Restaurants that link an online ordering portal to their website are turning business away and paying to do so.

If you have an online ordering link to a portal showing on your restaurant’s website, you are sending customers from your site, where they are completely focused on you, to a place where they can order from a variety of restaurants.  You are essentially inviting them to order from one of your competitors.

Within the overall marketing strategy of your restaurant, the purpose of a portal is to bring you new customers, not the other way around.  When you point customers to a portal to place an order at your restaurant, you pay extraordinary fees for that business.  If you’re sending repeat customers to place orders through the portal, it’s even worse.

The average portal fee at Grubhub/Seamless is about 14% of each order.  With your own, individually-branded online ordering site, like NetWaiter, you would pay a small fraction of those fees.

Customers come to your website because they are interested in your restaurant.  Don’t send them to a portal where you will either lose them to a competitor, or pay the portal’s huge fee.  Keep them on your site, accept their order directly, retain all of the customer information, and save money while doing so.

"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."