How to Set Up a Restaurant Online Ordering System
Even during COVID restrictions – people need to eat. People like to eat good food – often that they haven’t had to cook themselves. This is why having a restaurant online order system can give your restaurant, bar, pub, hotel or cafe the extra capacity to deliver food during these unsettled times.
With COVID keeping everyone inside, offering a bit of an extra treat or an upsell when ordering food will help you increase your profits per order and keep your customers happy!
“Do you want fries with that?”
McDonalds upsell!
How restaurants & pubs can operate currently
Currently delivery or takeaway is the only way for many restaurants & pubs to keep serving their loyal customers. If you’re looking to maintain or even top up your business’ income, or are just preparing for the 12th of April when pubs can serve outside. Gr8eat will help you get your restaurant online order system sorted in time to open & trade
There are three main ways you can set up a restaurant online order system:
- Use your own website or Social Media, using Gr8eat or WordPress to process orders.
- Use a third party online ordering app, such as Just Eats.
- Use a third party online ordering app combined with a POS system
Lets look at the options for taking your restaurant online orders, quickly & easily.
Use Your Own Website to take your restaurant online orders
What is it? Your very own restaurant website to provide menus and accept orders directly from customers.
How does it work? You build a website and then manage customer orders as they come through your website.
What do you need? A connection to the internet, a website building platform, and a team to deal with orders as they come through.
How do you set it up? Build your own restaurant website using a website builder or WordPress, set up deliveries and payments, then launch your site.
How much does it cost? You can build your own for free, and some website builders have plans as low as £7 per month! You need/are building an e-commerce website so you are
Accepting online orders through your own website using Gr8eat means
- customers order straight from you
- meaning you keep the process totally in-house
- You’re in control
- you get all the profits
- you keep direct contact with your customers
If you have used a website builder like Wix, Square Space, Go Daddy or 123-reg to build your restaurant website it can be hard to create a usable online experience without a lot of work.
If you have paid for a website that has been built on any of these platforms you will also be limited by the functionality available.
Gr8eat will work with any website or social media platform, all you need to do is link to your 4a.Gr8eat site and your customer can place their order!
Book a Gr8eat demo!
Do You Need a website? No! you can start using Gr8eat immediately, each platform is hosted on our servers. You don’t have to do any search engine optimisation or setup any analytics.
Do you want a new website or to update your existing site? Get started here
Key Benefits – Using Your Own Website for your restaurant online ordering.
- Allows you to connect easily with existing customers
- Gives you 100% of the profits
- You can control stock & pricing in realtime
- You have customer data & can remarketing to your existing customers with additional offers.
- You can adapte quickly to new regulations
- Improved COVID 19 track & trace to protect your business
- Your social media can help drive visitors with discount codes & offers
- Customers do not need to download an app, any web browser will work
Key Negatives – Using Your Own Website for your restaurant online orders.
- You have to arrange your own takeaway delieveries
- Search Engine Optimisation is your responsibility
- Hosting & Backups are your responsibility
Use a Third Party Ordering App (can’t be used for Table Service?)
What is it? You use a third party online ordering app, such as GrubHub or Uber Eats.
How does it work? A customer places an order, the app forwards the order to you, then their delivery service takes the food to the customer.
What do you need? Information about your restaurant for the sign-up form, such as your location, cuisine type, and estimated number of orders.
How do you set it up? Go to your chosen app and fill out your restaurant’s details to get started!
How much does it cost? Depending on the app, you may have to invest in equipment & set up fees, but the app takes a large cut of each transaction.
You can’t use this method for table service orders, only viable really for delivery, unless you deliver for your self? (that would be a bad idea!)
Here’s how it generally works once you’re partnered with a third-party delivery app:
- Customer orders will go through the app.
- The order is sent to you – you need to accept the order on the app’s device (normally a tablet) – so you can prepare the food. You can use any device with Gr8eat!
- You’ll also need to manually enter the order into your own POS, (upgrade your Gr8eat package for POS integration)
- Then, one of the app’s drivers will take the food to the customer.
Key Benefits – Using Third Party ordering app
- Gets your food in front of loads of customers
- Deliveries are handled for you – more convenient than handling everything yourself
- If you only opperate a takeaway this is an easy option!
Key Negatives – Using Third Party ordering app
- Your restaurant is listed wtih all others, giving youu potential customer the option of choosing somewhere else!
- Delivery staff are not your employees
- You can’t train delivery staff or choose who delivers your food
- Charges are a percentage of order value, taken directly from each order!
- Your customers know you are paying a percentatge of their order directly to the app
- The app has your customer details!
- Re-marketing directly to your cusotmers is expensive
- Using them for table service orders would be exceptionally expensive, each transaction would have a fee!
Use a 3rd Party Online Ordering App With an EPOS System (you still have to get your customers to download your app!)
What is it? You use a 3rd party ordering app (or your own), along with a POS system.
How does it work? The customer orders; the app then sends the order to you, which is entered automatically into your POS without a member of staff having to manually transfer the order.
What do you need? An account with a 3rd party or your own app, and one with a POS integration app.
How do you set it up? Simply go to your chosen integration app and enter your details to get in touch and get started.
How much does it cost? It depends – on the complexity of the system
Key Positives – 3rd Party Online Ordering App With an EPOS System
- Nearly everything is automated
- Great for dealing with large numbers of orders
- Good for intergrating other delivery options
Key Negatives – 3rd Party Online Ordering App With an EPOS System
- Very expensive
- High risk of ongoing development costs
- Potential for conflicts using data to market to customers
