Today, there are many ways to grow your business in the restaurant and catering industry. Competition is fierce with delivery platforms aligned to changing market needs. Consumers prefer to order online and have their order delivered, rather than going to the store. This situation is not about to change; on the contrary, this consumption pattern is accentuated by the Covid-19 crisis. So that restaurateurs can keep up with the competition and update their operating methods, they can deploy the solution offered by DOOD: a customizable e-commerce site with marketing tools for restaurants and catering businesses.
What is digitization?
Digitalization is more than just a matter of course these days, as consumers increasingly opt for online shopping. While the foodservice sector was less involved in this market transformation in the early days, this is no longer the case. Consumers order online and have their order delivered to their home or office at any time. This makes life easier for them, saving time by avoiding the need to travel.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, home meal delivery platforms have multiplied with great success. After reopening, restaurants are struggling to win back customers in the face of changing consumer lifestyles. Fortunately, there’s a way to keep a significant share of the market.
DOOD’s solution is designed primarily for food retail entrepreneurs. You can deploy your own white-label e-commerce site in 24 hours. It’s an all-in-one solution with all the marketing tools you need to optimize your site and increase your sales.
On the one hand, you can set up numerous parameters to analyze user behavior and adjust your site’s UX/UI design accordingly. On the other hand, you can collect data from Internet users, both visitors and customers, to create customer data that you can use for your marketing campaigns.
What impact will digitalization have on the foodservice industry?
Digitalization enables restaurants to adapt their marketing strategies to customers’ consumption habits. These consumer habits have gradually changed with the Internet. The Covid-19 pandemic has only reinforced this consumption pattern. If retailers and restaurants want to attract and retain more customers, they need to align themselves with their buying patterns.
Digitalization brings many advantages to restaurants:
- Keep loyal customers and attract new ones
- Increase restaurant traffic
- Get free customer data,
- Increase sales.
All this, while offering your customers the possibility of ordering and paying online, and having their order delivered to the address of their choice. Several solutions can be deployed for this purpose:
A delivery service: delivery platforms charge high commissions. Fortunately, you can opt for the delivery services offered by DOOD at a price that defies all competition, as no commission is charged.
Click and collect: you give your customers the opportunity to order their dishes online, and then collect them from the store at a time of their choosing.
The QR code: you can continue to welcome customers to your restaurant while minimizing queues and sources of contact. They can consult the digital menu and place orders via their smartphone or tablet using the QR code provided on the table, at the entrance or at the counter.
Successful digitalization enables restaurants to increase sales in two different ways. On the one hand, you’re responding to today’s consumer trends by boosting online ordering. On the other hand, you can improve your restaurant’s local SEO and increase footfall.
Thanks to a well-managed Google My Business listing, your restaurant has the chance to appear on the first pages of searches carried out by Internet users looking for a nearby restaurant. Your restaurant will appear in local searches and customer review searches, a practice that has become commonplace among consumers.
How do you digitize your restaurant?
To digitalize your restaurant, you need to create an e-commerce site. You can choose between using a service provider such as a web agency or freelance developer, or creating your own site. This second solution is both efficient and economical. With a solution like DOOD, you can set up your own site.
You have access to a site that you can customize to your brand’s image and graphic charter. You manage your own e-commerce site and naturally become the owner of your customer date. This is a colossal resource in the world of e-commerce for targeting your push or email marketing campaigns.
You also have access to a wide range of marketing tools to help you position your site in the top SERP results, on Google Maps and in customer reviews. DOOD provides you with numerous marketing levers to help you design the right offer and propose it to targeted customers.
We’ll help you study the different issues in the market: defining your target customers, identifying their problems and providing the right solution at the right time to make a sale happen.
Having an e-commerce site also enables you to efficiently manage order flow, payments, deliveries, available stock and the updating of your offers. As you take care of the creation of your website and the management of your marketing campaigns from A to Z, you optimize the costs of your digitalization. You can then maintain a good margin in the prices you offer.
As for payment methods, several features are available. You can set up multiple payment methods, apply differentiated VAT or integrate cash register software to automate your accounting. All this from a single, comprehensive, high-performance platform.