← RESTAURANT STRATEGY
RESTAURANT STRATEGY
Eight Simple Dos and Don'ts for Leveraging Third Party Platforms
00:18:50
#404 - Eight Simple Dos and Don'ts for Leveraging Third Party Platforms ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: AVERO Increase your profitability using the industry's best kept secret weapon. VISIT: https://averoinc.com/ ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: CHOWLY Chowly Off Premise Platform helps restaurants create, capture, and convert demand to help drive more profits into the bottom line. Empower your restaurant with Digital Marketing, Chowly Online Ordering, Smart Pricing, and Third-Party Marketplace POS Integrations. VISIT: https://chowly.com/chip/ ***** If you're going to put your restaurant on the third party platforms, then you need to have a plan to win on those platforms. On this episode I share a simple 8-step checklist for CRUSHING the competition. ***** You want a FREE copy of my book. Just DM me the word 'BOOK' at our Instagram page! CLICK HERE: https://www.instagram.com/restaurantstrategy/
Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hey, Chip Close here, host of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. As you know, I wrote a book. It's called the Restaurant Marketing Mindset. I am giving away 100 copies of this book for free. I actually already gave away 100 copies of the book. It went over so well that I'm doing it again. You just have to pay the shipping $3.92. You get that book totally free by following the link in the show notes. Go. Click get that now. That book also comes with a free 30 day membership in my restaurant Foundations program. It's incredible. There's an online course in there that really acts as a compliment to the content of the book. Go do that now. Click the link, sign up to get a free copy of my book and don't go anywhere. Because today we're talking all about third party do's and don'ts. Eight things you can do to leverage the third party delivery sites to make more money. Be more profitable. Don't go anywhere. There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated solely to helping you build a more profitable restaurant. Each week I leverage my 25 year in the industry to help you do just that. Building more profitable and sustainable restaurant. I also work with owners and operators all over the world through my P3 mastermind program. This is a group coaching format. Right now We've got over 150 members enrolled in the program, spread across four different groups. The program works. The impact we're making is real. So if you have a busy restaurant but struggle to generate consistent, predictable 20% returns, then set up a call with me or someone from my team. You go to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule. Grab some time on the calendar. We'll we'll get to learn more about you and your restaurant. You'll learn more about the program, ask some questions about it to see if you're a good fit again. Restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule and yes, that link is in the show notes. Now, are you ready to revolutionize the way you run your restaurant? Unlock the power of data to optimize your restaurant operations with Aveiro, the trusted technology partner for over 40,000 hospitality professionals worldwide. Aveiro understands restaurant operations. Their hospitality focused solutions are built by operators. For operators to help drive revenue, protect profits and prevent fraud and loss. Aveiro has a data backed answer for every food and beverage challenge and is focused on delivering the right answers to the right people at the right time. With Avero, you can make better, faster and more profitable decisions, drive consumer traffic, raise, check, average and ensure consistent guest experience across all of your locations. They empower you to optimize your menu mix, streamline operations and boost profitability. Join the ranks of over 14,000 restaurants across 75 countries who trust Avero to boost sales, manage costs and streamlining operations. Are you ready to drive more sales by leveraging the hospitality industry's best kept secret weapon? Unlock your restaurant's full potential. Today, get started for free and transform your business by visiting averoink.com that's a V E R-O I N C.com and yes, you better believe it. That link is in the show Notes okay now today we're keeping with this theme of the do's and don'ts. I'm sharing eight do's and don'ts this week, talking all about leveraging third party delivery. This is going to be a short episode, power packed. Grab a pen and paper, take notes because I'm going to roll through these pretty quickly. Eight things you need to do or don't do when it comes to third party delivery when we talk about third party, of course we're talking about UberEats and DoorDash and GrubHub and all of those sites out there. They can be powerful if we know how to use them. So number one, the first thing you need to do is you need to raise your prices on all of those platforms by 30% so that you do not lose your profitability. Yes, it means that your food, your products are more expensive on those sites, but they are paying a convenience charge. Just because you're listed on those sites doesn't mean that your profitability can suffer. Otherwise, why even bother being on them in the first place? We are on them because they are powerful acquisition channels and if people are willing to pay the extra because of the convenience, then let them pay extra. You get paid, the company gets paid and the guest gets their food quickly. So the first thing you need to do is make sure you've raised all your prices to cover the commission that you pay to those sites to the partners. Like Uber eats, like Grubhub, like DoorDash. The second thing you need to not do right, don't promote those guys on your own website. This absolutely drives me crazy right the your website is the mothership everything out in the Internet. Your Google, my business page, your Instagram, your Facebook, your TikTok, your Yelp page, everything is meant to drive traffic to your website. Never, never, never give traffic away. So if people came to you and found you, they know you and then they click on a button, it sends them away to grubhub. That's insane. So if you are currently doing that now, tear down that stuff. Do not send traffic anywhere else. Number three, do make online ordering available on your website. So if you use Toast or Spoton or Square or any of a number of POS systems, they all have an online ordering capability. And if you don't, you can leverage something like CH or, or Lunchbox or any of a number of sites out there. There are solutions, but if you offer takeout and delivery, you need to be able to capture that on your website. It will help make you more money so that you can drive traffic from the Internet to your website where they can place an order and generate revenue for you. Right, Those are the first three. They're all related. Now, Sterling Douglas is the co founder and CEO of a company called Chowli. Chowli does so much for this industry. And I want you to hear a little bit from Sterling.
- [06:36]
B
We talk a lot to our restaurants about this idea of return on time. Everybody talks about roi, like return on investment. And a lot of restaurants do that when you're a smaller operator. When you're one, two, three stores and as the owner or kind of the lead operator, your time is actually your biggest resource. And making sure that you're spending time on the things that are getting maximum impact is critical. And so when I think about operators and I think about optimizing for Google and making sure that that's done, it's less about the money, it's more about the time that it takes. Because not only the one time, kind of like set up and fill out all the fields, there's constant upkeep and Google changes it so often there's a bajillion different metadata fields that you can put on there. And the way that Google tends to rank whether your restaurant shows is how much information you have given them, because they believe that the more information you give them, the more the customer wants to see it. Right. And typically the more data you have on Google, the more likely you're going to be to answer that question and give the information that consumer is looking for. And that's what Google loves.
- [07:45]
A
If you want to learn more about Charlie, go find the link in the show notes number four. Make sure there are pictures for each, each and every item on your online delivery and or your online ordering portal, right? So if you use Toast or Spot on or Lunchbox or Chow Li, whatever it is, and also on your third party delivery sites, right? So on your account, on DoorDash, on Uber Eats, on Grubhub, on Seamless, whatever it is, make sure every single item has pictures and they got to be good pictures. Now you can just use your iPhone, you don't have to go hire a professional. But I promise you, I promise you the ROI is clear. If you wanted to go pay for a photographer, by all means, support the local economy, support local artists. They will deliver you really great products. But if you don't have the budget for that, don't worry about it. Just grab an iPhone, put your food somewhere where there's really good light. So get it up to the front of the restaurant over by the window. Take care. Take advantage of all that beautiful sunlight streaming in your window. Make sure that there are photos for every single item. Those are the first four, number five at the top. On the third party delivery sites and on your online ordering portal, make sure to have a featured section. This should be a section of items that are your most popular, your most profitable. Any signature items drive people to those items they don't know most of the time. Most people don't know what you're famous for, don't know what you're really good at. So show them what you're really good at. Lots of other people ordered these things. Here are our most popular. You are pushing people. It's not just a list of all the stuff you, you have available. You're pushing them to order the things that you want them to order, the things that they're most apt to love. Right? That's number five. Number six, when it comes to third party delivery, you need to focus on conversion. Now you can either do stuffers, right? So by when I say a stuffer, I mean somebody orders your food on Uber Eats. You prepare the food, you bag it up and the UberEats driver comes and picks it up and takes it away. The last thing you do before you send that bag out the front door is you stuff it with a postcard. Either it's a stamp on the side of the bag, it's a stamp on top of the to go food, it's a postcard that's literally in there, maybe it's taped to the top of the food, whatever. And in that, that stuffer, that postcard should be branded for your restaurant. And it should say, do you know you can save by ordering online directly with us? Get $10 off your first order by following this link or by scanning this QR code, right? You're basically saying save this for the next time you want to order and save money, right? That's called a conversion because anybody who orders from you via Uber Eats is not your customer. They are an Uber Eats customer. What we want to do now is turn them in from an Uber Eats custom to one of our customers. Because they are not our customer. We have not acquired the customer, truly, until we have their data, meaning their name, their phone number and their email address. Because we can use that information to remarket to them later. Right? That's what we want to do. Now when we do this conversion tactic, this stuffer in the bag, we're not going to get 50 or 80% conversion. You're probably going to get 5 to 10%. But if you can get 10% of your orders, meaning you get 10 orders on a given Friday night and you convert one of them to come over and order from you directly, right? If you get 10 orders every night and you convert one of them, you get seven new customers every single, every single week. That's no small thing. It's a little piece. All you're doing is designing this postcard, stuffing it in the bag, stapling the bag, clothes, sending it out the door, and the rest will take care of itself. The beauty part then is you can track that specific promotion, right? You're going to give them a specific code, use the promo code XYZ to get $10 off your first order. When you order with us directly, right? You can then run a report and see how many, how many of the promo code xyzs were used in a given period. And you can measure net sales so you can really see if your marketing is working. That's the important thing you need to do. Now if you want to go up and you know, above and beyond, I would use a company like Ovation. So ov Ovation is a customer fee is a guest feedback platform. The website is ovationup.com don't worry, we'll put the link in the show notes. But Ovation basically says, you know, scan this, you know, and take a, take a two question quiz to be entered into a drawing to win a hundred dollar gift certificate. Basically what you're trying to do is you're getting them to scan the little card and say, hey, how was your meal? Thumbs up or thumbs down, right? Hopefully they say thumbs up, you say, oh great, what did you love about it? And you're prompting them, right? And so Ovation, what they do is they drive traffic towards Google or Yelp and says, you had a great time, seems like you loved it. Go let the world know. You'll get more five star reviews that way. Likewise, on the flip side, if it's a thumbs down, it alerts a manager. And a manager can step in and say, hey, I just saw you, you got a delivery and it was a thumbs down. What happened? Let me, I want to make this right in real time, right? Manager can step in and rectify the situation, but only if they know that there's a situation. So when it comes to conversion with a stuffer, you can do a traditional stuff with a QR code and a promo code that gives them a discount if they order directly from you. Or you can use a platform like Ovation to really garner, garner reviews through this reputation management piece and get the manager to step in before something escalates that ends up being really, really powerful. Number seven, if you're offering online ordering right on your website, but it's only for pickup, I want to make you aware of a product that a lot of these third party delivery sites offer. It's called Last Mile Delivery. Doordash. I know. Does it, I think it's something like a $7 delivery charge. Either you pick up or you pass along to the consumer or you can even split the cost. So you, you take half, they take half. So that people can order on your website and say, what do you want to do? Pick up or delivery? They don't know that it's being fulfilled by doordash. And you know what? Most people don't even care. They just know they get the convenience of having it sent right to them. It's like, oh, wow, cool. I didn't realize that. If you're not leveraging that already, it's a powerful, powerful tool and it's a great product that they offer. So it's another way to leverage these huge companies. Finally. Then number eight, the last thing, right? When we talk about the do's and don'ts of third party delivery, I sincerely recommend that you max out all of the promotions. Right? If it's a 15%, 20% or 30% commission and that affects how you're shown in the search results, man, max it out. Do the highest commission because you just want to be at the top. And if you're somewhere in the middle, most people don't scroll that far. They just, they want Chinese Food. They log on, they scroll down and say, oh yeah, this place looks good. They are only going to scroll down so far because they're hungry. They need to order quickly and they need it to arrive quickly. Again, think of those channels, those platforms as acquisition channels. Your goal is to get a lot of orders. The way you get a lot of orders is by being at the top of the list. You pay to be at the top of the list, but it's worth paying for, right? And that brings us all the way back to number one. Remember the first thing I said was that we raised our prices to match the commission fees we pay. So we are never, never going to lose out on profitability again. Let's go through these really quickly and then I'll let you go. The eight things you need to do, right, the do's and don'ts of third party, the third party platforms. Number one, you raise your prices by 30% so that you mitigate all of the commissions you pay. Number two, you do not promote those guys on your own website. That's where you, that's where you're driving people to. You have an online ordering available on your website. Again, do make online ordering available. That's the third one. Number four, make sure you've got pictures for each and every item. Every single item? Yes, every single item. Number five, have a featured section, right? So that's the first thing that people see that's your most popular, your most profitable, your signature items. Number six, focus on conversion with Stuffers or a company like Ovation. Again, that link is going to be in the show notes. Number seven, I would leverage the last mile delivery product that sites like Doordash offer. It ends up being a really, really powerful tool to generate more revenue. And then number eight, max out the promotions. You're raising your prices to match or mitigate the the commissions you pay. So when you max it out, you just go to the top of the list and you get more sales. Those are the eight things. I told you this was going to be quick. We were going to roll through this really, really quickly. Those are the things I would focus on when it comes to third party delivery. One final reminder. Remember I'm giving away my book for free. I already gave away a hundred copies over the last two weeks. It went so well that we're going to give away another hundred copies. You do that by following the link in the show notes. To get a free copy of the book, you just pay shipping $3.92. This is available to anybody in the United States. If you're overseas, I'm sorry, you can still sign up and you will get a beautiful PDF version of the book. You just won't get the hard copy. And everybody who signs up gets 30 days free access to my Restaurant Foundations program. It's brand new. We launched about two months ago. It's an incredible community online course. Tons of resources in there. So go in, get the book, take advantage of that program. Again, you get it free, 30 days, no questions asked when you order this book. I appreciate all you guys being here, making time to to check this show out. I hope you get some value. I hope you get a lot out of this. I hope this helps. Thank you very much guys, and I will see you next time. Sa.