Why Should You Develop Your Own Food Delivery App??

Wondering if you should get your restaurant listed with a food delivery aggregator? Confused if you should develop your own food delivery app for your restaurant? 

Data reveals that in India, the food ordering market is set to grow at 16.2% and touch $17.02 billion by 2023 (This is gigantic!). These statistics evince that food delivering app for restaurants is promising for startups and entrepreneurs.

Indeed, prima facie it seems that listing yourself with a food aggregator will be pretty great because it will help skyrocket your online sales but, coming back to the question, there are various reasons why you should develop your own food delivery app for your restaurant instead of featuring on high profile and renowned food aggregators like Zomato, Swiggy, UberEats (acquired by Zomato in Jan 2020), etc. 

PROFITABILITY  

While getting tied up with any of these third-party players, you must be aware of the exuberant commissions being charged by them. Sometimes, commissions combined with taxation go north of 30%! (Yes, it's true!) and, to put it in simpler terms, that is money coming right from your pocket. Zomato charges anywhere between 15% - 22% (exclusive of other charges) per order. This is why you should develop an in house delivery team rather than pay a third party. You have better chances of creating margins in this case.

You can also look at some technological solution providers such as Uengage that offers - Zero Commission Brand App for Your New Age Restaurant Business and can help in the discovery, engagement(CRM solutions, brand loyalty) and marketing(SMS clouding, Digital marketing) of your food delivery app.

DIRECT CONNECT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

Food aggregators avoid you from getting in touch with YOUR CUSTOMERS. How do they do it? Easy peasy, they have all the database like the customers’ email IDs, cell numbers, etc. whereas you don’t have any access to it and are completely in dark about who your regulars are and what kind of service and facilities they like. This stops you from having any kind of relationship with them.

De facto, they send notifications about promotions and offers of your competing restaurants taking away the share that could have been yours!

If you develop a food delivery app for your restaurant, you get to know your customer and build a connection with them. You can also customize offers, deals, and promotions for a better response. (Great, isn't it!) Loyal customers go a long way to help make your business successful. Domino's across the globe and La Pinoz Pizza in india are successful live examples of this.

CUSTOMIZATIONS

The advantage of this can be seen as two-fold.

In your app, you could allow your customers to customize food and beverages according to their whims. For e.g., they can be given a choice of toppings and cheese while they order a pizza; a choice of ingredients in their salads; the level of sweetness/sourness in the beverages, giving your restaurant higher likeability factor. What better than serving your customer's food exactly how they like it and they go gaga over the food! This seems to be missing even in the well-known aggregators. 

The second advantage is the customization in offers & deals like mentioned above. When you provide targeted deals to your customers, say, based on their food choice and patterns, the chances of you making that sale goes up. 

Let's take an example of a customer, Sam, who orders mostly pizzas and fries from your restaurant. If you give Sam a coupon for the next time she orders a pizza or a combo deal which includes pizzas and fries it is highly likely that Sam will make that purchase. (Easy, right?)

INCREASE IN DELIVERY EFFICIENCY

When you partner with a third party app, delivery is taken care of by the aggregator where the availability of it can create an issue. Even if you are willing to serve in that area, the aggregator might not be present and extending its services in that particular region.

Another concern which arises here is the delay in delivery. Aggregators are overloaded with orders and their deliverymen are usually busy. This could lead to dissatisfaction and you could start losing your customers.

When you are developing a food delivery app for your restaurant, make sure to maintain adequate delivery staff and tracking systems visible to both - you and your customer and ensure timely delivery of the food. This will keep your customers satisfied and loyal.

AVOIDING COMPETITION

Partnering with a third party gives customers a wide variety of options which promotes fierce competition amongst the restaurants listed on there. As ironic as it may sound, if you don't have a food delivery app for your restaurant, you yourself give away your customers to other restaurants. 

Let's understand this with an example: Jack is hungry and is looking for something to munch, not sure about what he wants to eat. He is aware that your restaurant makes good burgers, but out of curiosity, he starts scrolling and looking for other restaurants available. He compares the menus, prices, ratings, and then finally orders from another food joint. 

This is something that could have been easily avoided if you had your own app and were taking orders!

You could also take feedback directly from your customers which will help you fill the void between your service and customers’ expectation if any!