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Menupricing isnt just about covering costsits about finding that sweet spot where profitability, customer perception, and operational reality meet. Set prices too low, and youre leaving money on the table. Fast-casual spots usually dont have that luxury, so pricing needs to be tighter and more dialled in.
Onlineordering has transformed the restaurant industry, turning what was once a convenience into an absolute necessity. In 2025, the US online food delivery market is expected to reach $424.9 Customers expect to browse menus, place orders, and pay for their meals with just a few taps of their phones.
While working hard to bring customers back into the restaurant is very important for success, it has become more important to figure out the third-party equation in terms of pricing, commissions and fees, and value – which is ultimately the difference between success and failure. These core elements never go out of style.
2024 was a year of experimentation with AI, with restaurants testing it on customer-facing interactions, like AI drive-thru ordering, with varying degrees of success. The 700+-store chain had a challenge with the amount of time it took to schedule an interview for a new applicant once the candidate had submitted their application online.
By combining proactive planning, strategic menu adjustments, operational efficiency, and strong vendor relationships, businesses can effectively manage these challenges while prioritizing customer satisfaction and food safety. What are the best practices for dealing with food costs for recipes when necessary items are fluctuating in price?
Many restaurant operators have misconceptions about average order volume (AOV) and how it works, making statements like: I need more customers to make more money. For example, lets say you have 50 orders in a day that total $2,000 in revenueall you need to do is divide the total revenue by how many orders you have for the day.
Keeping menus updated across various onlineordering systems and third-party delivery apps can feel like a never-ending game of catch-up. Manually updating menus across multiple onlineordering channels is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to mistakes. What is Menu Management Software?
Mobile orders were expected to drive $38 billion in restaurant revenue in 2020. Although mobile ordering isn’t the new kid on the block, it has certainly become the most popular because it’s one of the safest – and easiest – ways to order and pay for food.
Steady OnlineOrdering Brings Food Waste, Donations to the Forefront of Priorities Ordering food online increases restaurant sales, but it also can potentially increase wasted food if proactive measures aren’t taken – for both the business and consumers at home. Now, the process is fully digitized.
Understanding your target market is the foundation of making smart decisions for your menu, pricing, and overall guest experience. Without a well-defined target market, restaurants risk wasting resources on strategies that dont connect and menu offerings that dont selltrying to appeal to everyone, but standing out to no one.
If youre one of the thousands of restaurants that added online food delivery in recent years, you might be wondering: is it actually helping my business grow? These metrics give you a clear picture of your delivery performancefrom order volume and customer retention to delivery speed and profitability.
If you weren’t thinking that much about onlineordering before, you definitely are now. But when it’s so dead simple to get listed on third-party delivery marketplaces and take orders, why do all the other work to create your own system when you are a time-strapped restaurateur? It will still cost you to run your own delivery.
If you’ve taken a look at Grubhub’s app lately, you may have noticed an immense amount of new restaurants available for onlineordering. While customers might initially be delighted by the array of choices they have, the prices will leave them shocked and disappointed.
Every onlineorder, email sign up, and reward program interaction generates valuable insightsbut if that data just sits there, youre missing a major opportunity. Think about it: What if you could automatically send a special offer to a customer who hasnt ordered in a while? Restaurants collect a ton of customer data.
However, 30 percent of high-income consumers are dining at TSRs more frequently than before, signaling room for premium offerings at the right price. Value Isn’t Just About Price—It’s About Experience Price sensitivity may be at an all-time high, but focusing solely on discounts risks missing the bigger picture.
The advent of on-demand food delivery can be traced back to the early 2000s when the use of GrubHub, Seamless and numerous other online and mobile food-ordering systems became commonplace among college students and young professionals throughout the United States. So, is menu scraping legal? So, is menu scraping legal?
.” With months of experience under their belt, many restaurants have established their own takeout ordering system. Most modern POS services make it easy to set up an onlineordering form that integrates with the rest of your operations. But how do you let customers know to bypass the delivery apps and order direct?
Many restaurants shifted to onlineordering, curbside pickup and delivery during the pandemic to stay afloat, and they adopted new safety protocols for guests onsite. Even before the pandemic, it was a best practice to sanitize menus because they are so frequently handled. Putting Customer and Crew Safety First.
Two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennials admit to spending more time online than they’d like, driving a desire for balance between online and in-person connections. Now is the time for restaurant brands to ask: Are we merging human insight with technology to craft meaningful customer journeys?
The tool from the East Coast vegan chain — a digital take on a split-flap mechanical display that appears on its website and in the chain’s ordering app — estimates the amounts of water, land, CO2, and oil saved by eating vegan burgers. The “ PLNT Impact Tracker ” on PLNT Burger’s website wants you to think about what you’re eating.
Customers on average will order more menu items, resulting in a larger bill for the restaurant and a larger tip for the employee. One major area of improvement we noticed when it came to management: menu costing research. Luckily for restaurant managers, several tech solutions exist to cure this headache.
In this guide, youll learn how to use ChowNow tools along with a handful of other effective strategies to increase order volume, boost your current customer traffic, and grow your overall sales. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to stay top-of-mind with customers and remind them its time to order again from your restaurant.
Is onlineordering inefficient? Experiencing over-ordering or last-minute shortages? Are you aiming to speed up service, cut labor costs, or increase online sales? A higher-priced system that saves time and reduces errors might be more valuable than a cheaper, less effective alternative. Are labor costs too high?
These are tools that can help you streamline operations, easily schedule staff, and make sure you never run out of ingredients for your best-selling menu items. It allows AI to understand and respond to human language, which is how virtual assistants can answer customer questions or take onlineorders.
Youre delivering a great dining experience, yet foot traffic remains inconsistent, online engagement is low, and new customers arent coming in as often as youd like. Optimize Your Restaurants Online Presence Your restaurants online presence is often the first touch point for potential guests, so make it count.
If you want to increase order volume for your restaurant, focusing on online takeout and delivery is key. But growing onlineorder volume isnt always easy. Many restaurants struggle with high third-party app fees, low website traffic, and clunky ordering experiences that drive customers away.
77% of diners look at a restaurants website before going out to eat or ordering takeout or delivery. If you dont have a website, that means over three-quarters of the people near your restaurantyour potential customerswill never come in or place an order because they have no way to find you when theyre looking for a place to eat.
Today, customers rely on Google searches, online reviews, and social media to decide where to eat. People want convenience, transparency, and a connection to the brands they support, and that starts with how you market your restaurant online. A strong online presence means more visibility, more orders, and, ultimately, more revenue.
The concept goes far beyond a simple onlinemenu or QR code. Every dine-in experience starts with a menu, so having yours available online is the first step to going contactless. However, restaurants have discovered that not all onlinemenus are made the same. So what makes a good contactless menu?
Diners want the convenience of ordering, booking, and engaging with their favorite restaurants straight from their phones. Beyond mobile ordering, restaurant apps support operations in ways that were never available before. Onlineordering and delivery apps. Here is an example of a restaurants branded app.
Every restaurant faces operational challengeseven with a great menu and a talented team, bottlenecks can slow service, frustrate customers, and cut into profits. A single missteplike a delayed order or a system glitchcan throw off an entire shift. Staff scramble, customers grow impatient, and suddenly, a busy night turns into chaos.
Here are some key takeaways: Each generation discovers and researches restaurants differently, with younger generations relying more on online review platforms and social media. Theres also a visual element here, with diners eating with their eyes first and being reeled into new restaurants by food imagery and what I ordered videos.
It just goes to show how important drink pricing and cost management are to maximizing profits. Bar profit margin and pour cost Some high-performing bars can reach higher margins by optimizing their costs and pricing strategies. Keep in mind that certain drinks can be priced higher due to their popularity or unique ingredients.
Restaurant operations management is the art and science of keeping a restaurant running smoothly, creating order in a naturally chaotic environment. Successful restaurant operators use data-driven ordering, reliable supplier relationships, and waste-reduction strategies to keep inventory lean without sacrificing quality.
Some great examples for restaurants are: How often the customer orders. What the customer orders. Which of your locations the customer orders from most. What the customer orders. How the customer prefers to order (for delivery, for pick-up or to dine-in). How many people does the customer orders for at a time.
Online food delivery thrives as phones become one-stop shops for ordering and tracking meals. This convenience has made the online food delivery market massive, with global revenues of over $1 trillion in 2023 alone. They must choose whether to use third-party onlineordering platforms or handle delivery in-house.
While these platforms do bring in orders, they also come with the price of high commission fees, loss of customer data, and a weaker connection between you and your guests. Its up to you to educate them on the impact and show them why ordering direct makes a difference. can be an eye-opener for customers.
Menu engineering: while the name might suggest you need to go to college at MIT to be good at it, is actually a common and essential task that all restaurateurs should regularly undertake. Menu engineering can be simplified as the steps taken to increase the profitability of a restaurant menu. MenuPricing and 2.
According to a Gallup poll, guests only look at your menu for 109 seconds before ordering. Menu engineering uses real data to show you which items are the most profitable and should be your main focus. See how your menu items are performing with our free menu engineering worksheet. What is menu engineering?
They’re demanding increased levels of immediacy, having grown accustomed to ordering and paying — even ordering ahead — with a few taps of a smartphone. Meanwhile, diners can scan a QR code to easily view and order from your menu, as well as alter and route items to the correct kitchen location in real time.
In fact, as digital platforms have become more prominent during the pandemic for ordering takeout and delivery, restaurants can use the time their customers spend on their smart phones to their advantage. The Customer Online Journey Needs to be at the Forefront.
From managing an off-premise presence with onlineordering platforms to navigating the labor shortage and keeping costs down, it’s clear from the emerging trends we are seeing that technology is at the heart of helping FSRs not only survive but make gains during these extremely challenging times.”
Those who don’t are effectively lowering their prices. Understand if your prices are keeping pace with inflation and maintain a markup that matches the costs associated with paying suppliers and staff. How is inflation affecting food prices? Business owners should routinely track increased costs and adapt.
The restaurant needs cohesion, from signage to menu design to uniforms. Social media, online reviews, and delivery platforms make digital branding just as important as physical branding. We created a simple menu focused on a brand experience that merged nostalgia with modern efficiency. Having a digital presence is critical.
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