For restaurant owners, Covid-19 has had a very significant and detrimental impact on the food service industry. Between the difficulty of getting food supplies for your restaurant, trying to keep your staff healthy, and complying with social distancing for everyone involved, it is impossible to run your restaurant exactly like it was before the pandemic.
To keep income coming in, restaurants are having to rely much more heavily on take-out and delivery options. However, delivering food via a delivery service may end up costing you more money than self-delivery.
5 restaurant owner advantages of using self-delivery
Some of the best reasons to skip hiring a delivery service are:
Save money
Though delivery services do all the training and delivery, it comes at a hefty fee. Just to set up your restaurant with a delivery service can cost you up to $400. You will also need to sacrifice between 10 and 40 percent per order in service fees and any marketing costs.
Do it your way
While delivery services have people already trained for the job, they may not do things the way you would. By hiring and training your own staff to make deliveries, you make sure they are doing the job the way you want and prevent potential problems.
You can insist on brand advertisement as well, with shirts, hats, carry bags and even signs on the vehicle to help promote your business. Delivery services will not do that for your business.
Connect with your customers
When you and your employees make the deliveries, you are able to form a bond with the customers. Getting to know them, greeting them with a warm smile and referring to them by name all help to build relationships with your customers. Partner that with great food, and you have a recipe for more orders from them in the future. They will also be more likely to tip you and refer you to their friends and family.
Control the data
Delivery services don’t just get paid for their work in money. They also gain valuable customer data, making it easier for them to gain insight into who is buying from you. While that may not seem like the worst thing in the world, it can actually be detrimental to your business. That is because they can use that data and sell it to your competitors, allowing them a leg up and a way to take customers away from you.
The delivery service can also keep the data to use in their advertisements, making your customers trust them with their orders. This can be dangerous because separating from the delivery service can cost you the loss of customers. They can also promote your competitors with deals through their service.
Protect your product
Delivery services get paid when the food gets there, regardless of its condition upon arrival. By delivering your food yourself, you can guarantee that the food is transported safely, quickly, and to the customer’s satisfaction. Otherwise, customers may not return because they do not trust that their food will get there without issue. You hired the delivery service, so any errors from them reflect negatively on you and your business.
Conclusion
While delivery services are much more convenient, the cost to hire them is not always worth it. Especially when money can already be tight, it is important to make sure you are spending it wisely, and this can mean forgoing the more convenient services for you. Overall, it can be worth the time to train your staff when considering the advantages of doing self-deliveries.
When you choose to deliver your food yourself, consider having a custom
car topper made for your delivery driver.
