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As more and more restaurants start taking orders on their own website through FROLO in an effort to decrease the commissions that companies like Menulog, JustEat and Grubhub are charging, they have been looking for increasing efficiencies in the free online ordering system.  Our main effort has been integration into the Free Restaurant CRM system that we are building to finish of our all-in-one marketing solution for restaurants, but we haven’t forgotten what goes on in the kitchen.

To meet the demands of high volume restaurants, we have created a cloud printing functionality for restaurants so that a docket can go to the kitchen and the customer receipt can also be printed.

What are the requirements for the online ordering restaurant printer?

The only requirement for the online ordering restaurant printer is that you have an internet connection in the restaurant for the Epson restaurant printer to connect into and somewhere to plug it in to.  Usually it is close to the kitchen so that Chef can see when a new order has come in, or at the till.  Either way, every time you get a new order placed, the docket will print out.  You can still manage your orders by viewing incoming emails or through your FROLO Marketing Central login.

Where can I buy the FROLO Restaurant Printer?

We aren’t a hardware company, we are focused on creating software solutions for every restaurant, so we partnered with www.extremenetworks.com.au to provide fulfillment and shipping of the Epson Restaurant Printer in Australia.  As a bonus we also negotiated free phone support for the installation of the printer.

Can I use my own Restaurant Printer?

Maybe.  If you have an existing Epson TM-82-i, then definitely.  Contact the M4R support team and we will send out our set up guide for the FROLO Restaurant Printer.  We haven’t tested other Epson printers, but our team is happy to work with you to see if it will work with them as well.

How can I get the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system?

It’s easy.  Sign up for FROLO and our team will contact you and help organise menus and putting it on your website.

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This is really exciting news for Restaurants.  Cash flow is a huge problem for Restaurants and decreasing the amount of time that it takes to be paid for meals delivered is a big part in making cash flow better.

Companies like Just Eat (which owns Menulog and Eat Now) actually state in their Financial Reports that one of the strengths of their business model is that they are able to fund their businesses by holding onto Restaurant Payments for as long as 21 days.  This is free funding for them, but it places huge stress on the Restaurants’ cash flow.

Our approach is different.  We never see the money for the order.  It goes from the customer to the Restaurant, through Stripe.  The less middlemen the better, the payment is quick and the fees are low.  Stripe charges a very low rate on credit card processing.

How does 2 day Online Ordering payments improve restaurant cash flow?

Say you are using Just Eat for your online orders and they pay fortnightly in arrears, which means that on average they will pay out in 21 days.  The Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system now pays in 2 days.  If you average sales are $100 a night, transferring over to FROLO would bring in an extra $1900 of cashflow into your business.  How much of a difference would another $1900 of cash flow for your Restaurant make?  It makes it easier to make payments to staff and suppliers and may mean you can pay yourself a little extra.  It is definately better in your pocket than someone elses.

Sign up today for the FROLO and start seeing the benefits of improve restaurant cash flow today!

The post Improving Restaurant Cash flow – FROLO introduces 2 day payments for Restaurant Take Out orders appeared first on Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering.

Those days will soon be over. It is the break between Christmas and New Years and most Restaurants are super busy at the moment and so are we on our FROLO for Take Outs and Restaurants.

Here is the last fortnights work on FROLO.

Fish and Chip shops will be able to move into the 21st with an online ordering system designed with the needs of Fish and Chip shops in mind.

We have been working with our Beta Testers and are making the following improvements:
A simplification of the way you can enter and edit your menus;
Tweaking of the customer side of the ordering process;
An easier view to see your current orders; and
Various changes based on all of the great feedback from our Beta Testers.

One of the team has come up with an amazing idea to help you increase the average order value for your Restaurant – we are busy putting the finishing touches on the design of this and arguing with the dev team over how long it will take to put in . Hopefully it will be included in the Beta before we go live. We don’t want to say too much, but lets just say we are harnessing one of the most powerful statements in Restaurant sales ever for your Restaurant.

And the big surprise is the PAYMENT SYSTEM!

Hooray – we are looking at using Stripe to manage payments for you. This means a 4 day payment system for credit cards on a rolling basis, straight into your account. We won’t take the payment on your behalf. The money goes from your customer to the Credit Card payments company to you. One less middleman means less charges for you. We won’t be clipping the ticket on the way through, you will just have the normal credit card fees to pay and you will get payment on a rolling 4 day basis. This is much fairer and should free up some cash flow for you .

Sign up for the FROLO waiting list if you want to cut the cost of taking orders online.

If you want to have a say in the Next Generation of online ordering, join our Beta testers and get early access and help design the best online order system for Restaurants.

Happy New Year. 2015 is going to be Awesome!

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Menulog appears to be the dominant player, with most of our customers saying that they get the most orders from Menulog. Their website says they have 4,200 restaurants in their network. Starting in 2006, they have grown to become a very profitable business. Headed up by Dan Katz, Menulog has steadily grown over the last 8 years and according to our customers, sends through by far the most orders per week of the 3 players in the market.

Eatnow is the second biggest player and run by Gabby Leibovich, a really smart operator who is also behind Catch of the Day and Scoopon and the recently back from the dead Yumtable. Eatnow is very aggressive in the marketplace, trying to make up ground on Menulog. Eatnow does have a couple of interesting tactics. It evidently provides restaurants with “free” websites, but charges the restaurant commissions that can range as high as 12%. The standard Eatnow template website is missing one critical element, the phone number. This means that people wanting to phone in an order may order at another restaurant and also it makes the restaurant appear to be take out only, there is no option to dine in.

Delivery Hero is the huge Gorilla in the room from the global perspective, having raised $656,000,000 of 9 rounds of investment, with the last investment being $350,000,000 in September 2014. Headquartered in Berlin, they have over 73,000 restaurants that they work with, but have struggled for traction in Australia. They operate in 21 countries. Founded in 2011, they have grown spectacularly but were late entrants into the Australian market and have struggled to win market share away from Menulog and the aggressive Eat Now.

One of the ways that it has grown is through it’s affiliate program, which provides marketers with a 4% commission on every sale that they generate for customers over a 60 day period. These costs are obviously borne by the Restaurant themselves and go in some way towards the high costs that many Restaurant owners complain of, although the high commissions are an issue with Menulog and Eat Now as well.

All 3 companies are really business to consumer businesses, finding people wanting food and matching them with restaurants. They provide the restaurant with a customer and clip the ticket on the way through. They view the customer as theirs (in some cases quite rightly, but often, the customer is really looking to order online from a restaurant they already know) and take the customer details and send out coupon offers of other restaurants to that customer.

Since these companies started, the cost of software development has fallen dramatically and cloud based services make building an online business a lot cheaper. Marketing4Restaurants is leveraging this trend to be able to provide similar functionality to each and every restaurant that does take out ordering and want to move to taking those orders online.

The Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering System aims to do things differently. This is going to be a big opportunity for struggling small restaurants looking to improve profitability and not wanting to share their customer database. It is also a huge opportunity for those restaurants who have recognised that the costs of taking online orders has been too high for them to afford. These restaurants will now be able to move to online ordering and get all of the benefits associated with it, which include less time spent on the phones, less customers lost who can’t get through to place an order, less errors in taking orders and a database of customer contact details which grows every day.

Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering System is being offered free of charge to all restaurants and take outs wanting to take orders online. Set up is quick and simple and restaurants will be able to start taking orders in the same day that they sign up.
Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering System is currently in Beta testing and is scheduled for release in early 2015.

The post Menulog vs Eatnow vs Delivery Hero vs FROLO – the Free Restaurant Online Ordering System. A comparison of online ordering apps for Restaurants and Take Outs appeared first on Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering.

There are 3 main differences between our Free Restaurant Online Ordering System and the others.

1. We think this is bad for your restaurant because it is hard for you to show how your food and experience is different to your competitors.  Restaurant owners with poor food are able to compete with coupons and discounts to keep customers ordering, making it more difficult for great restaurants to survive.
2. They are building a list of customers to help them to drive orders. Delivery Hero, Eat Now and Menulog don’t care where a customer orders from, just that they make an order.  We are customers uses their widget on your website, the details are shared with the online ordering company, which means they can email out offers from other restaurants.  We don’t think this is fair at all.
3. We don’t charge you. Not per order, not per month.    Nada.  Free.  Free for you, free for your customers.

This is the way that online ordering was always meant to be [icon name=”smile-o” class=””]

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