Now more than ever, maximizing revenue is vitally important for anyone in the restaurant and hospitality industry.
Fortunately, over the past few years (and certainly the past few months) we’ve seen a rapid increase in alternative revenue streams available to hospitality businesses in the form of click & collect and delivery services. This has certainly helped.
But there’s still a need to do more. It’s really simple: you cannot afford to let a single potential order go.
Take opening hours and optimizing time in the kitchen, for example. There’s only so many hours you can stay open, and there’s only so much food you can prepare. And even within these limitations, it’s still easy to find yourself idle at certain times of the day and overwhelmed at others.
Some of that is inevitable - but not all of it. And the Flipdish platform provides you with the tools you need to make sure you take as many orders as possible, in a way you can control.
Pre-Ordering: Taking orders before you open for the day
Let’s talk first about Pre-Ordering. It’s easy to configure Flipdish sites and apps to accept orders before you open in the afternoon and evening.
Why would you want to do that?
Because if someone is planning dinner and your name springs to mind, you don’t want the fact that you don’t open for another hour to get in the way. Far too many restaurants and takeaways take orders only when they are open. This is a mistake.
Instead, while making it clear that you are closed at the moment, Pre-Ordering with Flipdish allows the end customer to select what they want, and then choose a time slot to collect or receive delivery. And the only time slots shown are those that can be facilitated, based on the opening hours of the store or branch.
It sounds simple - and it is! Basically, instead of showing your customer this:
You show this:
After all, why exactly should food be the only item that people order and pay for online that you expect to arrive immediately? There is no good reason. And turning away orders that can otherwise add to the bottom line is madness.
For more guidance on this, check out our helpful new video tutorial showing how to set up Pre-Ordering in the Flipdish portal:
Order Throttling
We’ve spoken about Order Throttling before on this blog post, so I’ll keep this relatively simple.
Order Throttling enables you to specify precisely how many orders you can take at any given time of the day, and then automatically stops your customers going over those limits (which would mean a terrible experience for all involved).
To be precise, Flipdish allows you to establish how many orders per 10 minutes you will take, for any given time period of the day or night.
You can see how it works in this image:
But the really important thing about this feature isn’t the ability to set the limit. It is how this is communicated to the customer in the most helpful, friendly way possible.
With Flipdish, if your Order Throttling is set to accept five orders per 10-minute slot, the sixth one is not just rejected. Instead, the customer is directed to the next 10-minute slot, or indeed shown a list of slots available for either delivery or collection from which they can choose.
For the customer, it’s a great experience. For you, it’s a game-changer. Because instead of being swamped and turning customers away (or turning off orders entirely!), you are instead gently directing customers to when you CAN take their order.
In other words, you are maximizing your revenue.
Putting them together
There’s one final thing to be aware of. The combination of Pre-Ordering and Order Throttling gives you total control, and the ability to accept as many orders as you wish for the entirety of your day - before you have even opened your doors!
For customers, it’s simple - they just order and choose delivery or collection slots, whether you are open or closed. Meanwhile, you have specified exactly what you can handle and when, so you can let this happen without any stress!
It’s a great experience all round. And part of Flipdish’s mission is to give our customers not just online ordering, but best-in-class online ordering that really works for their businesses.
