For restaurants that do a lot of catering, online ordering can be a boon.  NetWaiter can make the process easy for both restaurants and customers - allowing them to look through your menu and easily place large catering orders.

Here are some considerations for running a successful online catering operation:

1.    Let people know you cater.  Mention catering in all of your advertisements – you can even include the information in your on-hold message.  Highlight your catering business on your website so customers can read about it and so it gets picked up by search engines.

2.    Add a catering link to your website.  A recent article in Restaurant Hospitality pointed out that this serves two purposes. First, those looking for catering can find it quickly. Second, the link serves as a reminder to regular visitors that you offer a catering option.

3.    Offer a full catering menu.  Some restaurateurs treat catering as an afterthought, offering the menu as a PDF.  With NetWaiter, however, you can automatically turn your catering menu into an interactive online ordering site.  NetWaiter’s built-in controls let you set minimum ordering quantities for particular items, preset specific portions, and you can indicate the specific amount of advanced notice needed for each order.

4.    Think about rewarding the person who orders.  Selecting a restaurant for an office catering job isn’t often the boss’s decision, but somebody in a support position.  Think about rewarding them with a discount (or tasty dessert) for choosing your restaurant.

5.    Catering orders can be critical.  Every order is important, but catering orders are often for special events or business meetings.  It gives your restaurant the opportunity to impress a lot people.  On the same note, it can be really bad if something goes wrong.  Make sure you follow through to ensure everything is prepared properly.

It's common for restaurant employees to be familiar with the daily specials or a new dessert that hasn’t yet made it to the menu, but are you using your wait staff to their fullest when it comes to promoting your online ordering system?

Maybe not.

Make sure that your waiters and waitresses can inform customers about your online menu and ordering site.  Talk about how convenient it is for customers - reduced wait time, greater accuracy, and easy accessibility.  You can even demonstrate it to them at a staff meeting.

Also, make sure your employees are well versed on all of the latest features.  For instance, in the last few months, NetWaiter has added an ordering interface with Facebook, and more recently, the easy ability for customers to order from their mobile phones.  Your employees can help spread the word about new capabilities.

Some employees may be concerned that referring customers to your online menu will reduce their ability to make tips.  This is certainly not an issue.  Tipping is part of the ordering and dining experience.  If they help to create happy customers, they are going to get tips, and online ordering definitely makes for happier customers.

 

Ask any independent restaurateur what brings in the most new customers and they will likely tell you word-of-mouth.  People telling other people about your restaurant, by most estimates, brings in seven to eight out of every ten customers.

What they don’t say, because many haven’t thought about it, is that word-of-mouth conversations don’t just start out of thin air.  They happen because of the things you do to wow customers and catch their attention.  You have to give them something to talk about.  Here are a few examples:

Special Events – We know a Spanish restaurant that regularly holds special events focusing on specific aspects of their cuisine – tamale making, menudo sampling, etc.  The events normally have a nominal charge.  For instance, their tequila tastings are $30/person and they are regularly sold out.  The word-of-mouth these events create is priceless.

Team Sponsorships – Is sponsoring a local Little League team worth it?  You only reach maybe a dozen or so families?  Think again.  You’re reaching many more when you consider the larger organization includes hundreds of kids and their families – all in your area.

Outstanding Online Ordering – Yep, that’s another word-of-mouth builder.  With NetWaiter, the simple act of using Facebook when ordering online can help generate word-of-mouth activity for your restaurant.  After logging in with their Facebook account on NetWaiter, the customer’s friends are automatically notified (with permission) that they just ordered from your restaurant.  The average number of friends someone has on Facebook is now 338.  If only 10 people used Facebook to login, an additional 3,380 people could potentially learn about your restaurant (and even click to place an order for themselves).

Word-of-mouth is not a random thing that happens.  What are you doing at your restaurant to spark a conversation?