Increasing Your Restaurant Delivery Profits

Written by Justine Nightingale
Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 05:00am CDT

Did you know that more than 60% of consumers in the United States say they order food for delivery once a week?

For most of your restaurant customers, delivery is an expected service. Today’s diners want convenience. They don’t want to worry about going somewhere to pick up food – they want you to bring it to them.

Yet, offering delivery can be expensive for restaurants. To help you capitalize on the delivery trend, let’s look at increasing your restaurant delivery profits.

Partner with a Delivery Site

One way you may increase your profits is to partner with a delivery site.

Doing this lets you find more customers near you and reach a larger audience. When your customers use delivery sites, they may be looking for a restaurant that serves a particular type of food. If you fall in that category, you’ll show up in the list.

Using delivery sites exposes you to more potential customers by increasing your visibility. (tweet this) While you will have to pay a commission rate to the delivery site, you may be able to increase your profits with the sheer volume of sales.

Offer Online Ordering

Another way to boost your restaurant delivery profits is by allowing your customers to order online for delivery.

This eliminates the extra step for your customers of having to call the restaurant and place the order. It also virtually eliminates the chance of a mistake on the part of your staff when taking down the order.

What’s more, your online ordering system can offer additional items to customers, helping increase the order total with the up-sell.

Online ordering is a terrific way to increase your delivery profits because it provides your customers with an easy, quick way to order food from your restaurant.

What’s more, more restaurant customers prefer ordering from your website online than using a delivery service platform.

Decrease Your Food Delivery Costs

The expenses involved with delivering food from your restaurant can eat into your restaurant delivery profits.

You can increase your overall profit margin by reducing some of your expenses. Here are a few areas to look at:

• Do your research and make sure you have enough delivery drivers on hand but not too many. Having too many around eats into your profits. But do be careful as your customers don’t want to have to wait hours for their food to be delivered.
• Train your staff well so you don’t incur high delivery driver churn rates. When you have to train new staff on an ongoing basis, that is a costly expense.
• Cut down on your delivery packaging. Make sure food can be delivered warm and in good shape but be careful as over-packaging is costly.
• Watch your third-party commission fees on delivery sites carefully.
• Know what to charge for delivery. You don’t want to charge too little for how far your drivers have to go.
• Find good insurance to keep your rates low. Search around to find the best deal.
• The same holds true with your mechanic. Find a reputable one you can trust that keeps costs low to maintain vehicles if you’re using your own.

Control Your Labor Costs

As with any part of doing business, labor costs are generally the most expensive.

And with most restaurant jobs, turnover is usually high. You have an opportunity here to keep labor costs low and increase your staff retention rate.

To do this, concentrate on your employees’ pay and training rates. If you hire the right people who are a good fit for your company culture, they will stick around longer.

In addition, you want to do what you can to motivate your drivers and improve employee morale. You’ll see more productivity, and again, they will stick with your restaurant longer.

Remember, happy employees pay it forward, and that means the end result is happy customers.

Provide Excellent Customer Service

Your diners may be eating your food at home, but the expect the same service, the same portion size, and the same quality of food as they would if they were dining in.

They want their food to be delivered when you say it will be delivered. They also want their food to arrive in as close to the same condition as if they were eating inside your restaurant.

Test out your packaging. Make sure if works for each item you may send home. For example, do your soup containers leak? You can always shrink wrap them to prevent spills. If your customers are ordering drinks, leave out the ice so it doesn’t melt and ruin the drink.

In addition, leave a place on your online ordering form to ask customers if they want utensils and napkins. Don’t assume they do. Why? You may irritate customers who are living earth friendly.

If you have items that absolutely don’t transport well from restaurant to customer’s home, your best bet is to leave them off your delivery menu.

Add Group Ordering Options

A unique way to increase your profits is by adding a group ordering option to your website. This lets you cater to larger groups.

They don’t have to pay multiple delivery fees, and you’ll get bigger orders while increasing your profits.

Institute a Rewards Program

A loyalty program is the best way to encourage repeat orders. (tweet this)

You can decide how you want to offer it, but one popular way is for customers to earn one point for every dollar they spend.

Then, once they reach a certain amount, they get a free item from your restaurant.

You can use the email addresses you gain from online orders to market your rewards program to current delivery customers. This encourages them to come back and order again.

Final Thoughts

If you want to increase your restaurant delivery profits, you basically need to sell more meals for your delivery service while decreasing your delivery expenses.

You can do that with the tips in this article.

Always communicate with your customers. Tell them when to expect their food and stay true to your word.

Your overall goal is excellent customer service. This starts with your team and extends to your out of house diners.

Provide high quality delivered food that arrives on time. Pay attention to your expenses. Train your staff exceptionally well.

You will then find you are increasing your restaurant delivery profits each month.

At Restaurant Engine, not only do we create great, responsive websites, but you can count on us to create a website that works for you. We help you edge above the competition by using mobile-friendly design with a terrific user experience. Ready to take the plunge and create a new website? Get your free website consultation today!

Images: Sigmund and Toa Heftiba on Unsplash