Partner with third-party delivery apps to reach new customers and reduce staff workload
Dive deep into Making Third-Party Delivery Work for You at Pizza Expo during Michael Androw’s education session on Monday, March 23, at 3 p.m. See the full education schedule.
Only a few years back, the words “third-party delivery” were considered obscene by many in the pizza industry. As time has passed, many of the kinks have been worked out in the models, and more cost-effective structures have come into play.
Now, we have that big hassle of delivery off our plate, and we pay a fee for someone else to take care of it. So, their service takes care of our need, and this is where the relationship ends, right? Wrong!
Operators can capitalize on many facets of third-party delivery services, but only the savviest operators make the effort. Be sure you are among the “savvy.”
Consider Your Marketing
You see results while working within your budget, but we all wish those results could be better. Have you considered buying a 30-second TV ad during the Super Bowl? It costs only $8 million for an ad this year. That may be a dollar or two above our budgets as intendent operators, but it’s not too much for the third-party delivery companies. They have resources we can’t even never fathom.
You have a base of customers who order from you. The third-party giants have a national customer base comprised of everyone in your market – not just your current customers. Any person that opens a delivery app is someone who might order from you. Access to those potential new customers is at our fingertips if we take advantage of it.
Once we might have shrugged off the idea of advertising our restaurants with third-party delivery services. Today, allocating a few of our marketing dollars toward placing ads on those platforms could have a lot more value.
Think About Your Audience
We’re all shocked when, after many years in business, we run into a neighbor who has never been to our restaurant – and may not even be familiar with us. It seems nearly impossible, yet we’ve all experienced it. Once again, this is where a third party’s platform can pay huge dividends for you.
Instead of relying on people already familiar with your pizzeria, there is a new opportunity. When folks in your community open that third-party app, they see your restaurant whether they previously were familiar with it or not. The possibility of a new customer just presented itself.
Browsing for Options
Tell me if any of this sounds familiar: You are sitting on the couch, and you ask your significant other what they want to do for dinner. They reply, “I don’t know. What do you want?” After five or 10 minutes of this banter, you pull out your phone and open a third-party deliver app to browse for ideas.
Someone in your town will have this very conversation tonight. And since you decided to partner with this third-party company, your restaurant now pops ups in front of that person as they browse. They were not looking for you specifically. They were looking for dinner ideas. Your listing on their app has put you on the radar as a choice for dinner this evening. Without your listing on the third party’s app, you never would have had the opportunity to capture that customer.
Further, if you do a great job preparing their meal, that person could become a regular customer for life.
Other Platform Benefits
Third-party platforms offer benefits aside from capturing of new customers. While you may be familiar with the cost savings of not using your own drivers, there are other financial savings. Digital platforms streamline the ordering process and completely remove the need for your staff to enter the order. While it may not reduce your staffing levels, it does free up employees and phone lines to handle greater volume simultaneously.
On the rare occasion when there is a mistake with an order, customers normally would call the store and have a staff member help them with said issue. Not anymore. In the case of orders placed through third-party services, issues are handled through the app. This frees up your phone lines and staff members to take direct orders.
Staffing and Liability
As operators, we can be very profit-and-loss driven and see the benefit of not having to pay wages, taxes and insurance associated with delivery drivers. When the drivers work for third-party companies, another big expense is no longer on your plate: liability.
Once liability is no longer your responsibility, it relieves you of worries about possible accidents, injuries, insurance nightmares and more. It is nice to be free of that headache so you can sleep a little bit easier at night.
Third-party delivery can involve so much more than basic delivery service. It takes an engaged and driven operator to look deeper and find the benefits below the surface. If you invest in the service, be sure to get every benefit out of it. It does not take an inordinate amount of effort. Rest assured that if you don’t do it, your competitors certainly will.
As operators, we all look for ways to increase our revenues while simultaneously easing our workload. This is an instance where it can be right in front of us. Doing a little digging beneath the surface of third-party delivery can help move you one step closer toward that ultimate restaurant goal: financial freedom.
Michael Androw owns E & D Pizza Company in Avon, Connecticut.
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