Over the past few months, we’ve gone in-depth regarding one particular point — we want our customers, restaurant owners, to be able to get some practically useful tips for beating slump seasons. For the sake of conversation, we’ve talked a good deal about how summer months can be the ones where many restaurants experience this dip in traffic and revenue, but it really depends on each individual restaurant. It might be summer, especially if your restaurant isn’t in a touristic area. It might also be summer if you serve hearty, warm foods on the whole. But the dip could just as easily be fall, winter, or spring — for any number of reasons.

Ultimately, which month or two that you experience a slump isn’t really our concern. Our concern is that we provide restaurateurs with the knowledge they need to beat that slump in whatever way we can. While every restaurant is unique with its own variables to consider, there are plenty of strategies that can be discussed on a general level — strategies that are worth considering.

We encourage you to go back and read a couple, if not all, of the blog posts we’ve written for restaurants over the past few months. We’ve discussed online marketing strategy, how to connect better locally, and many other ideas that we’ve seen successfully implemented by our clients.

Today’s post, however, is going to be more focused on how Online Orders Now comes into play. We certainly have some wisdom regarding strategies for restaurants outside of the realm of mobile food ordering systems and online ordering software, but at the end of the day, our advanced online ordering solution is always going to be our bread and butter. With that in mind, we want to remind our readers about what a robust online ordering system like ours can bring to the table in terms of improving overall efficiency while increasing your revenue.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the many features NOW has to offer restaurants of all kinds!

The Big Picture Take

Online Orders Now is your go-to online ordering software for restaurants. You, ideally, only use the freshest of ingredients, hire the top people, and serve the best-tasting food. Online Orders Now fits in with the rest of the aforementioned superlatives for a variety of reasons. We seamlessly integrate with most every POS system while offering our customers a brand new website along with a custom-designed application for their mobile ordering system.

Here’s what else we do that others don’t:

• Lower cost (our competitors often charge up to 20 percent on each order)
• Easy-to-use, integrative system (no retyping orders)
• Direct integration with your preferred point of sale software
• Exclusive features such as “My Way” (our individualized “favorites” menu that works even when menus are updated)
• Non-integrated ordering options
• Non-exclusivity (allows you to use a variety of food delivery platforms without issue)

A Custom Website For Your Restaurant

Before we dissect individual features we are proud to offer as part of our online ordering system, allow us to briefly highlight why having a modern, mobile-optimized website is so important to a restaurant and its brand.

You need to meet customers where they are at. Make no mistake about it, consumers use smartphones and tablets much more often than they use a desktop computer. And when folks are deciding where they want to eat on a particular night, they need to be able to find your website as easy to view, understand, and order from. Long gone are the days where all you need on your website is your address listing and a PDF of your menu (and maybe a picture of your dining room).

Online Orders Now offers restaurants the chance to fast-track themselves into the digital marketplace with a sophisticated website that looks great on smartphones, tablets, and from any other kind of device. We’ll work endlessly to make sure that you are happy with the result, ensuring that we capture your brand’s essence while making sure all the little details of what makes a website up to snuff are there as well.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the specifics.

Online Orders Now Features

• POS Integration – When you choose Online Orders Now to be your online ordering software, our software is advanced enough to put the order into your POS and print out the ticket while the customer is still online! We mentioned improved efficiency as a benefit of Online Orders Now, and this is a perfect example of having what is essentially an invisible cashier taking orders. Plus, this cashier never makes a mistake!
• Order Accuracy – While we are talking about this invisible cashier who never makes a mistake, let’s talk about order accuracy more generally. Online orders are naturally more accurate than orders taken over the phone because it’s the customers who are able to enter the order themselves. Our online ordering software allows you to double check your order before confirmation. And because NOW is built from your restaurant’s database, you get the highest level of order fidelity.
• Geo-Coded Delivery Mapping – Geo-coded delivery mapping lets you determine where your delivery boundaries are in a distinct way. This system is designed so that wherever customers are searching from, they’ll be automatically matched to the right location. If you have a customer who isn’t within your pre-designated delivery area they will be able to choose “take out” as an option from any one of your locations.
• “My Way” 30 Second Ordering – Our food ordering system makes sure that each time a unique customer makes an order, we’ll save it exactly the way it was ordered with all specifications included. The customer can choose either “Edit” or “Add to Cart”. This certainly helps increase customer satisfaction when they feel remembered! Plus, it saves them time, which is the name of the game in mobile ordering systems for restaurants!
• Your Branded Online/Mobile Menu – Another feature of NOW is that we pull the data from your Place-Of-Sale system where we edit it to make sure it matches your printed menu. This means your online menu will have the exact same look and feel of the rest of your website and restaurant’s brand in general. What’s more, you can even upload pictures of all menu items you offer, so your customers can visualize the deliciousness!
• 30 percent Larger Tickets – The final benefit we’d like to feature in today’s post is one of the most important. If you are still riding the fence when it comes to deciding to implement an online ordering system for your restaurant(s), consider this statistic: Customers who order online spend an average of 30 percent more when compared with ordering over the phone or over the counter. There are a few reasons for this, chief among them being the simple fact that folks can take their time to browse the entire menu rather than feeling rushed with a line of people behind them waiting for their turn to order. Another is that the mobile food ordering system will make upsell suggestions for you, and it’s quite often the case that customers will take the system up on their offer! We’ve all done it, at one time or another! Plain and simple, it’s not too difficult to imagine what that 30 percent increase could do for your bottom line and overall success.

Stay Tuned For Part Two!

Though it might be more specific than other posts we’ve recently written, it could be the most valuable one of the series. Considering that final statistic of 30 percent larger tickets alone is enough to get most restaurant owners’ juices flowing (much like your customers when they see your delicious menu items highlighted by your sleek menu).

There is plenty more we could say — and we will, in part two. As we’ve been apt to do in recent weeks, we are turning this topic into a two-part series since there is far too much ground to cover in one post. In the meantime, contact Online Orders Now to get started!