COVID-19 has changed so much in all our lives. With people having to refrain from their social activities and forced to stay at home experiencing lockdown living, no visits to pubs or restaurants, trips out reduced to barely nothing, no cinema or theatre visits, this has led to a boom in the use of takeaway.
There is a bigger choice than ever before. Many hospitality businesses have adapted like restaurants, pubs and café’s who without being able to cater for dine-in customers now offer collection and delivery options.
Introducing delivery and collection options through digital ordering services clearly represents a major opportunity for hospitality businesses of all sizes. This has of course taken on heightened significance during the past year, with coronavirus changing society so drastically and forcing dine-in facilities to close for long periods. Struggling to survive in the circumstances, pivoting to takeaway through online ordering has been a real lifeline for many businesses.
In many cases, online ordering gives restaurants and takeaways a whole new stream of income and a great chance to increase their sales. Worldwide, revenue from online food delivery is projected to reach some €134 billion in 2021, with 11% year-on-year growth. So there’s big money at play in the industry.
The pandemic has seemingly accelerated UK household’s love of takeaway food, with more families opting to eat in as restrictions increase in the face of a second wave. For some it is their only break from mundane living, stuck between their four walls.
People have shifted to remote interactions, they’ve increasingly come to rely on digital channels to order their food. UK households have ordered nearly 50 million meals in the past three months from one delivery service alone.
The accelerating trend taps into a appetite that had been growing even before the pandemic struck; 2019’s KPMG survey on takeaways found that two thirds of adults in the UK enjoyed ordering takeaways, doing so on average once a week, 66% more often than they did in 2018.
According to the Lumina Intelligence Food To Go After Lockdown Report 2020, however, the food to go market was expected to exceed £20bn in 2019, but as a result of coronavirus, the market has contracted by £6bn.
The sales data from online takeaway delivery platforms Just Eat, Deliveroo and Foodhub have revealed that people are ordering more takeaways than ever before. COVID-19 has propelled the industry a few years into the future, as millions of people in lockdown ordered food online for the first time.
Many restaurants which initially turned to aggregator platforms for a quick digital ordering solution are now rethinking that decision, given all the downsides that come with it. Many restaurants and takeaway businesses are now moving away from third-party aggregators due to the negative effects of partnering with these platforms.
The cost of using third-party delivery services can be severely prohibitive. Turning a profit in the food industry is already difficult in the current climate, and partnering with delivery aggregators squeezes margins even tighter. Restaurants can end up paying up to 30% in fees for each order placed through these apps.
When using third-party aggregators, you also lose the direct relationship with your customers. That’s a hugely negative consequence, as the opportunity to build long-term customer loyalty is gone. Regular, loyal customers are the lifeblood of any hospitality business. Indeed, research shows that increasing your number of loyal customers even by 5% can grow your sales by up to 75%. So it’s really the best way to build a strong and sustainable business.
Using their own online ordering system gives control back to the takaway, reduces costs and provides the tools needed for sustainable growth. It allows restaurants to operate mutually beneficial food delivery and collection services for their customers. It gives you complete control over the customers experience, while you retain vital customer data for future loyalty and marketing campaigns. This helps you to build long-lasting, profitable relationships with your customers, long after their initial order.
However, with consumers very much inclined to order directly from a restaurant’s own website or app where they have the option, more and more restaurants are starting to take ownership of their own online ordering and delivery rather than relying on the aggregators.
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