In this guest blog post, Revel’s Chief Strategy Officer Chris Lybeer highlights the importance of native delivery offerings, and offers tips to simplify delivery management for restaurants. In case you missed his last blog post, Chris reflects on Revel’s attendance at the National Restaurant Association (NRA) show, one of the biggest stages in the foodservice industry.
Demand for Delivery is Still Strong
If you haven’t had the time or resources to launch a delivery service for your restaurant, I completely understand. But you’re missing out on major dollars if you’re passing on delivery! According to a National Restaurant Association report, 53 percent of adults say purchasing takeout or delivery food is essential to the way they live.
My family and I still really enjoy going out to dinner, but this data point holds up in my household. We appreciate a well-run off-premises experience, from placing the order online, to the status updates about our order along the way, to the food arriving (hopefully fresh and accurately!) at our home. The most successful restaurants today do just that; they offer a seamless, branded experience where the food arrives fresh, very similar to what you’d experience if you ordered the meal at their brick and mortar location.
Getting delivery right isn’t always easy, but operators that are willing to invest in the right technology for their operations are typically rewarded. Read on for my top three tips to help simplify delivery management for your business and further control your destiny.
1. Unlock Next-Level Delivery Management with Native Solutions
There are plenty of third-party delivery aggregators out there that many of us have used, especially during the peak of the pandemic when demand for food delivery was at an all time high. But restaurateurs continue to feel these third-parties burning holes in their pockets, as they often have to fork over 30% of their profits on every order.
That’s where native delivery management solutions can be game changers. Revel Delivery XT™—our fully-integrated, native delivery management solution—includes a dedicated app for driver assignment and tracking, a driver’s app to accept deliveries and get directions, and a manager’s app with reporting capabilities. Delivery XT helps our clients enjoy faster deliveries, leaves customers happier, and offers higher revenue with optimization of every order.
Integrated delivery options like Delivery XT give you greater control to manage the ongoing relationship with your customers as well. Contact your customers through email or SMS throughout the delivery journey, and reach diners outside of your dining room with a fully-branded delivery experience. Native solutions give you control of the customer journey from start to finish, and allow you to aggregate all your order data to a single, central console.
A BIG note here: You can mix and match when it comes to delivery! If you don’t have enough delivery demand Monday through Wednesday, that’s okay. Consider using a third-party for those days (more on that below), and then Thursday through Sunday when demand is high, you can use your own drivers. This methodology works for some clients to help optimize their business model economics.
2. Take Advantage of Powerful Integrations
I’m sure there are people reading this post thinking that native delivery management sounds great, but they’re concerned about managing and retaining a fleet of delivery drivers. That’s a fair concern as the labor market continues to put pressures on the restaurant industry as a whole.
To remedy this use case, Revel recently announced a partnership with DoorDash Drive, DoorDash’s white-label fulfillment platform that powers direct delivery for any business. Through the partnership, Revel Driver XT™ powered by DoorDash Drive allows Revel clients to offer delivery without having to manage and operate a fleet of drivers on their payroll.
During one of our recent webinars, strategic partnership teams from both Revel and DoorDash shared even more on what this partnership means to end users. A Revel product manager also offered a more in-depth look at Driver XT. I encourage you to check out the 30-minute webinar here.
Request a demo of Driver XT if you’d like to learn more. If you’re already interested in adding this solution to your off-premises revenue, click the button below to get started today.
3. Fully Integrate All of Your Off-Premises Offerings
At Revel, we talk a lot about helping operators pull levers for their businesses and control their own destinies. When talking about simplifying delivery management, I always recommend that operators take advantage of native online ordering solutions as well to bring their off-premises offering full circle.
When you pair Delivery XT with our native online ordering solution, the result is a fully integrated off-premises solution for your business. Online Ordering XT™ gives operators full control of the consumer experience and ensures their brand stays top of mind with every order.
Not only can you enable frictionless transactions for customers and make real-time updates to your menu from anywhere, but unlike many third-party aggregators, user account data for online ordering stays with your business. This allows you to use customer profile information for personalized messaging and promotional materials, and helps customers access their favorite items with ease and speed.
Better yet, Driver XT fully integrates with Online Ordering XT, making it easier than ever for clients to offer delivery even if they haven’t had the time or resources to launch a delivery service prior.
Integrated Solutions are Key to Simplicity
I’ve learned a lot about restaurateurs after working on the technology side of this industry for most of my career. One of my biggest takeaways is that restaurateurs are busy people! There are hardly enough hours in the day to serve great food, let alone manage a pieced together technology stack.
When possible, and if it makes sense for your business, consider a point of sale (POS) that offers integrated off-premises solutions to ease the burden on your staff, own the customer experience, and rake in additional profits. You’ll be glad you did!
To request a free demo of Revel’s cloud-native solution, click here. We look forward to chatting with you.