Third-party delivery services like Uber Eats, Grubhub and others are taking the market by storm. But using them comes at a cost, to the tune of 20% to 30% in fees and commissions, which cuts into restaurants’ margins, says Larry Fiel, director of marketing for PDQ POS, an all-in-one, all-in-house point-of-sale technology solutions provider in Warminster, Pennsylvania. “It’s no surprise that restaurants have gravitated to the delivery revenue stream,” Fiel says. “The problem is that the stream flows more toward the delivery providers.”
PDQ POS circumvents that margin loss with its PDQ OO, a native, built-in online ordering platform that can be used standalone or with any third-party service. “We’ve been ‘trained’ to think of online ordering/delivery as our primary method of obtaining food,” Fiel says. “Accordingly, restaurants have been ‘promised’ new growth via an expanded customer base. But are they really obtaining a breadth of new customers—or is their existing base simply shifting to online vs. in-store? Either way, restaurants need to play in this space in order to remain relevant.”
Fiel recommends using the PDQ Online Ordering platform right from the restaurant’s website. “When a customer orders from an online delivery platform, reach out and ask them to order directly from your website the next time and entice them with loyalty program incentives,” he says. “You’ll still get the eyeballs and traffic from the third-party site, but you’ll train customers to reorder from your PDQ OO platform, where your cost is measured in a few dollars a day total rather than 20% to 30% of each order.”
Seamless Integration
PDQ POS provides built-in, seamless integration and interfaces with all top-tier platforms, including online ordering, loyalty, labor/scheduling, inventory and payroll. It also provides the project management necessary to make it all work. This minimizes cost, time and effort, as PDQ POS does all the “heavy lifting.” And PDQ POS assumes all the accountability for the restaurateur if a problem arises in any one technology component.
Experience Counts
PDQ POS has been perfecting its innovative ordering and delivery software for over 32 years. “We began operations in the most demanding restaurant concept, namely pizza,” Fiel says. “There’s every possible way to order, including phone-in, delivery, at-counter, at-table and online, and myriad ways to have your pizza prepared. If you can master the art of ordering and delivering pizza, you can tackle any restaurant concept and delivery nuance.”
To learn more, visit PDQpos.com and PDQoo.com today.
