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Many restaurant owners could use the slow customer turnout as a good reason to panic: The reality is more than 60% of independently owned restaurants fail within the first three years. But a lack of foot traffic didn't spell doom for Diakhate's venture. That's because while customers may not have been stumbling upon his physical location from day one, they were finding him digitally.
Diakhate's customers were able to use an online ordering platform to find his restaurant and place orders online - and his business began to grow exponentially. Even now, digital accessibility makes all the difference in keeping Badou Senegalese Cuisine busy year round.
"Especially in the winter time," says Diakhate, "I don't have customers walking through the door - but I do have online ordering."
The benefits of online ordering
Diakhate's experience is just one of many success stories in the new age of online ordering. A recent study commissioned by GrubHub, an online and mobile food ordering company, found restaurants using the online-ordering service were able to grow their takeout revenue by an average of 30%. In fact, one in five doubled their takeout revenue. Between changing consumer behavior and the relative ease of implementing online ordering through platforms like GrubHub, being digitally accessible is now more important than ever for restaurant success.
According to a recent GlobalWebIndex report, consumers now spend more than six hours a day online. So it's no surprise that the National Restaurant Association says the availability of technology options is an important factor when choosing a restaurant for nearly one-third of all adults and more than 40% of millennials. These are just some of the reasons why being digitally accessible is critical for reaching these potential customers. To millennials, even if a restaurant is right around the corner, it's virtually invisible if it's not easy to access online.
And being truly digitally accessible includes the ability to take orders online. According to the National Restaurant Association, 60% of adults say they'd likely take advantage of delivery to their homes or offices if limited-service restaurants offered it.
Operational advantages to online ordering
Being more convenient for consumers is important, but it's just one of the many benefits to online-ordering platforms. The research found that GrubHub's order technology was able to cut order-processing time by more than half, which provides a huge benefit to restaurants' internal operations.
Research shows 75% of phone orders take more than a minute, and 30% take longer than three minutes. When added up, every 100 takeout orders received each week on GrubHub saved the restaurants 2.5 hours of workers' time. With customers entering their own information, online ordering can also improve accuracy.
Showing the biggest benefit to moving to online ordering were smaller restaurants; they typically see a 50% increase in takeout revenue after joining GrubHub.
Implementing the system
Even with all of those benefits, online ordering can be a tough sell to some restaurateurs. After all, they spend all day focused on creating great food and retaining customers to keep the lights on. Taking time out of their hectic schedule to become tech savvy can seem like too big a task, let alone taking on an extra cost.
Launching online ordering is easier than most restaurant owners realize. There's no cost to sign up, and most online ordering platforms are both user-friendly and offer a great amount of technical support.
Though it certainly takes time to get online ordering up and running, given the staff time saved by the service and the ability to potentially dramatically grow takeout revenue, the investment is one restaurateurs like Badara Diakhate have been grateful they've made.
Find out more about how restaurants are benefitting from online-ordering systems.
This post is sponsored by GrubHub.
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