Due to our current circumstances, many hospitality business owners have had to pivot from in-house dining experiences to online delivery options, so they can still keep busy and hopefully still employ staff on a continuing basis.
Food ordering and delivery platforms allow restaurants to make the most of both digital and traditional marketing mediums.
Online food delivery platforms are expanding the choice and convenience for customers to order from a wide variety of restaurants directly from their phone or device.
Getting food delivered right to your doorstep at anytime and anywhere is easier now than it ever has been. There are heaps of online delivery apps available now and all you need to do is set one up for your business, collect orders and have it ready for delivery.
The focus now is the food itself, packaging and presentation, taste and how fast it can get to your door.
However, it is good to have different options, as you may be paying up to 35% in fees to have the food delivered, making it impossible to make any profit.
Here is some good information for online ordering and delivery options for restaurants:
Deliveroo lets you track your food in real time, and for the most part the app promises sub-30-minute delivery times, which helps it fit into tight lunch breaks and for you to time it closely with your commute home after a long day. Ordering that comfort food, health food or local favourite is easy thanks to Deliveroo’s extensive range of restaurants. Expect longer from premium restaurants, but that is to be expected. The Deliveroo app tracks the rider in real time, and if your meal includes alcohol, they can deliver that too. There are even catering options for work functions.
Merged with EatNow, Menulog is an Australian and New Zealand-based food app with some of the widest-reaching delivery services. The business claims to cover 90% of delivery addresses, which is pretty significant if you think about all the country towns in the land down under.
Menulog reportedly has some of the lowest commission rates, although UberEATS and Deliveroo do not typically reveal the exact rate they charge restaurants.
Menulog is Australia’s widest-reaching food delivery service, delivering to 90% of all addresses. Order local favourites or discover new dishes from 11,000 plus restaurants covering 70 different cuisines. The spectacular user experience and multiple restaurant line up have made Menulog fastest budding digital food delivery app services. The app features user reviews, and many restaurants offer a 25% discount if it’s your first time ordering. Add alcohol to your meal and Menulog is happy to deliver it. If you order with Menulog and find the same item delivered by the same restaurant at a better price within 24 hours, they will credit you the difference plus an additional $10.
UberEATS is one of the largest providers of on-demand food delivery around the world. Get the food you love from the restaurant you love at Uber speed, this is the motto of UberEats – food delivery app. The mobile application is redesigned with enhanced user experience and user interface. Food images are well-presented that attracts the visitors and compels them to order food online.
Ride-sharing app turned delivery service Uber Eats will help you find the local flavours you crave and deliver to your door with “Uber speed.”. Browse local restaurants and fast food favourites or go directly to what you want by searching names, dishes or cuisine. You can pay for food via your Uber account, and track the rider every step of the way.
This US based company recently launched in Australia in Sept 2019, but is only available in Melbourne and Sydney. Use the DoorDash website or app to browse eligible restaurants. Order and securely pay online and your food is on the way!
DoorDash is a technology company that connects people with the best in their cities. We do this by empowering local businesses and in turn, generate new ways for people to earn, work and live. We started by facilitating door-to-door delivery, but we see this as just the beginning of connecting people with possibility — easier evenings, happier days, bigger savings accounts, wider nets and stronger communities.
Get discovered by hungry customers and easily accept their online orders. Streamline your takeout and delivery orders with Zomato Order.
Zomato provides information, menus and user-reviews of restaurants, and also has food delivery options from partner restaurants in select cities.
Just two clicks and food will be delivered at your doorstep. With more than 2,600 restaurants on board, EatNow has become one of the most crowd-pleasing food apps in Australia. Matt Dyer, former web developer got influenced by the concept and trialled with the business idea which became successful quite fast.
Purchased by Menulog in September 2019, all orders are now done through the Menulog app.
EASI, No.1 Asian food delivery app used in Australia. Popular restaurants, cafes and grocery stores have joined us. EASI is one of the most popular food delivery apps in Australia. EASI brings gourmets from 12,000+ restaurant partners to our users‘ doorsteps. In Australia, EASI is now serving more than 1,000,000 users in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and Canberra. EASI is now boosting into an enormous global expansion.
Another home-grown Australian business, OrderUp! gives businesses and franchises customisation power over their own delivery services. For example, businesses can choose what area they want to deliver to, manage their own payments and delivery logistics.
Order Up is here to provide you with an affordable online ordering solution during this crisis. We can get you online fast and connect you with your customers. We offer the ability to enable Contactless Pick-Up & Delivery. Stand out from the crowd, build a database for future marketing and keep more profits from your hard earned revenue.
Australia’s new way to order and pay. Me&U is a smart menu that lives inside your pocket and adapts to whichever restaurant you walk into. It allows you to seamlessly order your food and pay your bill. No matter where you are Me&U knows your favourite foods, dietary needs, the best dishes and your preferred method of payment.
Combining the beauty of Instagram and the convenience of Uber, Me&U is making the dining experience better, faster and more convenient than ever before. Customers can now turn up to a restaurant, bar or café and simply tap, order & pay with ease. No more hands in the air trying to catch the waiter’s attention, no more standing in a queue and no more time wasted splitting the bill.
Hey You is the most popular coffee ordering app in Australia. Use it to discover local cafes, browse their menus. The app allows you to pre-pay and pre-order from your favourite restaurants and cafes before you arrive, saving past purchases for easy reordering. Then go pick up your coffee and pastry beating the queue. Discover new places to eat and drink near your home or workplace. You can pay in advance, so there’s no need to drag the wallet if grabbing a coffee on a morning jog. Best of all, the Hey You app lets you collect loyalty benefits without the hassle of cards and stamps.
Although Hey You technically doesn’t deliver to your door (yet—there are reports that the Australian-based company is trialling deliveries.
Bopple connects customers to nearby local restaurants and allows them to find, order and pay straight from the app. We’re working with over a hundred of the best spots to put the best local food and drink, all in one place. If you’re craving it, you can find it and order ahead on Bopple.
You can choose what time you’d like to collect your order, or keep your seat and we’ll have it sent to your table number. The average order takes 6 minutes from start to finish.
You can track your order at anytime or we will notify you when it’s ready to collect or on it’s way to you. We’ll even email your order receipt making it easier when you’re on the go. To remove waiting times at restaurants and improve the overall customer experience is London-founded, Brisbane-based app Boppl. The app is a mobile ordering and payment platform that allows customers to order food and drinks from venues via their phone. Customers can place orders either before they arrive at a venue or when they are seated. This means that customers order when they are ready instead of when the wait staff are ready.
Skip is another one for coffee fiends. It’s a Hey You competitor and its hook is that it makes ordering every bit as easy — even down to the super-simplified interface. If there’s a cafe near you that always has long lines out the door when you’re walking past, it’s genuinely worth checking to see whether they have a listing in Skip that lets you duck past the unwashed masses and pick up some hot caffeine.
Delivery Hero is all about popular lunch and dinner choices — it’s where you’d go to order from your local pizza place or that great Chinese down the road. Importantly, you can use Delivery Hero to order food which you can then pay for with cash at your doorstep, so especially if you’re ordering for a large group or don’t have a credit card, it’s a little easier to manage than competitors.
Postmates is an American exclusive food delivery app that deserves a place way in Sydney and Melbourne. This ingenious app has the largest on-demand network in the industry. Beyond food, Postmates can deliver groceries and alcohol for your next house party. Our favourite trait of Postmates and something we would like the local food delivery brands to adopt is the subscription plan. With Postmates, you pay around $8 USD per month and receive unlimited deliveries at no extra cost.
WooRestaurant
WooRestaurant utilizes WooCommerce to add a complete online food ordering and delivery service to your restaurant’s website.
Check out the live demo for WooRestaurant where you can try out browsing menus, adding items to your cart, and completing the checkout process. The menu can have multiple categories where visitors switch between “pages” instantly without the whole page reloading. Every menu item can have a unique image and symbols for qualities like spice level and vegetarian.
Visitors can make an order for pickup or delivery. You can also set a fixed delivery price and a minimum order amount, and include your hours of operation too. These are all critical for a professional restaurant website.
Since this food delivery plugin is built to work with extremely popular WooCommerce plugin, you can expect perfection from the payment processing and order accuracy.
RestroPress is an Online Food Ordering system for WordPress. It is a standalone WordPress plugin which allows you to easily add Food Ordering System to your WordPress Website. Using RestroPress you can easily receive both PickUp and Delivery orders.
RestroPress has a user friendly frontend and backend interface which will allow you to easily manage the orders and also comes with pre built user dashboard to manage their profile and orders.
To make food businesses work more effectively, efficiently & effortlessly with the use of sophisticated information technology combined with thoughtful user experience at the most affordable prices ever.
Restaurant Menu – Food Ordering System – Table Reservation
This plugin is all you need to turn your restaurant website into an online business. Using a simple and friendly interface you get a restaurant menu, online food ordering and restaurant booking system. All free, no fees, no hidden costs, no commissions – for unlimited food orders and restaurant reservations.
It is super easy to set up and there’s no coding required. Just follow the wizard, insert the food menu and publish the ordering button. You’ll be ready for the first food order within minutes.
WebPOS offers fully customised online ordering web apps that are fast, customer friendly and commission-free.
Your own professional, attractive & user-friendly online ordering website that adjusts for the best experience on desktop, mobile & tablet.
This free online ordering platform, FROLO enables restaurants who offer take-out and delivery to quickly and easy take orders online from their own website with no fees and no sharing f customer details.
Marketing4Restaurants Free Restaurant Online Ordering System helps restaurants who offer takeout and delivery from their restaurant to quickly and easily take orders online from their own website with no fees and no sharing of customer details.
Foodora is one of the premium food apps in Australia which delivers only cuisines from the best of the restaurants. The app displays curated list of reputed restaurants and follows a streamlined process of ordering and delivering food. Since this online food app delivers eatables from restaurant that otherwise traditionally don’t deliver, it is gaining a lot of momentum.
Note: Foodora has ceased operating in Australia since August 2018
POS Apps
Check with your current POS supplier, as many of these have add-on or additional options to add this to your current system.
Conclusion
This article has been brought to you by Maralytics, a marketing analytics software platform where you can compare sales results.
If you’re not sure which of these online delivery platforms is best for you, then try a few of them using their free trial options, and set up a campaign in Maralytics (using the free trial), so you can see the results in a format that compares apples for apples. This is the only way you can really compare which one is right for your business.
