We saw three trends, among many, changing the restaurant industry this last year, and they can all be addressed with online ordering from NetWaiter. 

Have It Your Way — This used to be the marketing line of Burger King, but now everyone is on the customizable bandwagon.  Extra meat, extra cheese, replace the bun with a lettuce wrap. NetWaiter’s online ordering system makes it easy to allow for this type of customization.  Even when a customer has pre-paid for their online order and throws in a special request that should cost extra, NetWaiter has enabled a way for you to politely go back and charge them the additional fee (see our March newsletter, out in a few weeks).

Unconventional Hours — A substantial number of people saw their traditional jobs go away for good over the last decade.  Some estimates have as much as one-third of the workforce in “freelance” jobs.  Others are working two jobs to replace the one that went away, or commuting a considerable distance. The 9-to-5 workday has been replaced by “whenever and wherever."  Online ordering accommodates these new and unconventional work hours by making your menu always available and easily accessible.   

More Competition from Unconventional Places — Some hotels are pondering takeout parking spots for their in-house restaurant as they struggle for new ways to bring in more revenue.  Supermarkets and even big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target are offering pre-packaged meals for shoppers that are on-the-go.  To compete with these places, you need to be more convenient and innovative than they are, and never let your customers forget it.

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.

A recent study shows the branding advantage of a mobile site, especially for a restaurant. 

Consider these facts:

• Consumers attach to a brand faster using mobile devices than anything else, because they hold the device in their hands, as opposed looking at a computer screen or television.  They make it a part of their identity, and therefore, trust it more (the study calls it psycho-haptic — “what I touch is real”). Amazing factoid: Studies report that 65% of mobile owners admit to sleeping with their device next to their bed.

• Choices to messages on a mobile device tend to be Yes or No, and responses come fast.  This is because mobile devices are designed, in part, to make things convenient and quick.  Amazing factoid: According to a Litmus study, entitled Email Analytics, as of December 2013, 51% of emails were opened by a mobile device.

• Branded content on a mobile device is more likely to get a positive response.  This goes back to how people take personal ownership of their mobile device, which is much more than a desktop or laptop computer. 

• Want to counter a couple of bad reviews on Yelp?  Spend a little money for a great mobile site.  Consumers are more likely to change their perception of a brand if the message or experience comes via a mobile device.  Remember, their device is their personal property.  They are emotionally attached to it.  It wouldn’t lie to them.

It’s accepted industry wisdom that a good contributor to building business at a restaurant is new-product introductions.  Those new dishes bring back customers, goes the logic.

If this is true, why does NetWaiter remind online customers what they last ordered when they visit your online ordering site?  

Because what we’ve long suspected turns out to be right… according to a recent industry study, less than 30% of diners are inclined to try new menu items or limited time offers (LTOs).  The other 70% stick with what is tried and true. 

The study also shows that for those culinary adventurers, there is a preference for permanent new-menu items over LTOs, by about 56%. 

There is also a distinct difference between the types of restaurants where customers are more likely to expand their menu selections.  The Casual-Dining segment is most likely to draw in customers who want to get adventurous and order something new for the first time.  40% of those customers may try a new or unfamiliar item.  Compared to only 19% for QSRs and 12% for Fast Casual restaurants, Casual-Dining is relatively high, but the overall incidences of people ordering something new are low.

For takeout and delivery, customers use Online Ordering for its tremendous convenience, and being reminded of what they last ordered, only helps increase that convenience.

January 1 is rapidly approaching. There is no better time to go over a list of things that will help you maximize the benefit of your NetWaiter online ordering system. 

1. One Click Access from your Homepage.  Attention spans on websites are measured in nanoseconds.  Don’t make your customer look – have at least one link clearly visible, at the top of your homepage.  Have at least one more button, shown consistently in the same place, on every page of your website.

2. Don’t Post a Link to Any Portal Listing.  Portals bring in the occasional new customer who might not have found your restaurant otherwise.  The costs, however, can be up to four times, or more, than NetWaiter.  Let portals send you new customers, not the other way around.  Remember, almost half of customers visiting a portal site (47.1%) said they clicked over to the restaurant’s own website to order their food once they found a restaurant they liked.  Capturing those customers is critical to save money.

3. Menu Priority.  Your online menu needs to be well crafted, just like your table menu.  The most profitable dishes, or those most popular with your customers, should have prominent positioning towards the top of each category.

4. Updated Menus.  Keep your online menu updated.  It only takes a second through your NetWaiter Management Console.  This is a big one: 68% of people are not likely to visit a restaurant, café, or bar after encountering incorrect online information about the business.

5. Don’t Forget About… Appetizers, desserts, and drinks are categories most frequently overlooked in takeout orders.  Make sure the hierarchy of your up-selling categories gives preference to these types of items. 

6. Market, Market, Market.  Use the database from your NetWaiter Management Console to promote off-hours business, special offers, and other incentives to make sure your favorite customers are well informed and come back often.

7. Seeing is Believing.  Photos sell product.  Are you making maximum use of photos on your NetWaiter site?  Click here for some tips and to learn more about the impact of photos with online ordering. 

8. Encourage New Customers.  Do you have an incentive for a first-time online customer?  The long-term value of an online customer is huge (considerably more than a phone-in customer), and the best part is – you can track it.  Consider offering an ongoing discount for first-time online customers (maybe 15% off, or more).

9. Take Advantage of Online Payments.  68% of customers pay online with NetWaiter, and the figure is even higher for delivery orders.  This saves time for both you and your customers.  In addition, the funds are deposited directly into your bank account. 

In past articles, we’ve discussed the benefits of using photos on your NetWaiter menu.  Now there is another reason to show photos, and this is especially pertinent for tablet and mobile users.

As reported in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, if you touch something you like, you’ll want it more. It might also explain, in terms of dollars, why online orders tend to be larger than phone-in orders.

When a customer holds something in their hands, they imagine themselves in control.  They get a sense of ownership.  Research has found this to be true even on touchscreen devices, where the viewer has some control.  Customers don’t handle the food in your restaurant before deciding to order, but the ability to touch an image or menu item on a handheld device or tablet gives them a sense of ownership and control.  It precipitates that thought of, “Yeah, I want to order this.”

All the more reason to drop in as many photos as you can of your menu items.  Customers will feel as if they are holding and touching the actual item.  Pay attention to the quality of the photography, too. Other studies show that the sense of ownership is enhanced when the photography is particularly vivid.

NetWaiter and Photos: a winning combination for larger orders and a healthy bottom line.

In a blog post earlier this month, we talked about how NetWaiter’s online ordering system can help you cater to increased demand for customization - requests for extra meat, double avocado, or other add-ons.

To help accommodate these requests, in addition to upselling the order, it’s important to include any paid option as a selection customers can click to add.  But what happens if a customer enters a separate request in the Special Instructions field that should incur an additional charge?

These special instructions, which restaurants are happy to fulfill, can cause a difficulty when an order is pre-paid. Do you honor the request for extra turkey, even though you haven’t been paid for it, or do you hold off and not include it?

To address this, NetWaiter has developed a Secondary Transaction Feature to allow a restaurant to run a separate charge on a customer’s card, after the initial transaction, to pay for that special request.

This is also a handy feature to add a tip.  A customer may not have thought about a tip when placing their online order, but the Secondary Transaction Feature allows delivery drivers to add a tip to an order, after the initial payment, if the customer tells them to.

Another new addition to NetWaiter is the Hidden Item list.  NetWaiter has always allowed restaurants to “hide” items on their menu, most often because the kitchen has run out of a key ingredient or the item was a limited special that may come back in the future.

This new feature shows “All Hidden Items” in one section of the Management Console for easy management.  Managers can see all items on their menu that are hidden, in one place, and then unhide those that they want to be available again.

Online ordering is one of the best tools restaurants can use to position themselves against larger chains that dominate the market.  Indeed, there might not be a better time to be an independent or small chain than right now, especially if you offer online ordering.

Yahoo Finance reports that customer traffic at large casual-dining restaurants slid 2% this past December. Reasons cited for this traffic decrease? Oversaturation, to be sure. How many large intersections in a city contain two or more casual-dining concepts?

Another is the rise of fast casual chains, the most prominent examples of which are Chipotle and Panera. Restaurants like these have seen sales increase 15% annually for the last five years. What do they offer? Made-to-order meals, made in a hurry. To sum it up in one word we all know well, they offer - convenience.

Also, a consumer trend we are seeing return is called “cocooning”, a word first coined back in 1981. Large-screen HD televisions, services such as Netflix, and the ability to buy almost anything online has resulted in more and more consumers coming home from work and never leaving the house again.

If they don’t want to go out for a meal or cook at home, their only alternative is the convenience of takeout. This is why online ordering is so helpful.  Customers crave convenience, especially takeout customers.  Offering customers the ability to order from your NetWaiter site helps them just as much as it helps your restaurant.

When NetWaiter brings you a new online ordering customer, our statistics show the likelihood is that they will return to place their second order within 14 days.  This is important.  New customers, and specifically ones that come back again and again, are one of the principal engines of growth.

It is safe to say that the convenience of online ordering is what draws them in, and is part of what keeps them coming back. What can you do to make sure your online ordering process is as convenient as possible, so they keep coming back to your restaurant?  Here are some quick tips:

Make the pickup process smooth and easy.  If you can, have a separate area for pickup orders, preferred parking, and your most personable employee working the counter.  These are all things we’ve talked about before, but are worth repeating.

Take advantage of NetWaiter’s pre-payment capabilities.  While one industry study indicated that less than 19% of online customers pre-pay for orders, that number is significantly higher with NetWaiter.  When given the option, 68% of all NetWaiter customers choose to pre-pay online.  The figure jumps to 77% when looking at just delivery orders.  Be sure to enable online payments and receive funds directly to your merchant account.

In past articles, we’ve discussed the benefits of using photos on your NetWaiter menu.  Now there is another reason to show photos, and this is especially pertinent for tablet and mobile users.

As reported in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, if you touch something you like, you’ll want it more. It might also explain, in terms of dollars, why online orders tend to be larger than phone-in orders.

When a customer holds something in their hands, they imagine themselves in control.  They get a sense of ownership.  Research has found this to be true even on touchscreen devices, where the viewer has some control.  Customers don’t handle the food in your restaurant before deciding to order, but the ability to touch an image or menu item on a handheld device or tablet gives them a sense of ownership and control.  It precipitates that thought of, “Yeah, I want to order this.”

All the more reason to drop in as many photos as you can of your menu items.  Customers will feel as if they are holding and touching the actual item.  Pay attention to the quality of the photography, too. Other studies show that the sense of ownership is enhanced when the photography is particularly vivid.

NetWaiter and Photos: a winning combination for larger orders and a healthy bottom line.

Restaurant customers are, of their own will, flocking to convenient technologies such as using online ordering for takeout & delivery.  But, as one hospitality executive observed in The Wall Street Journal last month, "When you lose the experience of ordering with somebody who can give you an intelligent answer, you lose, well, hospitality."

Although it’s the ideal way to order, personal touch is still important in online ordering.  How can restaurants that grow their business with online ordering keep customers happy by maintaining a personal touch?  Consider some of these tips and tactics:

1.    Select your pickup counter personnel and delivery crew based, in part, how personable they are. A friendly greeting and exchanging quick, pleasant niceties goes a long way with customers and your brand.

2.    Make sure the personnel who handle pickups and deliveries know and use the names of the customers.  As Dale Carnegie said, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

3.    As an owner, pick up the phone periodically and call a customer who ordered online.  Ask them how their order was, how the delivery driver treated them, and thank them for their business.  Not only will you make a personal contact, but you will receive invaluable feedback and respect.

Many restaurants have a philosophy about using multi-restaurant online ordering portals - they grit their teeth and do it. 

Most of the time restaurants allow themselves to be listed on portal sites to get any exposure they may bring.  According to a Cornell Hospitality Report, though, “nearly half of the consumers on multiple-restaurant sites (47.1%) said they clicked over to the restaurant’s own website to order their food” once they found a restaurant they liked. That’s good news for restaurants using NetWaiter – it can, not only save the restaurant a lot of money, but also allow the restaurant to interact with their customers directly, rather than be ‘commoditized’ on a restaurant portal.

The bottom line – portals can charge some outrageous fees.  According to a recent piece in Gourmet Marketing, a well-known portal site they investigated "keeps their contract terms behind close(d) doors, and the rates vary by restaurant. This incredible lack of transparency shortchange(s) restaurants… It gives restaurant owners little room to compare in competitive markets, especially as many times restaurant owners are bound by a non-disclosure agreement.”

The article notes that fees can range from 11% to as high as 20%.  In addition, restaurants don’t directly receive money from incoming orders – they have to wait for the portal to send them a check (minus their fees).  Not only that, as one restaurant owner admits, portal sites also use a restaurant’s customer list against you.  "I never see a report of who ordered through the portal," he said.  "I'm sure they are using my customer information to market themselves to other restaurants."

The message to restaurant owners is simple - if you use portal sites to help promote your restaurant, you should be very aggressive about converting those customers to your own online ordering site.  Rather than pay huge fees to a portal, customers that order directly from your site will allow you to extend your brand identity to them, receive payments directly, and capture your own customer information.

To capture those 47.1% of visitors that would rather order directly from your website, you need to make sure your ‘Order Online’ link is prominently displayed on your homepage.  Additionally, you should inform guests that have already used a portal to order from your restaurant that you have your own online ordering system, guaranteed to be up-to-date with the latest offers and menu information.  Including a flyer with each portal order or offering a first-time discount for using your system are good ways to make sure their next order will be “NetWaitered” from your restaurant.