One of our customers recently achieved a big milestone in their Restaurant, $250,000 in online orders using the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system. Whilst it’s great to get that much in online ordering sales, highlighting the importance of online ordering as a revenue stream, the more important part of the story is that all of this was done without any commission or fees, and the Restaurant collected over 2,200 customer contact details.
Reddy Yangtesh, from Chalisa Indian Restaurant, one of the best Indian Restaurants in Canberra has been using FROLO for over 2 years now, and has steadily grown monthly orders use a 7 step process to grow orders and cut the costs of taking online orders.
7 Steps to build your online orders and cut your Restaurant Online Order costs.
- A focus on producing great Indian food. The first step is to make sure your product – the food, delivery, service and price is at or above what your customers are expecting. We’ve eaten at Chalisa, and the food is terrific. The Vindaloo is great!
- Reddy started using FROLO. This enabled him to take orders commission free and build up a database of his customers. This enabled him to get a lot more visibility about his customers and more importantly, to collect customer contact details.
- He offered an order direct and save campaign. By not paying 13.5% commission to a third party, he was able to pass on savings to his customers. Many customers don’t understand the costs of third parties, and are happy to support their local Restaurant.
- He migrated customers from third parties to ordering direct. Each time a customer ordered through a third party, the Kitchen team put a flyer in detailing the benefits of ordering direct. This was able to gradually win over nearly all of their customers to ordering direct. It also means that third parties are now used only for new customer discovery, with a much lower cost to acquire each new customer through that channel.
- He used a loyalty campaign, offering a free meal after a customer had purchased a certain number of times. Each time a customer orders, they get an email with the amount of credit that they have earn’t. It drives them to order and re-order again to collect their free meal. It is a powerful way to build customer habits and reward loyalty.
- He emailed his customers. Having an email database emailed enabled Chalisa to email their customers with offers and news. This is a powerful way to stay top of mind and drive revenue targets, particularly during the quieter mid week times.
- He retargeted people who had been to his website. With all of the money that Chalisa has saved, they have been able to create their own marketing budget from savings, giving them the ability to find new customers and to turn them into repeat customers.
- Cross promote your dining in experience. Your online ordering customer list is the perfect place to cross promote your in house dining experience. A great way to run successful events like wine tastings or to launch your new seasonal menu.
Chalisa has saved over $33,750 in third party online ordering fees, which is a huge saving for a single location restaurant. It gives Chalisa the ability to invest more in the restaurant through marketing, have better staffing levels so that the owners can work less hours, or to have a payrise, or a combinations of all three.
Follow these simple 7 steps and you are well on your way to cutting your Restaurant Online Ordering costs.
If you’re looking to cut the cost of online ordering, sign up today and trial FROLO.
Support for docket printers, mobile orders manager, inbuilt loyalty system and advanced reporting. No bad for a free restaurant online ordering system!