B (6:36)

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.

A (7:45)

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.