One of the things we like to do at NetWaiter is provide restaurants as much information as possible about the benefits of adding online ordering to your business plan.  A version of the following article recently appeared in Restaurant Hospitality Magazine.

A 30% boost in your takeout business within a matter of weeks.  What restaurant owner would not want that?

Those are the kinds of success stories we hear over and over from restaurateurs who have made online ordering part of their marketing plan.

Every day, restaurant owners are confronted with the costs of doing business.  The fixed expenses and staples are no brainers – rent, utilities, payroll for a great staff, the cost of quality food, etc.  The more difficult expenditures are discretionary ones like marketing. Where can a restaurant spend to get the best ROI?  Owners are bombarded with choices daily.

When asked, many successful restaurant owners have a similar response: “Online ordering has been one of our most profitable investments.  NetWaiter should be at the top of every restaurant’s to-do list if they don’t already have it.”

Companies such as NetWaiter offer a fully branded online ordering service through a restaurant’s website (a NetWaiter site can be customized with the look and brand the restaurant).  Customers order in seconds from an online menu.  They can make special requests, indicate future delivery or pickup times, and even make payments (NetWaiter electronically deposits the money to the restaurant immediately).  Custom delivery zones can be set by the restaurant (if they offer delivery), or customers can come in and pick up their order.  

The benefit to customers is convenience. They can order from anywhere (desktop, iPad, Smartphone, etc.). Imagine a mother getting off work. While still in the parking lot, she can order dinner from a restaurant and pick it up on her way home.  There is also the control given to the customer. Since they placed the order, there is less chance of error.  Customers who use online ordering typically use it again and again, quickly becoming regular customers.

Customized online ordering is a game changer for restaurants.  Using a restaurant portal that promotes online ordering for a variety of restaurants is very expensive (10-20%+).  Online ordering via a custom ordering site, such as NetWaiter, creates more business and is significantly more cost effective.  In addition, restaurants get a great tool that builds loyalty and extends and strengthens their brand.  Some NetWaiter clients even have ROIs in excess of 7,800% (the average is closer to 2,000%).

Where can a restaurant get a better ROI with their marketing dollar than online ordering?  There are many marketing options available, but none can come close to the ROI of a custom online ordering site.

When they first came out, daily deals like Groupon swept across the industry.  Smart restaurateurs, however, realized them for what they were—a trap.  An article in The New York Times more than two years ago addressed the pitfalls of these services:  "The consumers were being told: You will never pay full price again.  The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price.  Disappointment was inevitable."

Years ago, a newspaper advertisement might have been a restaurant’s ‘go-to’ way to bring in business.  Readership has dropped significantly, though, and even when newspapers were widely read, buying an ad didn’t provide a very good ROI.  It’s very hard to measure the success of such an advertisement unless you offer a redeemable discount.  Those discounts, however, significantly impact the ROI of the advertisement. 

Even more modern and effective marketing and advertising opportunities, such as email, loyalty programs, text marketing, social media marketing, etc. (which are all certainly worthwhile to deploy) would have a hard time beating the ROI of online ordering.

According to a study and paper done by The School for Hospitality Leadership at Cornell University, one of the things that draws customers to online ordering is convenience.  Once they experience it, they use it again and again.  Plus, because NetWaiter is integrated with Facebook, it allows people to share their ordering experience with their friends.  The more people ordering online, the more people learn about the restaurant’s online ordering site.

The Bottom Line – Why would you not offer online ordering?  There is no replacement for a well-run online ordering system such as NetWaiter, which gives customers the control and convenience of ordering takeout and delivery online.  Other marketing opportunities can’t come close to the ROI an online ordering site can produce.  Just as our clients say – online ordering should be at the top of the list for every restaurant.

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The amount of technology being thrown at restaurant owners in today’s competitive marketplace is mind boggling. There are POS systems, kitchen systems, tablets for waiters, and tablets at the tables.  It’s enough to make your head explode.

Making it even more difficult, all of this is happening in a challenging environment. 70% of restaurants in the U.S. are independently operated, and those owners have little time to sit down, weigh all the factors, and determine which technology to invest in.

Online ordering for restaurants, though, is a technology that all independent owners need to evaluate. That’s why NetWaiter assembled this easy-to-digest restaurant infographic about what technology means to a restaurateur, and especially what online ordering means to a restaurant. We’ve culled through the research and selected the numbers that illustrate why online ordering is one of the most significant breakthroughs in the restaurant industry since the implementation of drive-thru windows.

Why, of all the technologies available, is online ordering the most important for restaurants?

Online ordering takes an already growing segment of a restaurant’s business and allows it to grow even more.  According to a recent survey by Technomic, takeout orders are the fastest-growing slice of the pie for casual dining and other full-service restaurants. Over the past three years, takeout sales at full-service restaurants have grown an average of 8% per year, about twice the rate of overall sales growth for restaurants in that category. Factor in, as reported in this infographic, that when a takeout order is placed online, there is a 95% rate of return for that customer (either online or in-person).

The same Technomic study asked consumers what they would have done if they hadn't ordered takeout or delivery the last time they chose that option. An astounding 76% would not have eaten a restaurant meal at all, and another 11% would have purchased a meal at a fast-food restaurant. Not only are you grabbing a larger slice of the pie by growing your takeout business, but the overall pie is growing, too. A restaurant can serve more meals without expanding its physical footprint, and the wait staff does not take on a larger load, because those meals are eaten off premises.

This restaurant infographic also addresses two other elements of the takeout picture that are equally important. The first is the role of mobile devices, particularly smartphones. 50% of restaurant searches are done on a smartphone, and two-thirds of those looking for a restaurant intend to make a purchase that very same day.

Curiously enough, the Pew Research Center reports that, “Nearly all young adults (ages 18-29) make sure their phones are never too far away at night; fully 90% sleep with their cell phone on or right next to their bed.”

By the way, those young adults that sleep with their phones next to them are categorized as millennials, the demographic with the largest share of people who have used online ordering. 58% of millennials report that they use more restaurant technology than they did two years ago. Millennials also make up the largest group of smartphone owners – a whopping 90%.

The result is a perfect storm for online ordering. 1) It’s a growth market. 2) The lead edge of the demographic that most prefers it is coming into their prime years as consumers. 3) The technology that supports it is ubiquitous.  There are about 182 million smartphones in the U.S., according to one estimate.