Takeaway and delivered food sales today is a major revenue stream for the UK restaurant industry thanks to online ordering. Restaurants are benefiting significantly from soaring demand for ready-to-eat meals, professionally prepared, ordered online, to be eaten at home.

In the UK 7.5 billion food deliveries were made last year, figures that fuelled UK consumer research organisation NPD Group’s report showing an increase in UK food deliveries of 39% in three years. Growth most business sectors would relish.

A similar study for hospitality EPOS company, Zonal, reveals that 28% of consumers in the UK ordered more meal deliveries than 12 months ago, with nearly half of the orders being made through online channels.

This growth explains the rise of food delivery businesses such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo that are now a common sight across the UK. The move of consumers to adopt click-and-collect offers restaurants a similar opportunity.

There many benefits of a robust click-and-collect strategy, supported by a reliable, strong and secure on-premise digital network, here are six.

The first and biggest advantage is that click-and-collect does not erode profit margins. Deliveroo, for example, charges restaurants a commission fee of around 10%-20% per order (more if they have more than one on-demand delivery partner). This is topped up with a £2.50 delivery fee paid by the customer. Click-and-collect incurs none of these costs to the operator, or the customer.

Click-and-collect can significantly improve footfall (as retailers have already discovered to their benefit). While customers are on-premise, businesses have a golden opportunity to engage with them, build a connection, showcase their service and product offerings.

Click-and-collect is convenient for the customer and enables a restaurant business to be more efficient. With traditional takeaway orders customers need to take time out of their busy day to wait for their meal to be prepared. This isn’t the case with click-and-collect, customers select a time to collect at their convenience. Customers who order and pay online don’t require a restaurant employee to process their order. This allows the restaurant to take more orders faster and focus more attention on food quality and customer service.

Click-and-collect promotes the use of an online ordering system which helps grow a businesses’ customer database. This will enable the restaurant to expand and grow its own customer marketing, further building customer relationships.

Click-and-collect helps upselling by showcasing appetizers, desserts, drinks and other high margin items, developing brand loyalty.

Good click-and-collect apps enable the customer to create and customise their own order and have that order submitted directly. This means that there is significantly less chance the order will be wrong, and food will be wasted, losing money and alienating the customer.

Pizza Express has been capitalising on the growing click-and-collect market. Being an early adopter, it has developed a platform that connects all its order channels – from on-premise diners to those ordering online or by phone – to deliver one seamless customer experience. The company has achieved this through directing all orders through its EPOS system with orders then flowing through to its kitchen. This co-ordinated and structured approach avoids the need to double key data and minimises the chance of human error.

Pizza Express customer solutions manager Matt Broom is on record saying that this approach has triggered a 5% upturn in incremental sales, had a similar boost in customer satisfaction levels and reduced the time it takes to process orders.

The good news for restaurant businesses considering click-and-collect is that there are plenty of turnkey apps already out there that you can plug into your existing systems offering click-and-collect functionality immediately.

It goes without saying, however, that for online click-and-collect system to work profitably restaurants must ensure they have reliable, strong and secure digital networks capable of handling not only sensitive customer payment data, but also a significant increase in custom and data traffic.

If you would like information on how the team at Vodat International can help restaurants with click-and-collect, please contact us.

Vodat International Ltd – 1 Signal Point, Bredbury Parkway, Bredbury, Stockport, SK6 2SN

Telephone: 0161 406 1820

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E-mail – info@vodat-int.com

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