The game-changing ‘rules of engagement’ that have been established by the COVID-19 pandemic ensures that restaurant delivery is not going away. And third-party services like Uber Eats, Grubhub and others realize their importance to off-premise services.
But using third-party delivery vendors comes at a cost, to the tune of 20–30% in fees and commissions, which cuts into restaurants’ margins, said Larry Fiel, director of marketing for PDQ POS, an all-in-one, all-in-house point-of-sale technology solutions provider located in Warminster, Pennsylvania.
“It’s no surprise that restaurants have gravitated to the delivery revenue stream,” Fiel remarked. “The problem is that the stream flows more toward the delivery providers.”
One way to circumvent the margin loss from online ordering and delivery is to use a provider like PDQ POS, which offers PDQ OO, a native, built-in online ordering platform that can be used standalone or in concert with any third party service.
“We’ve been ‘trained’ to think of online ordering/delivery as our primary method of obtaining food,” explained Fiel. “Accordingly, restaurants have been ‘promised’ new growth via an expanded customer base. But are they really obtaining a breadth of new customers—or is their existing base simply shifting to online vs. in-store,” he questioned. “Either way, restaurants need to play in this space in order to remain relevant.”
In order to be a part of this explosive phenomenon, but not cede their already low margins, Fiel offered the following strategy–one that uses the PDQ Online Ordering platform right from the restaurant’s website: “When a customer orders from an online delivery platform, reach out and ask them to order directly from your website the next time, and entice them with loyalty program incentives. You’ll still be getting the eyeballs and traffic from the third-party site, but you’ll be training them to re-order from your PDQ OO platform, where your cost is measured in a few dollars a day total rather than 20-30% of each order,” he exclaimed.
Seamless integration
One key characteristic of PDQ POS is that it not only provides built-in and seamless integration, and interfaces with all top tier platforms, including online ordering, loyalty, labor/scheduling, inventory and payroll, but that it also provides all the project management necessary to make it all work. This differs from other companies, which have a layered approach and only offer a single service. The benefit of having a provider that offers this synchronous approach is that it minimizes cost, time and effort, as PDQ POS does all of the “heavy lifting.” And, perhaps more importantly, PDQ POS assumes all the accountability for the restaurateur in case a problem arises in any one technology component.
Experience counts
With thousands of customers in thousands of locations, including a highly successful gourmet QSR franchise with over 2800 locations, PDQ POS has been perfecting its innovative ordering and delivery software for over 34 years. “In hindsight, we began operations in the most demanding restaurant concept, namely pizza,” explains Fiel. “There’s every possible way to order, including phone-in, delivery, at-counter, at-table and online, and there are myriad ways to have your pizza prepared. If you can successfully master the art of ordering and delivering pizza, you can tackle any restaurant concept and delivery nuance,” Fiel said.
Proven experience. Perhaps that’s why independents, franchises and chains alike look to PDQ POS for all of their point-of-sale needs…
