How to Increase Restaurant Delivery Sales Fast

3. Build an app that makes ordering a breeze

Your most loyal customers might want an even easier way to order food from your restaurant. A smartphone app is one of the most recent restaurant delivery trends and a convenient way to order food. For this, you can choose an experienced app development agency.

Letting your customers order through an app can also give them the option to:

• Repeat their favorite orders.
• Automatically pay without leaving the app.
• Receive messages about your current promotions.

Considering that 96% of Americans own some type of mobile device, it makes sense to give customers an app that helps them order food.

4. Offer free delivery promos

This is one of the most efficient solutions for how to increase restaurant delivery sales. People may be tempted to order from your restaurant because they like the food and the pictures look appetizing, but they need one more small push.

Check out these tips to ensure your free delivery promotion will be a success and won’t eat into your profit:

• Add a minimum order value: It’s a simple, yet highly effective way to persuade customers into buying more. Let’s say John looks at your menu and decides to have a medium pizza, worth $8.99. Then, he sees your free delivery promo for orders over $11, so he decides to add two cans of cokes to the menu, therefore achieving the minimum cart value necessary to benefit from the free delivery promo;
• Make it a limited-time offer: you won’t be able to afford skipping delivery for every order, so make the offer active for a selected period. This way you create fear of missing out and tempt people to place the order now.

Read more: 11 Ways to Offer Free Delivery to Boost Your Restaurant Sales

You can set up a free delivery offer and many other irresistible restaurant promotions in seconds with GloriaFood:

5. Analyze your delivery areas

To find out how to increase restaurant delivery sales, you need to have a better look at the areas you are delivering to. You can do so easily with the online ordering system from GloriaFood.

Navigate to your GloriaFood admin account – > Reports -> Extended -> Delivery Heatmaps, where you will see the following map:

Use it to increase your delivery sales:

1. The areas in red and dark blue highlight the great sales potential of the area – How you can use this to your advantage: deliver flyers to these areas, so people will get to know a bit more about your restaurant. You can also offer promos for first-time clients, so you can encourage them to order from you.
2. Light blue shows a more low-value area – How you can use this to your advantage: start by setting up a minimum order value. Considering that not that many people from those areas order from you, then you can make it lucrative and worthwhile to deliver to that area, by delivering orders that hit your minimum value.

Find out how you can easily create and manage delivery areas using our online ordering system using this video tutorial:

You can also use geofencing technology to send targeted promotions or ads to people within your delivery zones when they are nearby. This can help you engage customers with real-time offers, increasing the chances of them ordering from you.

Read more: How to Improve Your Food Delivery Service in 2024

6. Start upselling online

You may view upselling as a technique that is only used for dine-in, where your waiters can make recommendations. But the truth is that it can also work online if you do it right. Here’s how:

• Engineer your menu: if you want your clients to order certain dishes, place them in the middle and the top-right corner of the menu because that is where the customers look first;
• Offer meal combos: people like to order combos because it is easier, and they perceive it to be more high value. Even if they wouldn’t have ordered dessert on its own, they will order the combo that has it included;
• Offer promotions conditioned by minimum order amount: the online ordering system will remind people when their order amount is close to the one required for a promotion. For example, if they get 10% off the whole order, they might just add a dessert to take advantage of it.

Read more: 10 Restaurant Upselling Techniques to Increase Daily Profits

7. Reward loyal customers

There are only a limited number of people in your area, so you won’t be able to get more new customers than that. The trick to how to increase restaurant delivery sales is to also focus on getting more returning customers.

You can do so by rewarding them for their loyalty. For example, with the Promotions module from GloriaFood, you can offer promotions to return customers according to:

• Number of orders placed
• Amount of money spent

Read more: How to Increase Customer Loyalty in a Restaurant

8. Use social media to increase your delivery sales

You probably already use social media platforms to tempt your customers with your delicious dishes. Now it is time to turn your socials into money-making machines with conversion-centric posts.

First, you need to ensure you add a direct link to your menu in your description/bio, so clients can order in just one swift click. You can get a smart link from our online ordering system:

Afterward, get inspired by these ideas to create posts that encourage customers to place online orders:

• A video showing how easy it is to order from your restaurant;
• Promote offers only available for delivery orders;
• Unboxing video of a delicious food order from your restaurant;
• Videos showing how you prepare and package the food with care;
• Pictures of your food with strong CTAs such as “Order now, limited-time offer” and a direct link to your menu.

Read more: How to Attract More Customers to Your Restaurant Using Social Media

9. Get more positive online reviews

How to increase restaurant delivery sales? Show potential customers you are a trustworthy business that many have tried before and enjoyed their experience.

Most people tend to check online reviews before they order from a restaurant and their actions will be significantly impacted by what they read. Follow these tips to get positive reviews that vouch for your food business:

• Claim your account on review platforms: such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google Business Profile. Complete your profile with valid information such as working hours, link to the website, and recent photographs;
• Offer incentives for positive reviews: tempt people to make the effort to write a review by offering a small incentive like a free dessert or a discount on their next order;
• Showcase good reviews: after asking for permission, share the great reviews on social media to build trust with your followers.

Read more: The Importance of Online Reviews for Restaurants & How to Get More

10. Harness the power of special events

Special events give you excellent opportunities to promote certain menu items and services. After all, people still have to eat when they celebrate different occasions, such as the Super Bowl, but some prefer to do it at home.

Tempt people to choose your restaurant for these special events by creating dedicated specials and implementing promotions, such as “10% off for Father’s Day.”

Don’t just focus on the well-known celebrations to promote your delivery service. You can use practically any event as an excuse to market your business and promote delivery orders.

Take National Keto Day (January 5) as an example. On National Keto Day, you can promote low-carb items on your menu. Perhaps you even waive your delivery fee for customers who only order keto-friendly foods.

You can develop similar creative ideas for celebrations like:

• Fun at Work Day (January 28) – Push lunchtime delivery options.
• National Plant a Flower Day (March 12) – Include a free flower with every delivery.
• National Foster Care Day (May 7) – Give a special treat to foster parents and kids.

Read more: Restaurant Holiday Marketing & Planning: How to Get Ready for the End of 2024

Use every opportunity to boost business

You need technology and marketing ideas to increase delivery sales and help your restaurant earn more money. If you really want to know how to increase restaurant delivery sales, then you have to combine a good website (or app) with creative promotions that will get the attention of existing and potential customers.