Food retailers striving for a consistent brand message too
edify their relationship with the consumers can find that empowering consumers
to utilize their digital platform for online ordering is more effective than in
person experience according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA
based Foodservice Solutions®.
That said, it doesn’t matter if you’re a quick-service
restaurant chain with hundreds of franchises across the nation or if you’re
opening your first restaurant, if you want to survive online ordering is a
“must have.” Gen Z and Millennials both are digital natives and reaching them
is key to any brands future growth according to Johnson.
In a recent report by DoorDash, they found that 80 percent
of American diners believe that they order online the same or more than they
did last year. Additionally, the same report found that almost a fifth of
consumers actively seek out restaurants they’ve never tried before when
ordering online. Tie this with recent findings from the Paytronix 2023 Online
Ordering Report, which found digital orders consistently made up 25–30 percent
of all orders, as opposed to less than 10 percent in late 2019, and you have a
recipe for urgency. If you aren’t part of every notable ordering platform,
you’re simply cutting yourself out of the market. Plain and simple. Let’s see
what Ray Gibson a product developer at Paytronix Systems (www.Paytronix.com),
found and has to say:
“Eager to launch their own digital ordering, many
restaurants start off working with the big third-party delivery apps: DoorDash,
UberEats, and GrubHub. On paper, it makes sense—that’s where the most people
are aggregated. But they quickly find out that outsourcing online ordering to
third-party apps is expensive and it essentially hands over their hard-won
customer relationships to someone else.
Consequently, many mid-sized brands—restaurants with
anywhere from 10 to 100 locations—are creating and implementing their own
online ordering systems. In the process, they are discovering that digital
ordering is so much more than a way for customers to place orders.
In fact, digital ordering is an essential part of an
ongoing conversation between a brand and its guests. By enabling direct,
one-to-one communications, digital ordering also introduces things like
customer reviews. A brand experiences a profound shift in guest behavior when
reviews receive a response, even when the response was generated by artificial
intelligence. When guests hear back, even those who leave negative feedback
order 23 percent more and leave higher ratings.
Paytronix data shows just how first-party ordering
customers differ from their third-party counterparts. They order more,
higher-value items more frequently than third-party customers; tend to tip
larger amounts; and are more likely to be part of a brand’s loyalty program.
Want to Build a
Larger
Share of Stomach
Online Ordering Helps
Adding a Loyalty Program
With a digital ordering system in place, quick-service
restaurants also begin to accumulate information on their customers. Since
digital customers can also be the most loyal customers, adding a loyalty
program to expand those relationships makes sense.
At face value, a loyalty program will generate a consistent
18–30 percent lift in visits and spend across industries, brands, segments, and
business models. Additionally, the data collected through these programs—from
member demographics to visit frequency to most-popular menu items—is invaluable
to any brand seeking to understand its guests better. This information can be
leveraged to make strategic business decisions and market more effectively.
Once a loyalty program is up and running, a brand needs to
build its membership. After all, the more customers they can enroll, the
greater participation will be. Paytronix data reveals that restaurant loyalty
members not only visit more per month. They
also consistently spend more—with 5 percent larger checks than non-loyalty
members. The opportunity looks even stronger for quick-serves operating in the
convenience market. Convenience store loyalty programs deliver an even greater
lift in check sizes, the most of any segment with loyalty member checks 12
percent higher.
Once the loyalty program is up and running, it becomes a
direct marketing conduit to all customers via email or text. Brands can
implement initiatives, such as a lapsed customer campaign or birthday offers to
encourage guests to visit and spend more.
The Importance of Mobile Apps
Mobile apps add another dimension to an active customer
engagement platform by creating a compelling personal experience that meets
customers where they live—on their smartphone. They enable customers to order,
make payments, and access their loyalty program account while simultaneously
providing the brand with a constant marketing opportunity.
White label apps can be customized so that a brand can get
up and running quickly with mobile communications. Once in place, that app
delivers true 1:1 marketing by sending targeted offers and incentives (push,
pull, SMS, geofenced) to specific customers.
Don’t Forget Third-Party Apps
With a first-party online ordering system, loyalty program
and a mobile app up and running, a brand can reprioritize its third-party app
from expensive necessity to helpful acquisition tool. The goal transitions into
migrating those third-party customers onto the primary guest engagement system.
Brands do this in a variety of ways. For starters, many
brands will mark up orders to third-party customers via separate more limited
menus. They then send their first-party menus out with those orders. One pizza
brand even has specific boxes for third-party orders with “Order direct, save
dough” on them. The goal is to drive those customers to order directly from the
brand web site or mobile app and to induct them into the loyalty program.
Guest Engagement Surround Sound
How disruptive is it to make these upgrades? Pulling it all
together—or just pieces—and a guest engagement platform will make a big impact
on a quick-serve’s bottom line.
Continuing to add more layers over time—online ordering,
loyalty, a mobile app, and third-party ordering—may take time. The end goal is
always to have everything on one platform that is tightly integrated with the
POS and third-party apps. Once it’s up and running, the guest engagement
platform is key to keeping customers engaged. Back it up with social media
marketing and in-store marketing.
Ideally, each piece will be tightly integrated with the POS
to ensure each order extends from the guest’s fingertips all the way to the
kitchen. Food pictures and menu items should update in unison from the website
menu to the third-party apps so that it’s easy to do markups and make changes
on the fly.
Brands with a vibrant customer engagement platform find it
easy to get and stay close to their customers. It’s also attractive to the
franchisees who are so important to expanding the reach of a brand.”
For
international corporate presentations, regional chain presentations,
educational forums, or keynotes contact: Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA
based Foodservice Solutions. His
extensive experience as a multi-unit restaurant operator, consultant, brand /
product positioning expert, and public speaking will leave success clues for
all. For more information visit GrocerantGuru.com, FoodserviceSolutions.US or call
1-253-759-7869
