Setting up in-house deliveries: a guide for restaurants
Costly commissions, poor quality control, and lacking customer data have turned many restaurants away from food delivery aggregator apps. Hospitality businesses are looking for more and more ways to take control of their delivery service, bringing it in-house and nurturing it into a stronger revenue stream.
There’s a lot to consider when taking the reins on deliveries. Managing orders, hiring and training drivers, developing your brand through uniforms and vehicles, how to price everything, and, ultimately, how to turn a better profit than you would with an already established app.
Trapeze Media invited the food delivery experts at Andromeda — a hospitality point of sale service — to share their advice on going in-house.
The basics
Make your delivery and/or takeaway ordering website part of your brand website, e.g. orders.yourwebsite.co.uk — not a third-party site. This will help your SEO and ensure you maintain control.
Make sure you can feature product images and allergens on your ordering site, to increase orders and buyer confidence. Also helps with legal compliance!
Check that you can accept future-dated and -timed orders. A good chunk of your audience will prefer to order ahead, not just instantly.
Use a delivery platform that supports capacity management, so you can manage the volume of orders in line with the number of drivers you have at peak times.
Work with an ordering platform that pays attention to SEO. Your whole site should be searchable, including the menu (written in text, not just uploaded as a PDF), delivery areas (listed, as well as showcased with maps), and images (should have descriptive file names and alt tags for searchability and accessibility). This will massively help your Google ranking and get you seen by more potential customers.
Check that you’ve got an Order Now button on Facebook, Instagram, and Google My Business (Google Maps).
For a busy delivery operation, use a platform that provides driver management and delivery EPOS as well.
Ensure your provider can give you access to full Google Analytics reporting, with ecommerce integration. That way, you can see exactly where your sales are coming from.
Remember that some customers still prefer to order by phone, and like to call if they have any complaints or questions. Consider how that can be handled.
Your delivery crew
For food deliveries, the driver is often the only point of contact for the customer. While contact-free delivery is likely here to stay, having your own drivers is a great way to bring your brand to the customer. You also set the standards for how your fleet of delivery staff take care of your product, so that it arrives in the best (and warmest!) condition. Here are some ways to work with drivers to make the best delivery experience.
Uniforms: giving your drivers branded clothing gets your identity and messaging out onto the streets. It could be something as simple as a logo on the back of a jacket — or you could go all-out with something a bit wilder to turn heads and demand attention!
Branded vehicles: again, this could be something as straightforward as a logo on the side of a car. But it could also be an entire eye-catching vinyl wrap! For cyclists, branded food backpacks are a must. Think about how many times those big boxy bags have caught your eye.
Driver training: when clothes and vehicles are branded, you want to make sure drivers are traversing the city safely and courteously, both behind the wheel and at customers’ front doors. Your staff should be trained in road etiquette, customer interactions, and how to handle food.
Insurance and liability: make sure your drivers and your business are both appropriately protected, and stay up to date with all the latest laws and policies that could impact you.
Vehicles and delivery logistics
Vehicle ownership
If you’re just setting up in-house deliveries for the first time, you’ll need to decide whether you provide vehicles and bikes, or if drivers use their own. If they use their own, check all the necessary documents — licence, insurance, MOT, etc. — and provide top-up business insurance to cover any accidents that occur while drivers are working. Especially third-party liability.
Which type of vehicle?
The three most common means of traversal for delivery drivers are cars, pushbikes, and mopeds. Which one you choose will depend on the location of your restaurant and the surrounding street infrastructure, as well as your delivery radius. Consider: where can drivers park when picking up orders from your venue? Where will business-owned vehicles be stored? Is the area safe for cyclists?
Delivery radius
Smaller is often better. 20K to 30K households is a good starting point. In terms of distance, try to keep it within an eight-minute journey (whether that’s by car or by bike). For dense areas with a mix of roadside properties and pedestrian zones, give drivers the furthest-away deliveries and offer cyclists a tighter inner-city radius for spots cars would struggle to access. You can start small and grow over time.
How many drivers?
Delivery is spikey! A single peak hour on a Friday night is often busier than an entire Monday or Tuesday night. Use capacity control to make sure you don’t take on too many orders — this is bad for staff morale, food quality, and supply/demand of drivers.
Generally, drivers can deliver three orders per hour — six minutes to get there, two minutes at the door, six minutes to get back, then a few minutes to pick up the next order. Sending drivers on single drops typically works best, unless two orders are located very close together.
One of the best moves you can make: cross-training drivers to work in the restaurant, or having your in-house team help with deliveries. That way, ‘empty time’ is reduced. Successful operators also tend to over-schedule at peak times, to nurture growth.
If you price properly, you’ll be able to pay your drivers more, which is a great position to be in if you want to cross-train them and give them multiple responsibilities.
Charging for delivery
Should restaurants charge for delivery? Yes. It’s very much expected by customers at this point. If you charge £3 per order, and your driver can manage three drops per hour, you’ll be covering most of the costs of providing a delivery service.
A good ordering platform can vary delivery charges based on postcodes, drive time from the restaurant, etc.
Combining drop-off fees with a reasonable minimum order value can turn delivery into a real profit contributor — not just a marginal part of the business. Growing your delivery service also carries fewer costs than growing your in-house service.
Coming away from aggregators
How to wean off aggregators: only promote your own website or platform. Give customers the best value by ordering direct with you, and promote your delivery platform on all of your packaging and with flyers in each bag. Increase costs on aggregator apps to cover their charges and commissions.
Add £1 on your main dishes on aggregators, and offer £5 off your first direct order. If you have a strong brand, good ratings, and quality food, your customers will seek you out directly, and you won’t need to rely on aggregator apps. That kind of loyalty is invaluable; success in delivery is all about repeat business.
Building brand loyalty: customers will order with you time and time again if you:
Deliver on time – when you promised
Ensure the order is correct
Ensure nothing is forgotten
Ensure food is hot ( or cold) as appropriate
Use an ordering platform and delivery system with features that help measure delivery times and ensure that drivers don’t forget things.
Most customers prefer paying a bit more for a better experience than getting discounted — but lower-quality — food. You don’t need to be the quickest in town, or even the best in town, if you’re the fastest (case in point: Domino’s).
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