Food delivery for everything from household essentials to tasty meals has become commonplace. You click on a gig economy app, make a selection, and food is delivered to your door.
While food delivery is mainstream, restaurants are finding they have little control over the outsourced delivery drivers, speed of delivery, or personal brand representation. Worse, third-party delivery can take a healthy chunk of your profits.
It’s time to change to in-house delivery— a win-win (for the customer and brand). Here are three tips for moving to in-house food delivery. This way, you’ll make the transition as smooth as possible.
1.Hire qualified brand-conscious drivers
Research shows that when customers order food delivered and something goes wrong, they blame the restaurant, not the third-party delivery service.
From the time the healthy meal leaves the restaurant, many problems could occur (traffic, poor GPS, inadequate food insulation, etc.). All of which may have little to do with the brand, but rather faulty timing and planning on the part of the delivery team.
When you move to in-house delivery, you can better protect your brand’s image. You can hire qualified and dedicated delivery drivers that can better ensure your food arrives hot and fast. You can train delivery drivers to represent your company, regardless if you specialize in grocery deliveries or take out.
Most outsourced delivery drivers wear anything they want, from shorts to t-shirts. When you move to in-house delivery, your drivers can wear branded clothing or a uniform with company colors and logo.
Nothing is more professional than having a delivery driver look and act like the host or hostess greeting customers in-person. It tells the customer that no matter where they dine (at home or in your dining room), the experience and quality is the same.
If you value excellent customer service, your delivery driver should as well. This way, the customer experience is seamless door to door.
When you hire day delivery drivers, you also need to decide whether you’ll use an in-house delivery vehicle or pay per mile for personal vehicle use. Insurance coverage is another important consideration when moving to in-house delivery.
One option is to use ShiftPixy’s native delivery solution. You’re moving to in-house delivery with the support of a brand-trained delivery service that includes vehicles and driver insurance. In essence, you have all the benefits of a third-party on-demand food app without all the excessive fees and poor brand representation.
ShiftPixy connects you to a network of ready and trained drivers while covering auto coverage. The health and safety of all drivers won’t be a concern if you invest in ShiftPixy.
2. Own the Customer Experience
While ordering on-demand placed many restaurants within the fingertips of hungry customers on social media or third-party apps (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates), it also places a barrier between the restaurant and customer.
The customer is no longer engaging with the restaurant but a third-party app with no loyalty to their goals. Outsourcing online ordering also takes a healthy chunk out of revenue. In some cases, 30% of the profits.
When you move to in-house food delivery, plan how to own the customer experience. Look at everything from your website to an online ordering system. Every time your customers interact with your restaurant, the better chance you have of developing brand loyalty. Moving to in-house delivery gives you control over your customer experience and saves you money.
3. Choose a reliable delivery tracking system
As part of owning the customer experience, and avoiding brand damage, select a reliable delivery tracking system. The ShiftPixy native delivery solution, powered by ZiPixy, offers consistent customer data tracking. From the moment shoppers place an order, you can follow the order from your restaurant to the point of delivery.
You’re given exact metrics for completion time and driver performance. With third-party food delivery apps, you lose all customer data and can’t track information. How do you know if the food reached its destination? Did the customer highly rate the delivery driver?
You own all the data regardless if it’s the same day delivery or scheduled for a later date. You’ll know exactly how the delivery went.
ZiPixy will save time in trying to figure out all the delivery metrics. If something goes wrong, you’ll know immediately, and the ZiPixy communicates with the customer the whole time. You’ll be able to respond and learn about customer feedback directly.
This way, you’ll ensure excellent customer service and complete control. ShiftPixy puts you in the driver’s seat. Native delivery with ShiftPixy offers you the following benefits:
- Increase and preserve profits
- Brand protection
- Seamless delivery
- Own your customer experience
- Track delivery times and data
- Trained brand delivery drivers
- Uniformed delivery drivers
- Includes auto insurance
Deciding to offer in-house food delivery doesn’t have to happen overnight. However, there has been a healthy shift to food delivery in the last few months, with data showing the trend will continue.
If you’re still relying on third-party delivery, you’re giving your profits away and jeopardizing your brand image. Follow these three tips for moving to in-house delivery, and you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to switch.
Find out what it would take with your current resources to get your very own native delivery service to hit the ground running. Book a demo today! 