group ordering allows any customer, but particularly people like administrative assistants, pharmaceutical reps, or anyone organizing a group lunch/dinner, to conveniently place orders for everyone involved.

To start, an organizer invites friends or co-workers via email.  Your NetWaiter site allows the organizer to select invitees and include an optional message.  Each person accepts or declines the invitation.  If they join the group, they are directed to your menu to select their items.  When completed, their selections are sent to the organizer, who submits the Group Order, with the desired pickup/delivery time.  Each item of a Group Order is identified with the person’s name that ordered it.  If possible, your restaurant should write the name of the corresponding person on each item before packaging up the entire order.

Other Front-End Changes

Editing Orders – Customers will discover they now have a faster and easier way to edit and delete order information, if needed.

Site Appearance – We’ve tweaked a couple of visual elements (fonts, etc.) to improve consistency throughout the ordering process.

Site Layout – We’ve increased customer usability of the NetWaiter website.  Additions include a ‘breadcrumb’ to help with navigation, easier access to Log In/Off, and a link to view the status of a pending Group Order.

Management Console Changes 

Email Marketing and Social Widget Upgrades – You now have more options for editing content of email messages and those on your social widget.

Promotions Upgrade – When offering promotions that include specific items, NetWaiter will automatically add those items to an order when the customer enters the Promo code.

One of the things we like to do at NetWaiter is provide restaurants as much information as possible about the benefits of adding online ordering to your business plan.  A version of the following article recently appeared in Restaurant Hospitality Magazine.

A 30% boost in your takeout business within a matter of weeks.  What restaurant owner would not want that?

Those are the kinds of success stories we hear over and over from restaurateurs who have made online ordering part of their marketing plan.

Every day, restaurant owners are confronted with the costs of doing business.  The fixed expenses and staples are no brainers – rent, utilities, payroll for a great staff, the cost of quality food, etc.  The more difficult expenditures are discretionary ones like marketing. Where can a restaurant spend to get the best ROI?  Owners are bombarded with choices daily.

When asked, many successful restaurant owners have a similar response: “Online ordering has been one of our most profitable investments.  NetWaiter should be at the top of every restaurant’s to-do list if they don’t already have it.”

Companies such as NetWaiter offer a fully branded online ordering service through a restaurant’s website (a NetWaiter site can be customized with the look and brand the restaurant).  Customers order in seconds from an online menu.  They can make special requests, indicate future delivery or pickup times, and even make payments (NetWaiter electronically deposits the money to the restaurant immediately).  Custom delivery zones can be set by the restaurant (if they offer delivery), or customers can come in and pick up their order.  

The benefit to customers is convenience. They can order from anywhere (desktop, iPad, Smartphone, etc.). Imagine a mother getting off work. While still in the parking lot, she can order dinner from a restaurant and pick it up on her way home.  There is also the control given to the customer. Since they placed the order, there is less chance of error.  Customers who use online ordering typically use it again and again, quickly becoming regular customers.

Customized online ordering is a game changer for restaurants.  Using a restaurant portal that promotes online ordering for a variety of restaurants is very expensive (10-20%+).  Online ordering via a custom ordering site, such as NetWaiter, creates more business and is significantly more cost effective.  In addition, restaurants get a great tool that builds loyalty and extends and strengthens their brand.  Some NetWaiter clients even have ROIs in excess of 7,800% (the average is closer to 2,000%).

Where can a restaurant get a better ROI with their marketing dollar than online ordering?  There are many marketing options available, but none can come close to the ROI of a custom online ordering site.

When they first came out, daily deals like Groupon swept across the industry.  Smart restaurateurs, however, realized them for what they were—a trap.  An article in The New York Times more than two years ago addressed the pitfalls of these services:  "The consumers were being told: You will never pay full price again.  The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price.  Disappointment was inevitable."

Years ago, a newspaper advertisement might have been a restaurant’s ‘go-to’ way to bring in business.  Readership has dropped significantly, though, and even when newspapers were widely read, buying an ad didn’t provide a very good ROI.  It’s very hard to measure the success of such an advertisement unless you offer a redeemable discount.  Those discounts, however, significantly impact the ROI of the advertisement. 

Even more modern and effective marketing and advertising opportunities, such as email, loyalty programs, text marketing, social media marketing, etc. (which are all certainly worthwhile to deploy) would have a hard time beating the ROI of online ordering.

According to a study and paper done by The School for Hospitality Leadership at Cornell University, one of the things that draws customers to online ordering is convenience.  Once they experience it, they use it again and again.  Plus, because NetWaiter is integrated with Facebook, it allows people to share their ordering experience with their friends.  The more people ordering online, the more people learn about the restaurant’s online ordering site.

The Bottom Line – Why would you not offer online ordering?  There is no replacement for a well-run online ordering system such as NetWaiter, which gives customers the control and convenience of ordering takeout and delivery online.  Other marketing opportunities can’t come close to the ROI an online ordering site can produce.  Just as our clients say – online ordering should be at the top of the list for every restaurant.

Launching later this month, NetWaiter's new Group Ordering feature will allow offices and other groups to order more easily.

When someone visits your NetWaiter online ordering site, they will have the opportunity to organize a Group Order.  To start a Group Order, the organizer simply invites friends or co-workers to join their group.  NetWaiter provides the ability to easily enter the email addresses of invitees, along with the option to include a message.  Each person receiving the email can accept or decline the invitation.  If they join the group, they are immediately guided to the restaurant’s menu to select their items.  When done, their items are submitted back to the organizer.  Once all orders have been collected, the host can submit the Group Order, along with payment and their desired pickup/delivery time.

The organizer can view their Group Order and the progress of each invitee.  The Group Order status shows the organizer who has accepted/declined the invitation, who is browsing the menu, and the order information from the people that have completed their order.

The group ordering function includes several convenient features for organizers, including the ability to save invitees.  The next time an organizer places a Group Order, they can automatically select people to include that they previously invited.  The host can also delete names as needed.  In addition, if someone was left out of a Group Order that should have been included, the organizer can invite them, even if the order is in progress.

Online group ordering is a major benefit for both customers and restaurants.  For instance, if an office is having a staff meeting during lunch, it’s easy for employees to initiate a Group Order at a local restaurant.  This saves the hassle of everyone ordering individually.  From the restaurant’s perspective, the orders are larger and more organized for easy preparation.

Group Orders mean more convenience, and for restaurants, more convenience means more business.