Online ordering is the best weapon for addressing change in the restaurant industry…

The Orlando Sentinel, citing several respected industry sources, reports that restaurants that have not spent a huge amount of energy trying to capture the lunch crowd are now refocusing their efforts.

Mid-day meals typically mean lower profit margins and diners that are in a hurry.  Competition for the business, however, has forced restaurants to refocus their efforts.  Some restaurants are at a disadvantage here, reports the article, “… when diners eat out at lunch, they often want something quick — a problem for some sit-down chains.”

A weakness for restaurants in the lunch business is the lack of a good online ordering system.  Ordering online is ideal for the mid-day customer who wants to spend a limited time away from their desk or, better yet, get it delivered.

To compete, it’s important to emphasize the convenience of online ordering to customers, either for pickup or delivery.  You can do this through conversations with customers, in-store signage, messages on receipts, and email campaigns through your NetWaiter Management Console.

“A recent industry survey revealed that the lunch crowd accounts for 34% of restaurant traffic,” said Jared Shimoff, Sr. Director at NetWaiter.  “If that’s part of your business, you certainly want to keep it and expand it.  Online ordering is a key tool for that opportunity.”

Social media offers an excellent opportunity to reach customers on an emotional level using photos.  Here are three suggestions of photos you can post to Twitter and Facebook:

Photos of Dishes - Presentation is everything.  Post a photo of your popular entrées and desserts to Twitter and Facebook.  You can even add an offer:  ‘Surprise your sweetheart with pie tonight – order an entrée online and get 50% off one of our delicious pies.’

Photos of Employees – Highlight your employees and how well they do their job.  Post photos of employees so customers feel like they know them the next time they come in to eat.

Photos of Customers - Patrons are also part of your restaurant family.  When a customer comes in with a new baby, capture it on your camera phone.  How about the folks who order online at your restaurant three times a week for lunch?  Snap a picture (with their permission) the next time they pickup an order and use the photo for promoting ordering online at your restaurant by posting it to Facebook and Twitter.

The restaurant industry continues its love-hate relationship with daily deals. There is even some research that the customers are not as bad as once thought, although they still are not the most profitable. The main drawback is that once you start using them, customers come to expect them.

Online ordering, however, proves a far better way to grow business--and is more profitable. As noted in a recent NetWaiter blogpost:  "Almost 98% of operators say the ROI of online ordering met or exceeded their expectations, with 52.4% saying their expectations were surpassed.

Everyone likes to feel as if they are an insider, that they know things other folks don't know.  This includes secret menu items at restaurants.

What's better than a secret menu?  A ‘secret’ menu only available to online customers.

"Online ordering is a natural for ‘secret’ menu items," says Jared Shimoff, Sr. Director at NetWaiter.  "Obviously, it’s impossible to keep things a secret when you post information online, but keeping certain menu items exclusive to your online menu will encourage people to gravitate to your online site and help set your online menu apart from menus at other restaurants."

Often times, secret items are similar to regular items, but in different presentations.  For instance, McDonald's purported Monster Mac - a Big Mac with eight patties (can you say heart attack?).  The ingredients are already on hand.  Alternatively, secret menu items can also allow you to experiment with new offerings before rolling them out to the mainstream.

"If you have a secret menu or customers know the secret menu, they feel like they're insiders," Bret Thorn, senior food editor of Nation's Restaurant News, told NPR News.  "They feel a kind of personal connection to the restaurant; they feel they know something that maybe not everybody else does.  And everyone loves that."

Takeout continues to grow as a percentage of takeout business for restaurants. No wonder when many popular meals are more expensive to make at home (according to this Yahoo article) than ordering at a restaurant. And that says nothing about your time involved in putting the meal together. 

Take full advantage of that takeout market with online ordering from NetWaiter. 

Jose Davila, manager of The Sub and Pizza of Amherst, located not far from the University of Massachusetts, setup a new marketing tool in 2012 - NetWaiter.

"I looked at online ordering systems for a year," said Jose. "I have a big file of all the companies I reviewed.  NetWaiter made me feel very comfortable.  Their system is very easy to use, very easy to make changes, and they walked me through all the steps.”

Jose reports that his average takeout ticket size prior to NetWaiter was about $11.  Now his average takeout ticket ranges between $17 and $19.  "The cashier, who takes orders over the phone, does two or three jobs at once," says Jose. "They don't always think to suggest an appetizer, another dish, or another topping. But NetWaiter allows me to do this."

NetWaiter has also opened up an entirely new client base for The Sub and Pizza of Amherst.  Whereas they rarely received orders from delivery services catering to the college crowd, NetWaiter allowed them to expand access to that customer base.  “NetWaiter has opened that market for us,” he said.  “Younger people really like online ordering."

This may be a big shock, but studies reveal that only 4% of Facebook fans return to your page after visiting and liking it.

This means if your messages don’t end up in a user’s newsfeed, they probably won’t be seen.  So, how do you get your Facebook posts to as many followers as possible?

Posts on a newsfeed are based on an algorithm called EdgeRank.  If you do things the algorithm likes, then your posts will get in front of more people.  Here's what the algorithm looks for:

Affinity:  The more posts a fan likes, comments on, and shares, the more likely they will see your future updates.

Weight:  Closely linked to affinity, this measures the action of each individual update.  The more action an update gets, the more likely it will be shown on more newsfeeds.

Decay:  If you are posting the same thing all the time, or you wait too long between posts, the algorithm starts to forget about you.

TIPS:  Try to post at least once a day, and pay attention to when you post and what kind of responses you receive.  Your followers may be more prone to responding at specific times.  Look for patterns of high response, make posts or ask questions that elicit answers, and try to be interactive.

A popular marketing vehicle used by restaurants is the limited time offer, or LTO.  

Typically, LTOs are special menu items or offerings made available for a short period, often offered in unison with a holiday or celebration of some sort.  These opportunities work especially well with online ordering.

NetWaiter has assembled a list of non-holiday events that are great for online ordering LTOs:

•    Do you have a local minor league baseball team, or a major league team for that matter? Offer a combination of foods for a pre-game tailgate party.  You can set the offer to be available after a certain time on game day.
•    The Saturday wedding special - a bag of sandwiches for the groom and groomsmen, or finger foods for the bride and her bridesmaids as they get ready.
•    Do local parks offer summer evening movies or concerts?  Customers can order dinner online and pick it up on the way.

NetWaiter and limited time offers - a combination that can help your bottom line.  Develop your offering and use the NetWaiter Management Console to email it to your database of online customers.

Delivery Areas

Coming soon, your restaurant will have the ability to customize more specific delivery zones.

Within the NetWaiter Management Console, restaurants will be able to 'draw' and configure custom delivery areas on a map.  Each delivery zone can be configured with a simple click-and-drag function to encompass the exact area in which delivery is available.  As allowed now, restaurants can configure more than one delivery zone, each with its own associated settings, such as a delivery fee and an estimated delivery time.  The new delivery area configurations provide restaurants in densely populated locations the ability to configure their zones more precisely.

The current delivery zone options, based on a radius, will remain available to restaurants offering delivery based strictly on distance.  

Holiday Hours

You can now configure your holiday hours for the entire year.

Just in time for Easter - a new feature is now available in the Location Information section of the NetWaiter Management Console that allows restaurateurs to customize hours for annual holidays.  The Holiday Hours feature allows restaurants to indicate special holiday hours or if they are closed for a particular holiday.  It also allows for the creation of custom holidays throughout the year that a typical calendar might not recognize.

This new feature alleviates the need for restaurants to re-adjust their normal open/close hours each holiday.  If the Holiday Hours are configured, it will automatically account for them.  It’s an ideal tool to accommodate Thanksgiving or Easter, both of which have different dates each year.  Do you close early on New Year’s Eve?  No problem, you can configure that as well.

A recent article in the online version of QSR quotes a 2012 Nielson study revealing that more than 90 percent of consumers say that recommendations from friends and family have the biggest effect on their purchasing behavior.

The Zocalo Group, a marketing agency in Chicago, reveals which social media tools work best for restaurants.

Although it is frustrating that they don't include any quantifiable numbers in the article, according to Paul Rand, the CEO of Zocalo, the #1 most credible source is YouTube. This is followed by someone liking a brand page and sharing it. The third favorite online vehicle for consumers is online brand reviews. 

The information was collected for Highly Recommended, a book Rand will release soon.

Rand says brands also shouldn’t be afraid to ask guests to give a recommendation. “Whether you’re large or small, give people opportunities to do what you want them to do," he told QSR Magazine. "People will recommend all day long when you ask them to do it.” 

With the capability of internet access on most mobile phones, ordering online from a mobile device quickly became a natural fit for restaurants.  Each day, we see more and more feedback from restaurants and published information that reinforces how and why restaurants benefit from mobile ordering.

Recently, we came across information from a study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Viggle, an interactive media platform.  Take a look at their findings:

•    69% of those polled have ordered food via the mobile internet at least once, and use mobile devices for information/research even more frequently.
•    44% of those surveyed use a smartphone or tablet regularly to find a phone number.
•    39% use their smartphone or tablet to see a menu, 38% to find location, and 35% to check hours.
•    72% of respondents say they order pizza via the mobile internet, making it the dominant online-ordered cuisine.
•    78% of respondents said discounts would make them more likely to order.

Convenience is the largest benefit cited by customers ordering online.  Make sure your customers know about the added convenience your mobile site brings to their smartphones.

"Micro-relationship" is the bond you form with a tourist in your area visiting a local attraction. Tourism spending at restaurants in the U.S. is at an all-time high, according to the National Restaurant Association. Fifteen percent of sales at quick serves come from tourist wallets. Quick-service and fast-casual restaurants account for 34 percent of the total tourism and travel restaurant spending in 2012.

First and foremost, do what you need to do in order to show up on mobile search. Enroll in all the directories, boost your SEO budget, and keep the social media at a high level. These temporary visitors are using their smartphone to find a restaurant. You want to be at the top.

Visit the concierge staff at local hotels. Drop off a stack of flyers and menus and make sure they know you offer online ordering for either pickup or delivery

The advantage of these micro-relationships is that once someone finds your restaurant, they seek you out on their smartphone again and again during their stay as a matter of convenience. They are not familiar with the area, so they do what it easy. Not only that, but when they tell others of their destination vacation, they will often mention "that great restaurant down the street from the hotel that took online orders and delivered to our room."

This from the Open Forum Blog of American Express: 

Practice the "benevolent ambush." This tip for better customer service comes straight from psychiatric research that found people were more grateful for an unexpected dollar bill than they were for the $100 bill they knew was coming. Look for ways to surprise your customers with an extra benefit or bonus to build real and lasting goodwill. Try this idea:

• A random 50 percent off coupon sent via NetWaiter once or twice per year to each customer is a great start. 

Recent articles in respected business publications reveal that restaurants are seriously questioning the business sense of portal sites that offer online ordering.  An article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek relates how Pedro Munoz, owner of Luz, a Latin American restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, has decided to drop his portal service with Seamless.

The good news is that Munoz has been sending out information with his takeout and delivery orders, directing customers to use his custom online ordering site – powered by NetWaiter.

In the articles, Munoz cites the factors that make portals an untenable situation for his restaurant, and others:

High fees.  Munoz paid Seamless a 14% commission on all orders, plus additional charges for advertising and credit-card transactions.  Considering that some restaurants don't realize a high profit margin on some dishes, this doesn’t leave much profit.

Turnaround time for payment.  Munoz and other restaurant owners had to wait up to 30 days for payments that were processed through Seamless to reach his account.  He says that Seamless was holding as much as $20,000 at some points.

Similar complaints have been made by other restaurants against other online portals.  “It’s awesome if you’re a customer.  It’s great,” Munoz told Bloomberg. “But in all aspects, it’s killing the restaurants.  It’s a model that cannot be sustained.”

The advantages of online ordering are undisputed.  Customers love the convenience and accuracy.  You love that you can sell more meals without the added traffic in your restaurant.

So how do you encourage your customers to order more online?  Here are some simple steps you can take to make the online option more appealing.

Make the Order Online button more visible on your website.  We at NetWaiter are forever amazed at restaurants that require you to click through two or three screens before there is anything that tells the customer they can order online.  That button should be on your homepage, preferably at the top so the client does not have to scroll down.

A call-to-action.  Something as simple as, "Order Now!" is enough to get folks to click on the button. Maybe enclose it in a blinking star - the web is so distracting that sometimes you need some extra pizzazz to call attention to the otherwise obvious.  If you want to get serious, you can add a discount offer - 50% off your second dessert when you order online.

Offer curbside service.  For some people there is only one thing better than walking into a restaurant and picking up an order ready to go - pulling up to the restaurant and having them bring it out to them.  They don't even have to get out of the car.  Allow the customer to enter their vehicle description when placing the order.

This incident could have been disastrous for this restaurant, but cooler heads prevailed.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees ordered takeout at Del Mar Rendezvous, a Chinese restaurant in San Diego, CA, where he used to live and where he is still involved in the community.  The order was in excess of $70.  Somehow, a picture of the receipt got into the hands of a website called The Dirty.  The website posted the photo and called Brees a cheap (insert expletive) for tipping three dollars on the order. 

Daniel Shalom Schreiber, one of the partners of Del Mar Rendezvous, did several smart things very quickly.  1) He took responsibility for the incident and apologized to Brees for the unwanted attention.  2) He determined the receipt did not come from the restaurant staff (it sounds like a rogue guest snapped the photo during the brief moment the receipt was exposed).  3) He wrote and posted a very classy letter on the restaurant’s website explaining the situation, apologizing to Brees again, praising  him for his benevolence in the San Diego community, and also pointed out that the tip was, in fact generous, as most customers don't tip for takeout at his restaurant.  4) He donated $888.88 to the Brees Dream Foundation (eight being a lucky number in Chinese culture). 

In our opinion, Schreiber took a potential disaster and turned it into a PR success by being calm and thoughtful.  For that, we give him a NetWaiter salute.  In addition, his personal donation to the Brees Dream Foundation was above and beyond the call of duty.

Let the record reflect that THIS WAS A TAKEOUT ORDER.  Tips on takeout orders are not typically expected, because the level of “service” (if any) is miniscule, especially compared to dine-in orders.  As most waiters/waitresses would acknowledge, any tip on a takeout order is appreciated, regardless of the amount.  Mr. Brees, it doesn’t matter how much money you make or how many passing yards you throw, your tip should NOT be considered small.  The irony is, if no tip was left, there probably wouldn’t be any controversy.  Regardless, it sounds like Mr. Schreiber and the restaurant staff certainly do appreciate your business and tip.

 If true, it’s unfortunate that a rogue guest thought it was important to 1) take a picture of Brees’s receipt and 2) get it posted online in an attempt to embarrass him.  That’s completely classless.  For that, we think you’re a jackass.

Are you considering SEO--search engine optimization--for your restaurant? Read this.

According to OpenForum.com, Adobe recently put out a study of the importance of website optimization activities. The survey covered 1,800 digital marketers, asking them about their activities in this area.

Eighty-six percent of the companies spent less than 15% of their marketing budget on website optimization activities--search engine optimization and other web-based campaigns. Slightly more than a third of those reported website conversion rates below 1%.

Those companies who  upped that investment to 25% of their marketing budget were twice as likely to enjoy website conversion rates of at least 9%. That means increasing your SEO budget by two-thirds can net an increase in results of as much as nine fold.  

This survey was across all business types, so it is not specific to just restaurants, but the general results are probably close.  According to a 2013 survey released by IAB and Viggle, 69% of those polled have ordered food via the mobile internet at least once, and use mobile devices for information/research even more frequently.

Investing in SEO will bring customers to your website and subsequently through your front door or to your NetWaiter online ordering website. 

It's a question restaurant owners often encounter from employees.  Here is what we have found at NetWaiter:

1.    Activate the tip field on your restaurant’s online ordering site so customers can leave tips when they enter their payment information.  This makes it simple for customers to leave a tip, and simultaneously benefits your employees.

2.    For online ordering, tipping is done in advance, so it’s important employees live up to (and exceed) the customer’s expectations after they tip.  Since one of the principal benefits of ordering online is customer convenience, it’s important to follow through with that expectation.  The extra TLC is remembered when the customer receives their order and it can impact tips on future orders.

3.    By and large, takeout customers make their decision for takeout/delivery BEFORE they choose the restaurant.  Using NetWaiter, your restaurant is better positioned to win the next question: What restaurant should we choose?  So, not only is online ordering good for business, it’s good for employee relations because it provides them an opportunity to earn tips from orders that might have been placed at a different restaurant.

This threat to restaurants keeps coming back.

A new study by the NPD Group, as reported in FastCasual.com and Supermarket News, predicts that within the next decade the market for prepared food and ready-to eat meals will increase more than 10 percent, compared to a 4% increase for commercial foodservice.

Supermarkets, convenience stories and even drug stores will be taking a bigger chuck of the traditional restaurant business.

Clearly these are restaurant customers who are interested in convenience. The key to not losing business share is to be more convenient. Online ordering can be a valuable ingredient in your marketing toolbox to reach these customers.

Some of the benefits of online ordering over ready-to-eat meals at retail outlets:

Selection--Ready-to-eat meals rely on a limited selection to appeal to all customers. Online ordering allows your customers to tailor their meal  from your menu.

Freshness--Ready to eat meals are typically prepared days in advance. Even hot food in the supermarket deli has been on display for hours, and picked over. Restaurant meals are fresh and cooked to order.

Time--A meal that has been ordered online is ready to go. Customers only need to park, walk into the restaurant and walk out of with their purchase. A ready-to-eat meal means negotiating a crowded supermarket parking lot, finding out what selection is and is not available, standing in the check-out line and then getting out of the parking lot.

Online ordering is the boost you need in the ever-competitive food service industry.