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Onlineordering has transformed the restaurant industry, turning what was once a convenience into an absolute necessity. In 2025, the US online food delivery market is expected to reach $424.9 Customers expect to browse menus, place orders, and pay for their meals with just a few taps of their phones. billion in revenue.
Since Sunny Street's inception 16 years ago, Stasko has led various departments – including menu design, product strategy, the move to a bright and fresh restaurant design, and its family-centric marketing focus. What are the best practices for dealing with food costs for recipes when necessary items are fluctuating in price?
Steady OnlineOrdering Brings Food Waste, Donations to the Forefront of Priorities Ordering food online increases restaurant sales, but it also can potentially increase wasted food if proactive measures aren’t taken – for both the business and consumers at home. Now, the process is fully digitized.
Many restaurant operators have misconceptions about average order volume (AOV) and how it works, making statements like: I need more customers to make more money. For example, lets say you have 50 orders in a day that total $2,000 in revenueall you need to do is divide the total revenue by how many orders you have for the day.
Menu pricing isnt just about covering costsits about finding that sweet spot where profitability, customer perception, and operational reality meet. Set prices too low, and youre leaving money on the table. Most operators aim for food costs to be around 28-35% of the menu price, though this can change from restaurant to restaurant.
As a restaurant owner, you’ve put some serious thought into your interior design, menu development and ambience creation to make your guests feel comfortable and attract more people to visit. But have you thought about your website design? Align your web design with your style. Implement an online reservation system.
While there was a brief dip in consumer awareness of menu price increases in late 2024, the spring of 2025 has seen a moderate rise, affecting dining habits and consumer perceptions of value. “With rising prices tied to eggs and imported goods, restaurants will need to think creatively about their menus,” Fink said.
And no, increasing restaurant sales doesn’t mean turning your restaurant staff into pushy upsellers trying to squeeze a few extra dollars out of every order. Create Limited-Time Offers That Drive Action Limited-time offers (LTOs) give potential customers a reason to order now, not later.
An onlineordering system is table stakes for every restaurant these days. But if you're still on the fence about implementing online food ordering software at your establishment, take a look at some of the latest stats from the National Restaurant's Association's 2025 State of the Restaurant Industry Report.
Restaurants are already experimenting with using AI to handle drive through orders to allow human employees to focus on customer interactions in the restaurant. I think smart, AI-enabled platforms will turn data into intelligence around visit frequency, ordering, traffic patterns and more.
Understanding your target market is the foundation of making smart decisions for your menu, pricing, and overall guest experience. A restaurant target market is the specific group of customers your restaurant is designed to attract. Income: Do your customers prioritize affordability, or are they willing to pay premium prices?
If you want to escape the guesswork and increase your monthly profits, you need to use menu engineeringit blends psychology, data, and clever design to help you sell more of your most profitable items. Menu engineering is the process of using data and design to make your menu more profitable. Hidden gems with potential.
The concept goes far beyond a simple online menu or QR code. Every dine-in experience starts with a menu, so having yours available online is the first step to going contactless. However, restaurants have discovered that not all online menus are made the same. Every restaurant should look into hosting its own onlineordering.
If youre one of the thousands of restaurants that added online food delivery in recent years, you might be wondering: is it actually helping my business grow? These metrics give you a clear picture of your delivery performancefrom order volume and customer retention to delivery speed and profitability.
77% of diners look at a restaurants website before going out to eat or ordering takeout or delivery. If you dont have a website, that means over three-quarters of the people near your restaurantyour potential customerswill never come in or place an order because they have no way to find you when theyre looking for a place to eat.
Youre delivering a great dining experience, yet foot traffic remains inconsistent, online engagement is low, and new customers arent coming in as often as youd like. Optimize Your Restaurants Online Presence Your restaurants online presence is often the first touch point for potential guests, so make it count.
However, 30 percent of high-income consumers are dining at TSRs more frequently than before, signaling room for premium offerings at the right price. Value Isn’t Just About Price—It’s About Experience Price sensitivity may be at an all-time high, but focusing solely on discounts risks missing the bigger picture.
Is onlineordering inefficient? Experiencing over-ordering or last-minute shortages? Are you aiming to speed up service, cut labor costs, or increase online sales? A higher-priced system that saves time and reduces errors might be more valuable than a cheaper, less effective alternative. Are labor costs too high?
For a long time, third-party delivery apps seemed like the easiest way to get your restaurant online and in front of new customers. Instead of giving up control to outside platforms, some restaurants are shifting to a more direct approach: first-party ordering. First-Party vs. Third-Party Ordering: Whats the Difference?
Knowing the true cost per serving means you’re not guessing where to set menu prices. When done correctly, dish costing helps you control food costs, reduce food waste, and price items in a way that supports your restaurant’s financial health without alienating guests. Every smart pricing move starts here.
Today, customers rely on Google searches, online reviews, and social media to decide where to eat. People want convenience, transparency, and a connection to the brands they support, and that starts with how you market your restaurant online. A strong online presence means more visibility, more orders, and, ultimately, more revenue.
Diners want the convenience of ordering, booking, and engaging with their favorite restaurants straight from their phones. Beyond mobile ordering, restaurant apps support operations in ways that were never available before. Onlineordering and delivery apps. Here is an example of a restaurants branded app.
The tool from the East Coast vegan chain — a digital take on a split-flap mechanical display that appears on its website and in the chain’s ordering app — estimates the amounts of water, land, CO2, and oil saved by eating vegan burgers. The “ PLNT Impact Tracker ” on PLNT Burger’s website wants you to think about what you’re eating.
Plaid represents structure, heritage, and intentional design. From there, we can start developing the brand identity (think color palettes, typography, and logo design). The restaurant needs cohesion, from signage to menu design to uniforms. For regulars, make a point to remember names, orders, and preferences.
They’re demanding increased levels of immediacy, having grown accustomed to ordering and paying — even ordering ahead — with a few taps of a smartphone. Meanwhile, diners can scan a QR code to easily view and order from your menu, as well as alter and route items to the correct kitchen location in real time.
Restaurants can now use customer data to enhance restaurant menu design, creating smarter menus that increase profits and improve the dining experience. Set Smarter Prices : Use data to adjust prices based on demand and profitability. Smarter Pricing Adjust prices based on order frequency and demand.
It allows AI to understand and respond to human language, which is how virtual assistants can answer customer questions or take onlineorders. The best restaurant-focused AI tools are designed to support staff not replace them. Theyre designed to be easy to implement and even easier to see value from.
” He said the design was meant to have that “Wow” factor, not just a name of a business and a phone number. “While working takeout, people drove by and said, ‘I saw the van, I called the number, I need a takeout order for tonight.’ And it has gotten people’s attention. ”
Dark kitchens or virtual kitchens––real places staffed with non-ectoplasmic people—bring efficiencies to running a restaurant by providing off-site commissary services for delivery orders. Growth for most, after all, isn’t walking through the front door, it’s coming in online. It might not be.
If your site is clunky, hard to navigate, or missing basic features like a prominent onlineordering button, your potential customer will bounce because diners have little to no tolerance for friction or confusion when theyre looking for food. 77% of diners visit a restaurants website before they dine in or order takeout or delivery.
Restaurants will continue to embrace digital on-premise, including mobile ordering and payment at the table, to streamline operations and improve the guest experience. Restaurants will continue to embrace digital on-premise, including mobile ordering and payment at the table, to streamline operations and improve the guest experience.
Further Optimize Delivery, Takeout and Curbside Experiences Many QSRs already relieve congested drive-thrus with distinct lines or protocols for call-ahead orders and third-party pickups. One of our clients, a well-known QSR legacy brand, added an express drive-thru lane for customers ordering ahead on the brand’s app.
Online food delivery thrives as phones become one-stop shops for ordering and tracking meals. This convenience has made the online food delivery market massive, with global revenues of over $1 trillion in 2023 alone. They must choose whether to use third-party onlineordering platforms or handle delivery in-house.
It's important to guide them in adjusting to specific parameters in order to achieve a successful partnership. For example, Pancheros now implements pick-up windows where needed, as our online business has grown rapidly due to the pandemic shifting people’s buying habits.
Some operators are willing to have you work today, get paid tomorrow in order to get people in place to handle their minimum requirements. Order at the table through apps and kiosk ordering for fast casual/fast food is being embraced to reduce the need for wait staff. 200 onlineorders a month with one to two people. .
Frequent users (ordering from restaurants more than five times a week) were far more digitally engaged with brands. About half of respondents rely on apps for loyalty or rewards promotions, an effective and profitable way to grow your brand’s reach in these price-sensitive times. But don’t just take our word for it.
Its more than just designing a cool logo, picking a catchy name, and slapping it on everything. Its the sum of everything about your restaurant, from your menu design and decor to the tone you use when replying to comments on social media or greeting customers walking through the door. But how to brand a restaurant isnt always clear.
Since the pandemic, restaurants have endured a plethora of issues ranging from fluctuating dining restrictions to supply chain issues to rising food prices. At the forefront of these investments is artificial intelligence, which is a technology that, by design, is intended to accomplish tasks that are typically done by people.
Restaurants will also explore delivery options beyond costly third-party partnerships, and hike delivery menu prices to make the channel more lucrative as off-premise demand holds steady. Younger generations are willing to pay higher prices for healthy meals specifically tied to buzzwords such as GMO-free, all-natural, or organic.
If you want to increase order volume for your restaurant, focusing on online takeout and delivery is key. But growing onlineorder volume isnt always easy. Many restaurants struggle with high third-party app fees, low website traffic, and clunky ordering experiences that drive customers away.
Retailers have always guided customers to products, and navigation is fundamental to good store design. The pandemic massively accelerated the widespread adoption of a variety of paths to purchase, including buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS), delivery and app-based ordering. Now, it’s the same with QSRs.
It just goes to show how important drink pricing and cost management are to maximizing profits. Bar profit margin and pour cost Some high-performing bars can reach higher margins by optimizing their costs and pricing strategies. Keep in mind that certain drinks can be priced higher due to their popularity or unique ingredients.
Although there is an undeniable convenience of seeing all flight options in a single search pane, Southwest has opted out of appearing on aggregators, instead offering an everyday low price value proposition for booking direct. Will the restaurant industry learn from these cautionary insights?
As catering orders grew, so did the demand on his time. Without the right tools in place, scaling onlineorders in a sustainable way became more difficult to manage. Third-party platforms helped generate some new orders, but the tradeoff came at a cost. Reduce the amount of revenue lost to high commission fees.
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