How to Solve 8 Challenges Delivery Restaurants Face (2023)

The online food delivery market has seen significant growth over the past years. The delivery industry is the market’s largest segment, with delivery services like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Deliveroo taking care of the delivery logistics. 

COVID-19 propelled the industry years into the future, as millions of people in lockdown across the globe started ordering (more) food online. While this surge in demand settled down with the world returning to normality, we can confidently say that online ordering and food delivery are here to stay.

That means that restaurants and other businesses that offer delivery must create a successful delivery strategy to capture consumers’ interest and stand out from their competitors. A solid delivery strategy should also eliminate the common problems associated with online food ordering. 

In this article, we’ll discuss some key challenges of digital ordering and online food delivery for restaurants and how to address them.

Issue #1: You punch in delivery orders manually, losing time and sometimes making errors 

Many restaurants assign one of their employees to online orders, accepting delivery and takeout orders on the aggregators’ tablets and entering them in your restaurant’s point-of-sale system by hand. This manual task, which is both time and labor intensive, creates a delay in the order flow.

Manually double punching orders also creates a delay in the kitchen, because your kitchen staff doesn’t receive the orders until after they’ve been created in the restaurant POS.

Once the kitchen gets the online order tickets, they all look different based on the delivery service’s specific ticket layout. Enter confusion - and even slower delivery times.

Another issue with rekeying orders is that it’s prone to error. Making mistakes is only human, but errors in the customer’s order will lead to complaints, frustration, loss of revenue, and repeat business.

The solution

By automating the online order process, you can eliminate human error and free up your staff’s time, to focus on improving the customer experience. With tickets printed in the kitchen in a consistent format, your delivery operation will run much smoother.

According to Deliverect customers CrêpeAffaire and Thunderbird Fried Chicken, automating their delivery flow improved both speed and accuracy, boosting customer satisfaction and revenue.

Issue #2: The more online ordering platforms, the more tablet mayhem

When you deliver food, working with multiple third-party food ordering players is a smart strategy to scale up your business. Each delivery service your restaurant works with will send you their own device, usually a tablet, with platform-specific software.

If your restaurant is listed on 4 platforms, that means you’ll have 4 tablets, on top of your own hardware. Imagine you run a dark kitchen with 10 virtual brands, each available on 5 different delivery platforms. That’s 50 tablets!  

You must ensure these tablets are on all the time - this is necessary to indicate that your online shop is open. You also have to ensure your staff can hear notifications of incoming orders at all times to accept them and send a ticket to the kitchen.

It’s no wonder restaurants have coined the phrase “tablet hell” to describe the chaos that inevitably enters the restaurant when managing all these different devices.

The solution

You can solve this issue by integrating your delivery orders into your point-of-sale system, automatically pulling in all your orders to your POS.

Although you still have to keep your tablets online, you can stuff them in a cabinet and manage the entire delivery flow using just one central device.

Byte To Bite, a virtual restaurant that runs multiple brands in LA, ditched the tablet madness. Now they manage orders from multiple platforms at multiple locations from one dashboard, processing orders most efficiently. 

Issue #3: Managing your menus across different online ordering platforms takes up a LOT of time

Never before have there been so many restaurants offering delivery and takeout. Therefore it’s crucial to stand out, and one sure-fire way to do this is with a menu adapted for delivery that is clear, attractive, and customizable.

Creating online menus on different third-party platforms and keeping them up to date can take up hours and hours of your precious time. You have to set up multiple menus for each delivery platform. For example, if you want to create a limited-time menu deal, a happy hour menu available only at a specific time, or a menu for a special holiday or event.

Once you want to adjust a price or item, you have to put in a request with the delivery service. This means it’s hard to stay agile and make quick online menu changes.

When you run multiple restaurants or dark kitchens, menu management can become a headache.
 

The solution

Fortunately, it’s possible to quickly and efficiently manage multi-location and multi-platform menus from one screen.

Deliverect’s omnichannel restaurant solution comes with an easy menu builder that enables you to create, duplicate and automate menu items, and publish them to multiple channels with a few clicks. This will make playing around with descriptions, promotions, and pictures easier, allowing you to experiment with audiences and segments.

For Goiko and Mambo Italia, which have multiple locations and virtual kitchens, the Deliverect menu builder proved essential in growing their delivery operation. 

Issue #4: You don’t have real-time sales data, and you don’t know what’s been sold online

Analyzing your sales data is one of the best and fastest ways to optimize and grow. If your restaurant is available on multiple online ordering platforms, however, it can be challenging to get a complete overview of all your online sales. 

Ideally, you want to see your online and offline sales side by side in one clear reporting dashboard. But if you work with multiple delivery service providers, that means all your sales data will be fragmented.

Spruce up your Excel skills because you’ll have to export separate data from all your online sales channels, consolidate it, and add your in-house sales manually for a complete overview. As a result, reporting can become a time-consuming chore. This approach also leaves room for mistakes. 

Another common problem delivery restaurants face is that they don’t have real-time data about their online sales. Some restaurants enter their online orders as one big ticket at the end of the workday, which can lead to omitting important details.

Unfortunately, that means you don’t know what exactly has been sold online and which dishes are your bestsellers.

The solution

Seamless integration between your online sales channels and your POS system is all it takes to solve this pain. Connecting all your online ordering platforms to your point of sale means you’ll see all your sales data in real-time, on one screen.

Deliverect customers Matcha Mafia and Salsa Shop, among others, are convinced of the added value of integrated reporting. It saves them lots of time and effort on a daily basis. That time, they can put right back into their core business.
 

Issue #5: Customers can order out-of-stock items because your stock isn’t synced with your online channels

Replenishing your inventory can be a complicated job if your stock isn’t automatically updated in your restaurant inventory software or point-of-sale system after an order has been placed online.

A customer looking to order their favorite dish online will buy it elsewhere if he finds it is no longer available on your menu. This, of course, is something you want to avoid.

The solution

Many modern POS systems already include stock management, but restaurants need an active POS integration to sync with their online sales platforms.

Inventory data is the only way to guarantee correct product availability and reduce out-of-stock products. Read Deliverect customer. It’s All Greek To Me’s story on how a POS integration for delivery helped solve their online inventory issues. 

Issue #6: Your online orders aren’t in your POS - you’re not VAT compliant

Hospitality businesses are subjected to rigid tax regulations worldwide. In some countries, restaurants and catering services must work with a registered cash system - the so-called “white cash register” to avoid fraud.

This means all your incoming revenue, including through online sales channels, needs to be registered to comply with VAT requirements. You must enter all your delivery receipts in your restaurant POS to be compliant, and you’ll have to ensure the customer receives a ticket. 

You are breaking the law and could be seriously fined if you don’t correctly register your orders from delivery platforms and other online ordering systems at your point of sale.

The solution

Automate your online order flow to ensure your online orders, no matter which platform they come from, will be sent to your POS system without you having to do anything. It’s that simple!

Issue #7: Your restaurant is crowded with riders

Food delivery couriers must make as many deliveries as possible to earn a living. For them, there’s nothing more frustrating than waiting for a meal that’s not ready for pickup.

When multiple riders are waiting inside your restaurant, that could take away from the in-house dining experience for your guests, especially if you’re working with a small space. Your in-house diners may feel rushed or crowded. 

On the other hand, your staff also needs to deal with all these couriers showing up to collect orders. So they’ll be easily distracted from doing their job. 

Finally, if your prepping times and courier waiting times aren’t consistent, this will influence your scores on third-party delivery platforms, lowering your in-app ranking. 

The solution

One solution is to rethink your restaurant’s design and flow to accommodate specially designed waiting areas for riders. You may also want to think about a screen displaying order statuses that are ideally placed in your delivery pickup area. This will increase the efficiency of your pickup.

Another excellent solution for this is implementing Deliverect Pickup Manager. You can easily manage order statuses and keep your drivers, and customers informed when they are at your restaurant. One look at the Pickup Manager will tell them when they can go to the counter to pick up their order.

Many online delivery platforms consider prep times to rank restaurants and dark kitchens. To stay on top, you need to keep a solid operation.

Deliverect customers Poule & Poulette and The Regency Club invested in waiting areas for food couriers, so in-house diners are unaffected by their presence. Now the kitchen can communicate efficiently about orders ready to go.

Issue #8: Customers don’t find your restaurant in the app

Cities like London, Madrid, Amsterdam, Dubai, and New York count thousands of eateries with delivery services. With many of those signed up with platforms like Uber Eats, Postmates, Talabat, and Deliveroo, the number of in-app restaurant listings, and thus competition, is huge.

So what if potential customers aren’t finding your restaurant? Optimizing your delivery business is critical to ranking higher in food delivery apps and capitalizing on your position.

The solution

Faster preparation times, faster delivery times, higher acceptance, and online rates,… in short, a better delivery performance will lead to more positive customer reviews and a better position of your listing.

Like Deliverect’s customers, Absurd Bird boosted the time of delivery and ratings, leading to higher visibility on the Uber Eats app.

Address your delivery challenges with a POS integration

Optimize your delivery management and automate the process. That’s the first step to achieving a top-notch delivery operation.

You’ll regain time to focus on your core gains and what matters most: what matters most: making what matters most your food.