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When your cravings pangs you hard, you will order a burger or maybe a pizza?
That’s where we can surely say that not all knights hold armor, some ring your doorbell with some piping hot yummylicious food.
Whatever it may be food delivery apps are always a savior. This growing demand for instant and easy food delivery is a win-win situation for every food and beverage business. With its 24/7 seamless service, the way people used to eat is changed a lot.
Studies show that there are 5 specific features that make the food delivery apps a must factor in day to day life.
Decision Convenience: when we have too many choices we will always select the best and finest from them. The same logic is applicable in the food delivery system also. With a wide collection of delicious food they offer, helps the customers to make a better decision. Food delivery apps like Just Eat and UberEats even have a wide array of restaurant choices also. According to the ratings and reviews customers can choose the best from it.
Access Convenience: Another important benefit offer by food delivery apps is the easy access they provide through their platforms. Through its user-friendly interface and easy navigation, it bestows an effortless experience to the user. Along with the minimal time delivery policy also make people more attracted towards food delivery apps.
Transaction Convenience: Multiple payment options make food delivery apps an all favourite among customers. Through different gateway options, your customer can make a contactless purchase from anywhere they want. After each payment, an instant invoice will be sent to their email ID to guarantee a secure purchase.
Benefits Convenience: The promotion campaigns and loyalty programs offered by delivering app provide discounts and other benefits to its customers. People always love discounts, so whenever a promo code is available on a favourite food there is a high chance to purchase it.
Post-Benefits Convenience: After every food delivery, the data regarding the purchase, payment, and delivery address get stored in the database and used for repetitive orders. By knowing your customers’ preferences you can easily run loyalty campaigns.
Now, it has also well established in outlets where so many restaurants are getting set. Ever wondered what is the workflow of online food delivery apps?
The on-demand food business has distorted the conventional marketing methods by replacing them with a fully equipped approach including the main three basic steps in providing a better meal experience, namely, ordering, cooking, and delivery.
Ordering: When a customer reaches your online food ordering platform, he/she can go through the comprehensive array of food options along with the description, rating, and price range are given in the menu. Once the order is placed, the alerts will be received by the service provider through the app, website, or phones. Then the order details got directly forwarded into the kitchen display. Customers can track the live status of their orders.
Cooking: This is the second stage at which food is prepared according to the order displayed on the kitchen display. In some cases, food may be pre-cooked or may be cooked after the order for placed. In both cases, the delivery time depends mainly on this cooking time. Some restaurants even charge extra for completely avoiding pre-cooked meals and serving freshly cooked food without losing its nutritional value.
Delivering: Delivery is the first part where your customer will like or dislike the service. If the delivery takes more time than expected then a majority of people will show a reluctance to give a 5- star rating. As a solution, delivery personnel can make use of route planning apps to utilize fast from to driving direction. Depends on the convenience of the delivery person he/she can choose any mode of transportation. Before the food is dispatched the temperature check if the delivery person is a must factor that restaurants mandatorily do because of the global pandemic and the same is shared with the customer to ensure safe and contactless delivery.
The workflow in the online food ordering system
The workflow can be grouped into three categories, namely, order only model, the order and delivery model, and the fully integrated model.
Let’s discuss the features and specifications of each one.
The order only model
The order the only model is the very first method implemented and practiced by online food ordering system in London, Liverpool, and Edinburgh. The order only model practiced by restaurants and other food businesses are only focused on takeaways. They no longer rent physical space for dining, a fully equipped kitchen is more than enough. They can easily market their food directly through the customers via online food apps even without investing any money in the dining area and on staff. Usually, the customers place their orders at these kinds of outlets through their websites or online apps.
The restaurants received the order through fax or emails. The order confirmation is given through various methods. such as making an automated call from a telephone system on the website. Sometimes they take orders with the help of a restaurant POS system and directly forward the order to the kitchen display. Here the delivery is done by the delivery staff in the restaurant.
One of the main limitations of such models is that they somehow fail to offer various cuisines and price points. They usually offer low-end takeaway foods like pizza and burgers. Since it doesn’t have any methods of streamlining, the speed and delivery quality is difficult to optimise. Since they don’t only perform the ordering part, they charge a low fee of around 10-15%.
The order and delivery model
The order and delivery model is another method used to market food to customers but here the only two processes are involved namely, ordering and delivering. Deliveroo and Doordash are two widely renowned online food delivery players that come under this category. To be successful in this type of restaurant model you need more resources than the order only model. Most of the outlets that don’t have any delivery options need to depend on this type of delivery platform.
A website or app with a detailed restaurant menu is used to take orders. Sometimes restaurants need to lightly increase the prices of food in order to give the commission fee to these platforms. When an order is placed, a delivery person is sent to the location. The real-time tracking of the delivery person is obtained when he logged into their courier phone app. The delivery guy can decide whether he wants to take the order or not, if he doesn’t pick the order then it will automatically give to another person.
The biggest challenge in this type of food delivery model is to deliver the food according to the time. Here the delivery time matters the most. Customers get easily irritated when the food doesn’t deliver on time. Streamlining the different resources under one phase is another difficulty in this food delivery model. The strongest advantage of the order and delivery model is its wide network of restaurants and delivery persons. It will be really difficult to compete with this type of model for start-ups and other models. Since they have a comprehensive array of restaurants they charged a higher commission rate of 25-30%.
The fully integrated model
The fully integrated model is totally different from the above two models. Here the meal delivery start-ups develop their own app and offer a finite array of food from which customers can order according to their wish. Here the three processes, ordering, cooking, and delivering are managed by the owner and their team. This on-demand method has a kitchen that produces food according to a particular area and the menu usually changed daily.
They undertake two types of delivery such as scheduled delivery and Instant delivery.
The kitchen receives the order for a particular time in a day and schedules the order accordingly. When the kitchen opens for business, people got instant alerts and place orders. Customers can also choose the delivery door. For instance, Just Eats. Once the food is out from the kitchen it is placed in the truck to serve the customers. It needs to be planned very carefully to avoid a shortage of food or an excessive amount of food once it is placed on the truck.
But since it encourages people to pre-order, they can assume an approximate quantity of food that is needed. They schedule each and everything to reduce food wastage and money loss.
In instant delivery, The kitchen only opens when the meals are ready to serve. Since meals are prepared already it leads to instant delivery. The only problem is the food should be hot and need to deliver quickly to enhance the customer experience. They usually don’t use any kind of restaurant POS software.
The delivery is done through couriers by the company. Each delivery person will be assigned with a set of packed meals and need to deliver to the accurate address given by the admin.
The main advantage of a fully integrated model is that you don’t need to depend on any third-party service provider. The biggest challenge in this model is the operational costs.
