Restaurants can stay ahead of the competition by enabling their customers to order ahead. Selling food in advance will help you boost sales and increase loyalty. Customers can schedule orders and avoid sitting in a queue. You can accept food pre-orders using the order-taking app.
It’s a win-win.
We live in busy times when there is high consumer demand for online food orders. Customers often choose to pre-order food online on their smartphones to save time.
Let’s see how using an online food pre-order system will help you increase sales and drive repeat business.
Why do customers love food pre-order?
To what do we owe this increasingly high consumer demand for scheduling online food orders via an order-ahead app? Here are the main reasons why customers prefer ordering ahead:
- limited interaction
- convenience
- shorter wait time
Every business owner wants to keep their customers happy because a happy customer is a loyal customer who will keep coming back to you over and over again.
And not just that, but chances are they will also recommend your business to other people. That’s the very definition of customer satisfaction.
As you know, word-of-mouth recommendations are as great as written testimonials on a website because they help you pick up more business.
With all roads leading to customer satisfaction, it is no surprise that tech-savvy clients are now dictating the success of modern restaurants.
That said, here’s how offering a pre-order menu for mobile ordering can boost your sales.
Why embracing a restaurant pre-order system will increase your sales
Customers are enticed to pre-order food from restaurants because they’re promised that they will skip the line. That way, if they have a busy day at work, they’ll be able to go in and out of the restaurant much quicker, thus saving plenty of time.
As a restaurant or coffee shop owner, the best thing you can do to improve customer satisfaction is to allow customers to place orders ahead of time for delivery, pickup, and dine-in.
The GloriaFood online food ordering system allows you to enable all three features for free.
Using our system, customers can book a table and order their favorite foods in advance or schedule orders for delivery or pickup. You can even enable online payments to allow them to pay in advance.
Benefits of food pre-order for clients
Allowing scheduled orders will help you attract a loyal fanbase of tech-savvy clients who love to pre-order food.
For example, a customer can use the food pre-order app to order food ahead for pickup as soon as they start their day.
Once they start their lunch break hour, they can make a quick trip to your restaurant to pick up their food, thus skipping the queue.
Likewise, if you’re using our system, your customers will be able to pre-order food for dine-in by reserving a table.
Benefits of food pre-order for restaurant owners
Enabling the order ahead and scheduled orders features saves you a lot of logistical hassle and headaches. It gives you the chance to see the orders before you have to fulfill them.
This gives your staff plenty of time to:
- better organize themselves
- be more efficient and productive
- cook your clients’ desired meal promptly
All these factors combined will help you deliver an outstanding service that will skyrocket customer satisfaction.
Plus, by reducing those long wait times to just a few minutes, you’ll also be able to serve more customers in a day’s work.
Using something as simple as the order ahead or scheduled orders feature can have a powerful and positive ripple effect on your entire business. It will give you a competitive edge over the others.
Enable Order Ahead & Scheduled Orders now
Follow the steps in this guide to learn how to enable scheduled orders for pickup and delivery using the GloriaFood online ordering system and allow your customers to order food anytime.
Go to this guide if you want to enable food pre-orders so that customers who place table reservations can order ahead.
Final Words
Customers will always choose convenience over anything else. They will often prefer to pre-order lunch or dinner for an enhanced eating out or dine-in experience.
The beauty of using an online ordering system for restaurants resides in creating a favorable brand image for your business. Once your client places a scheduled order, your order-taking app will put it into a preparation queue.
Customers will stand in a digital line, which allows them free time to do anything else. It’s the exact opposite of the old-fashioned queue, which eats up their spare time by forcing them to wait and nothing else.
Pro tip: If you want to optimize the pickup and dine-in experience at your restaurant, consider having a designated area/separate entrance for scheduled food delivery and pickup. 29% of customers believe that delivery riders picking up orders negatively impacts the dining atmosphere.