What Restaurants Considering Third-Party Delivery Need to Consider

I recently came across a post on the website of a business loan provider. They must be in the food space because their post was about increasing restaurant delivery sales. The top two suggestions the firm offered, in this order, were: Online partnerships with delivery services and ensuring quality. But based on the results of a recent Technomic study, I would have to reverse those in order of importance. Quality earns repeat customers and new customers. Quality is how you grow your business. Quality improves with better communication, and the restaurant is ultimately responsible for quality, even if you’re using a third-party delivery service. Third-party delivery will make mistakes, but ultimately your restaurant is still on the hook.  This isn’t just my opinion—your customers are thinking it. Technomic’s study, “On Demand Delivery: Disrupting the Future of Foodservice,” confirms that even if restaurants have a formal agreement with third-party ordering portals and delivery services, the majority of consumers (76%) hold the restaurant at least partially responsible for any errors. “This puts operators’ brand reputation at risk each time a customer orders delivery through these services,” said Melissa Wilson, a principal at Technomic. “Even if delivery is not a current strategic initiative, operators should educate themselves about and understand the dynamics of the third-party delivery market so they can put guardrails in place to maintain quality and brand reputation.” Other than demanding the best service from your third-party delivery service, what can a restaurant do to minimize risk? Maybe it’s a matter of moving faster in food preparation. Or maybe it’s using better packaging that improves presentation. Maybe we need to find out where to start! So here’s a better question: When a delivery problem is reported, and you know it’s something the restaurant could have done differently, do you have a way of addressing it at the restaurant level? For instance, if the wrong meal arrives or a meal is prepared incorrectly, does the restaurant have the ability to respond quickly?  Delivering a replacement meal or missing item might depend on the contract you have with a third-party delivery service. But maybe you should set a standard policy to email the person who files a complaint a coupon for a free appetizer or a percentage off their next bill. The restaurant that doesn’t respond loses customers. And although mistakes happen, that doesn’t mean restaurants should write off third-party delivery services. The fact remains that third-party services are generating additional business for casual dining restaurants and other concepts that do not offer delivery. More than a third of third-party users (34%) reported ordering from casual dining restaurants and 14% had ordered from family-style restaurants that did not offer delivery on their own. Here are more important insights from the Technomic study:

Chains on top

Chain restaurants are almost twice as likely as independents to receive delivery orders. Two-thirds of delivery orders either placed with a restaurant (69%) or via third-party service (66%) were from a chain restaurant.

Burger-happy

One in five third-party service users ordered a burger. Pizza is still king in restaurant delivery, but the fact that 20% of restaurants are comfortable ordering items that restaurants have previously feared delivering themselves bodes well for the industry. It’s a sign that users are taking advantage of the wider variety of options available.

These findings are further evidence that restaurants have to think more critically about quality and how it translates to delivery of various menu items. Moreover, chain restaurants have an opportunity to create a set of best practices that can be shared across their network.

Zenput is a mobile solution that can help share those best practices and track compliance. It also provides a means of communicating real-time insights at the store-level. To learn more about how Zenput helps improve restaurant operations, click here.