As per a report from Grand View Research, the Online Food Delivery Market in India is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8% from 2021 to 2028. Also, the number of Online Food Delivery Users in India is expected to reach 191 million by 2024, up from 125 million in 2020, as predicted by German research agency, Statista.
EMERGENCE OF ONLINE FOOD DELIVERY BUSINESS IN INDIA
The emergence of the online food delivery business in India can be traced back to around 2014, when a few startups began offering on-demand food delivery services through their mobile apps. These startups disrupted the traditional food delivery model, which mainly consisted of local restaurants offering home delivery services through phone orders.
The Online Food Delivery Business in India has grown rapidly in recent years, driven by factors such as increasing smartphone penetration, rising disposable incomes, and changing consumer preferences. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the growth of this industry, as people turned to online food delivery services to avoid going out and minimize contact.
COMMON MISTAKES ONLINE FOOD DELIVERY BUSINESS MUST AVOID
Today, the Online Food Delivery Market in India is highly competitive, with several players vying for market share. In a situation, as a Restaurant Business owner, the one thing that you cannot absolutely afford is to make mistakes. Here we are listing some of the common mistakes that online food delivery businesses make and that you must avoid at any cost.
Opting for Unprofitable Delivery Model:
To handle online food deliveries, restaurants have the option to create their own delivery fleet or partner with established food delivery platforms. What many restaurant businesses do is to blindly copy what their competitors are doing. However, for better management and profit, it’s important to carefully consider which approach works best for your business.
Partnering with established delivery platforms can cost high commissions but freedom from delivery hassles. However, having your own fleet may be a better option if you want to expand your physical presence in a more solid way. The goal is to optimize delivery times, increase profits, and provide excellent customer service and as per your own terms.
Using non-friendly user platform:
With the thousands of options around and lack of patience and time when really hungry, your customer is not going to tolerate one thing that is a faulty app or system. It’s important to make sure that your website or app can be easily accessed through different mediums, such as mobile and desktop devices. The design should be simple, clean, and easy to navigate. To encourage customers to place orders, make sure that the “order” button is prominently displayed and easy to find. It’s also essential to offer multiple payment options with a secure payment gateway to ensure a smooth and secure checkout process.
To enhance the customer experience, consider using data-driven recommendations to suggest items that customers may be interested in. Additionally, providing a live chat option can help customers with any questions or concerns they may have and improve overall customer satisfaction.
You also like to read our article on The Essential Features a Restaurant Management System Should Have.
Failing To Create Special Menu:
It is very important to curate a special deliverable menu which can be substantially different from your dine-in menu. Considering the fact that your online orders will have to endure a certain amount of travel-time before reaching the customer’s plate, it is essential to understand how it need to be optimized as opposed to serving your dine-in customer hot and steamy right from your kitchen or cold and frizzy right from your mocktail counter.
Also, do keep in mind to update your online menu time to time and keep a check on your inventory such that customers need not face any order cancellation which only creates a bad taste and hampers your brand image.
Messy Packaging:
When it comes to online delivery, packaging grabs the center stage as messy packaging can negatively impact an online food delivery business in several ways. Firstly, it can affect the presentation of the food and leave a bad impression on the customer. Very importantly, it can impact the quality of the food during transit, resulting in spoilage or damage which can substantially discourage your repeat business.
To avoid these negative impacts, businesses must pay attention to packaging, ensuring that it is presentable, preserves the quality of the food, and contributes to a positive customer experience.
No Communication or Improper Communication With Customers
In this age of everything being trackable and predictable, not knowing when your food is going to arrive is an absolute no-no. Make sure that your restaurant management system allows smooth communication with your customers. Right from the point of ordering to receiving the delivery, the processes should be trackable and communicate the right estimated time. It is advisable to already add 5 mins extra in your estimated time of delivery to cover any time loss in the process or to win brownie points if delivered early.
Ignoring Customer Response
Customers often face the challenge of receiving unresponsive customer service when it comes to online food delivery. As a business, it’s crucial to be attentive and responsive to customers’ queries, ranging from delivery delays to dissatisfaction with the food and payment or refund concerns. However, delivery apps can make it challenging for customers to share their grievances, leading to added frustration.
To address this issue, it’s essential to provide customers with multiple options to register their queries, such as live chat, email, and phone calls. Ensure that the language used is polite and professional, and strive to redress their concerns immediately. Providing compensatory food items or refunds can go a long way in satisfying the customers and ensuring their turnaround rate.
ONERESTO – A COMPLETE RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
oneresto is a complete restaurant business management solution powered by oneapp. It is specially built and crafted bundles of software that provides a 360 solution for the management of the restaurant businesses, both online delivery and dine-in restaurants.
Some of the notable features of the oneresto solution are:
- Digital Menu that allows the customers to view the menu on tablet, place order and also pay online. It helps in cutting down on manpower as well as paper usage.
- Integrated Inventory Management system incorporated into the POS to keep track of the products in and out of inventory list giving a clear picture at any point of time.
- Split payments or Multi-mode payment to allow settling of a bill via multiple payment modes i.e. cards, cash, coupons, etc.
- A built-in Customer Relationship Management system that helps to secure a robust guest database with information about customers from various sources. These databases later aid in formulating sale policies and chalk out discounts and offers.
Check out The Complete List Of The Features here or Request For a Free Demo to understand how oneresto solution can help you leverage maximum profit for your restaurant business.
If you have any query about oneresto, you can ask us in the comments section.