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Onlineordering has transformed the restaurant industry, turning what was once a convenience into an absolute necessity. In 2025, the US onlinefood delivery market is expected to reach $424.9 Customers expect to browse menus, place orders, and pay for their meals with just a few taps of their phones.
While there was a brief dip in consumer awareness of menu price increases in late 2024, the spring of 2025 has seen a moderate rise, affecting dining habits and consumer perceptions of value. Millennials and parents also over-index in restaurant visits, with a strong inclination toward nightlife activities and premium dining experiences.
If youre one of the thousands of restaurants that added onlinefood delivery in recent years, you might be wondering: is it actually helping my business grow? These metrics give you a clear picture of your delivery performancefrom order volume and customer retention to delivery speed and profitability.
This edition of Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine's Research Roundup features news on summer restaurant employment, indecisiveness ordering, onlineordering trends, and the world's best cities for food. percent stating these hikes have changed their ordering decisions.
Nowadays, running a successful restaurant takes more than great food and good service. With 90% of diners checking a restaurant online before visiting, you also need a strong online presence to attract and boost reservations. Let’s explore 26 proven online marketing strategies to help your restaurant thrive.
In recent years, the food service industry has undergone a rapid transformation of automation and increased technology usage. This has led to many perks for consumers, such as reduced wait times, contactless ordering, and more personalized offers and rewards. Perkins American Food Co. percent from 2025 to 2033 and reach US$ 345.6
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.
Foot traffic or heat mapping, menu item engagement, or consumer demographics by time of day. Restaurants are already experimenting with using AI to handle drive through orders to allow human employees to focus on customer interactions in the restaurant.
Understanding your target market is the foundation of making smart decisions for your menu, pricing, and overall guest experience. Without a well-defined target market, restaurants risk wasting resources on strategies that dont connect and menu offerings that dont selltrying to appeal to everyone, but standing out to no one.
Are you doing all the right thingsserving amazing food, delivering top-notch service, crafting perfectly balanced drinksbut the tables still arent filling up like they should? 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.
You can have a crowd-pleasing menu, loyal regulars, and a packed dining roomand still watch your margins disappear. Too many restaurant menus are built on intuition and aesthetics, not real numbers. What Is Menu Engineering and Why Should You Care? Because not every dish thats popular is profitable.
Every onlineorder, email sign up, and reward program interaction generates valuable insightsbut if that data just sits there, youre missing a major opportunity. Think about it: What if you could automatically send a special offer to a customer who hasnt ordered in a while? Restaurants collect a ton of customer data.
When business slows down, its easy to blame the season, the weather, or people not going out like they used to, but sometimes all customers need is a good reminder or the right reason to show up again. Are you trying to increase your direct onlineordering ? Start by asking: What are you trying to accomplish?
A customer in Miami should bite into the same perfectly seasoned burger that delights diners in Seattle. One location might offer seamless mobile ordering, while another struggles with glitchy payment systems, creating inconsistencies that can frustrate customers and impact revenue. And customers aren’t the only ones at risk.
A well-crafted email can remind a past guest to stop by again, encourage reservations for a new seasonalmenu, or even boost onlineorders with a limited-time discount. A well-timed email with a special offer, new menu item, or exclusive promotion can be the nudge they need to place another order.
Have you ever walked into a restaurant, excited for a great meal, but the server can’t answer your questions about the menu? Without the right training, even the best menu or ambiance can fall short due to poor service, leading to dissatisfied customers and lost revenue.
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.
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.
Keeping menus updated across various onlineordering systems and third-party delivery apps can feel like a never-ending game of catch-up. Manually updating menus across multiple onlineordering channels is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to mistakes. What is Menu Management Software?
By analyzing customer preferences, dining habits, and feedback, AI chatbots can send personalized messages to engage customers with new menu items, exclusive offers, and meal recommendations. Automated Ordering AI-powered chatbots can handle customer orders, reducing the need for human intervention.
It’s the foundation of knowing your actual food cost. 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.
Is onlineordering inefficient? Do you lose money due to food waste? Experiencing over-ordering or last-minute shortages? Are you aiming to speed up service, cut labor costs, or increase online sales? Are labor costs too high? The best tech investments solve real problems. Too many missed reservations?
Understanding what customers order, when they order, and how often is an untapped goldmine of information for restaurant operators. What do repeat orders say about our customer preferences? Ordering data includes more than just what gets sold. Which dishes are getting ordered the most?
It gives people everything they need to make a decision about where to eat, including business hours, phone number, location, menu, photos, reviews, and links to onlineordering, all in one place. Add high-quality photos of your food, staff, dining space, and even signage. A blurry menu photo from 2018 isn’t a good look.
Today, the global food delivery app industry is predicted to reach $320 billion by 2029 — up from $140 billion in 2022. As such, implementing a robust food delivery and takeout service has become critical for restaurants’ longevity and success. Manages orders at peak hours so the kitchen isn’t overwhelmed.
Picture the perfect dinner party: thoughtful food selection, a welcoming host, and an ambiance that takes your mind off of the troubles of your every day. They’re demanding increased levels of immediacy, having grown accustomed to ordering and paying — even ordering ahead — with a few taps of a smartphone.
In order to achieve long-term success and build essential brand credibility, restaurants must cultivate meaningful experiences and relationships to help drive growth and expansion. National food holidays, once everyday occurrences on the culinary calendar, have evolved into marketing goldmines for restaurants.
Of all the costs your restaurants generate, your food is one of the largest. The cost of the food you serve can be affected by so many different outside influences, some of them more obvious, like the rise and fall of fuel costs or the effects of good or bad weather. The cost of food and beverages is a bit of a moving target.
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. Simplified Menus. Menu variety plays a substantial role in every dining experience. Health-Conscious Food Will Dominate Menus.
Increase sales by promoting high-margin menu items and special offers. Factor in seasonal trends: If your restaurant has seasonal peaks and slow periods, adjust your budget accordingly. You might need to spend more on marketing before busy seasons and scale back during slower months. Looking to promote new menu items?
A spike in food costs, a drop in sales volume, or one slow season can wipe out months of hard work. They tell you how much money your restaurant keeps after paying for everything from food costs to labor expenses to utilities and rent. This gives you a sense of how effective your menu pricing is.
Every day, youre juggling staff, food quality, inventory, customer service, purchasing, and moreall while trying to cultivate a dining experience that wows your customers enough to keep them coming back. Customer Service and Experience Great food and drink is only truly enjoyed when its coupled with a great service experience.
A Link Page solves this problem by hosting a menu of links accessible with one evergreen link. In the caption, you write something like, “Tis the season for Cranberry Martini’s! OnlineMenu Link. The first thing most customers want to find is your onlinemenu. OnlineOrdering Link.
Restaurateurs put great passion into their food, their concept, and their decor. A restaurant’s brand identity is the cumulative effect of what your guests see, taste, smell, feel and hear at your restaurant, online, and in the world at large. Your online presence is almost as important as your restaurant itself.
Are your regulars ordering the same drink and entree every time they come in? Pick your event idea by looking at your: Venue size and layout Customer demographic Available resources Time of year (season) Community Write out each of these factors, and a picture will emerge of which restaurant event idea will best fit your location.
A bar is a profitable business option if you’re looking to enter the food industry. Start by tracking all the income your bar generates, including sales from drinks, food, and any additional services. Analyze your product mix Review the drinks and food items you sell the most and least.
Consider options such as food-delivery services to attract and retain new customers, QR codes to reduce menu costs and expedite orders, using social media and other potentially low-cost digital ways to attract customers, and online business checking accounts that cut out unnecessary fees are all great ways to proactively manage costs.
89% of people do dining research on their phones, so if you’re not making the most of your online presence, you're missing out on a huge opportunity. Whether through supporting local charities or participating in food drives, local restaurants can become go-to places for customers who want to support their community.
Participants reported continued food and labor cost increases, with 88 percent experiencing rising staff expenses, compared to 89 percent in last year’s annual survey, and 86 percent reporting an increase in food costs.
Winter can be a tough season for restaurant and bar owners. Here are a few ideas for restaurant and bar owners to consider in an effort to continue to serve up good eats and top-tier service during the winter season. Consider making food that travels well for those who select curbside pickup or delivery.
Since the pandemic, restaurants have endured a plethora of issues ranging from fluctuating dining restrictions to supply chain issues to rising food prices. Taking Orders with Artificial Intelligence. One place where AI has been making an impact as these challenges persist is with phone ordering.
1 Simplify the Dining Area for Comfort and Style Updating the dining area produces a friendly environment that invites guests to remain longer and enjoy their food. 2 Fresh and Local Ingredients Elevate the Menu Using fresh, locally grown foods freshens the menu and demonstrates quality consciousness.
With rapid advances happening across various industries, including the food industry, you might be wondering: What does AI have to do with running my restaurant? These are tools that can help you streamline operations, easily schedule staff, and make sure you never run out of ingredients for your best-selling menu items.
But that does not mean that they are married to the idea of cooking at home for every meal, so offer as many dining options as possible including dine-in, carryout, onlineordering, curbside pick-up, and delivery. From collecting the feedback, restaurants can gauge if there is interest in adding meatless options to the menu.
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