How to Promote Your Food Delivery Business as a Restaurant Owner

So you’ve just started delivering food in the neighborhood. But how will you bring this news to as many people’s attention as possible? The answer lies below. Learn how to promote your food delivery business and make your restaurant outshine the local competition.

Food Delivery Strategy: 14 Ideas on How to Promote a Food Delivery Business

1. Add an order button on your website’s homepage

The easiest way to accept delivery orders as a restaurant is on your website. Using an in-house online ordering system has the advantage of allowing you to have complete control over the entire process and keep all the profits.

Not to mention accepting orders online removes the risk of human error, which often occurs when taking orders via phone. Simply add an order button to your website to enable online ordering.

The button should be visible at the top of your homepage, so users can’t miss it. That way, whoever lands on your website will immediately know that you also deliver. Your food delivery marketing strategy should start from your website.

Here is a quick video explaining how to add the online order button on websites built with Duda, Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, and WordPress.

2. Add the ordering link on social media

Next, focus on your social media profiles. In some cases, you can enable customers to place orders straight from your profile.

For example, Facebook has a feature that allows business owners to place a call-to-action button on their pages. You can choose the text from various options, but the most appropriate for a restaurant would be the “Start Order” call-to-action.

Here’s how to add online ordering to your Facebook page.

While you won’t be able to do the same with other social media platforms, you can still use your bio to link to the ordering page on your restaurant website.

To make it extra clear, include a call-to-action before the link, such as “Place food order here,” “We deliver,” or “See menu and order.”

3. Use appetizing photos in your promotional materials

Before they get to try your food, customers can feast on the mouth-watering photos you display on your website, social media, and printed materials.

Whenever you advertise your food delivery business, make sure to use images that will trigger customers’ hunger. A bowl of steaming, cheese-grated pasta, a crispy pizza, or a luxurious, velvety dessert can make all the difference.

And speaking of words used to describe food, pay attention to your menu descriptions as well. These menu writing tips will make all your customers hungry.

4. Offer exclusive discounts and promotions

One of the most innovative food delivery ideas you can use is tempting customers with delivery-only promos. They won’t get that when they dine-in, so it’s a unique opportunity that they will be tempted to take advantage of ASAP.

Get creative with your restaurant promotions. Adapt them according to the season, special holidays, and even time of the day.

If you need some extra help coming up with promotion ideas, we’ve created a food holiday calendar for the whole year. It highlights the most important food holidays of each month and includes promotion ideas for each. You can download it for free here.

5. Do search engine optimization

Now, if you’re wondering how to promote your food delivery business to customers in your area, search engine optimization (SEO) is the answer.

In short, optimizing your website with key phrases relevant to your restaurant can help you increase your Google ranking. That way, you’ll appear higher than your competitors whenever someone searches for those phrases.

Learn how to optimize your website for SEO here:

• SEO for Restaurants Or How to Sell More Food Online
• The SEO Saga: 4 Tips That Can Boost Your Local SEO for Restaurants

6. Partner with local influencers

Leave some food delivery advertising ideas to others by contacting local influencers who might be willing to promote your service for a cost or some other benefit. This will allow you to expose your delivery service (and your restaurant as a whole) to their followers.

Work together with the influencer to decide on how they’re going to promote your restaurant. They could, for instance, post photos of your food and tag your restaurant encouraging people to try it out.

Learn more: Restaurant Influencer Marketing Guide: How to Do It and Why

7. Look for business partners in the area

Similar to partnering with influencers, you can also visit other businesses in your area and ask whether they’d be interested in a mutually beneficial deal.

For example, local hotels might be willing to add a flyer advertising your delivery service in every room. That way, tired visitors can order something from the comfort of their hotel room.

In exchange, you can leave flyers advertising the hotel on tables at your restaurant for every tourist who comes by to grab a bite and doesn’t have a place to stay yet.

8. Attend food fairs and festivals

Are you wondering how to promote your food delivery business to even more locals? If there are any food fairs or music festivals in your area, they are the key to unlocking local business.

Ideally, you will participate as a vendor to provide people with a sample of your food. If that’s not an option, inquire about the possibility of at least distributing some flyers to participants.

If you get a food truck or a stand to sell your food, it’s vital that you bring promotional materials such as virtual business cards and flyers to give to people who buy something from you.

The materials should contain the name and logo of your restaurant, together with the website where people can order and your restaurant’s address. If you’d like to, you can also include a promotion for your food delivery service, like “10% off your first online order.”

9. Do email marketing

A newsletter is a perfect place to promote your delivery business. You can send regular emails to your subscribers with special offers and discounts only available to your email list.

Include a mention (and a link) to your online ordering page in the welcome email you send to new subscribers to ensure they all know about this service.

Read more about email marketing here:

• Restaurant Email Marketing Done Right: 12 Ideas to Woo Customers
• 12 Restaurant Newsletter Ideas That Will Convert & Engage

10. Consider creating an online ordering app

To improve the ordering experience, you can also take it to the next level with an ordering app. Customers can download it on their phones for easy access to your online menu.

An app provides smoother navigation and additional features like push notifications and in-app loyalty programs. Advertise these benefits on your website to get more people to download your app.

Read more about promoting your restaurant mobile app for free.

11. Offer group deals for corporate offices

If your restaurant is located next to office buildings, consider catching their eye by offering deals on large orders. That way, for the next office party they’ll throw, you’ll be the head caterer.

Advertise those deals on your website and social media, but also print them on flyers and inquire whether you can leave them at the reception desk or distribute them in the building.

Some examples of group deals are “order five pizzas, and you get one for free” or “20% discount on orders over $100.”

12. Invest in newspaper and billboard advertising

Does your marketing strategy for the online food delivery service include a hefty budget? Then you can afford to invest some of that money in advertising.

Whether it’s an ad in the local newspaper or a billboard advertising your new online ordering app, old-school advertising still works.

Read more: Back to Basics: 10 Offline Marketing Ideas for Restaurants

If, however, you can’t afford to spend that much money on advertising your food delivery business, check out these low-budget restaurant ideas.

13. Create a loyalty program

A point-based loyalty program is an excellent way to improve your app’s food delivery service. Of course, you can create a loyalty program without an app, too, so don’t think you can’t do it otherwise.

However, the app allows users to scan their virtual loyalty cards to get additional points effortlessly. They can later use those points to redeem cool rewards or discounts at your restaurant.

You could give customers subscribed to your loyalty program a unique user code that they can enter each time they place an order. That will let the app know it’s time to add some new loyalty points to their total.

14. Spread the word in your restaurant

Finally, you should also think of how to promote your food delivery business inside the actual restaurant. Luckily, the answer is simple, and it lies in promotional materials.

Hang a poster on your front door, one next to the POS, and add tabletop flyers to all the tables. If you’d like, you can also train your servers to ask the customers whether they know they can also place orders online.

That’s a Wrap

Now that you’ve gathered all this information on how to promote a food delivery business, the ball is in your court. It’s time to make some friends around the neighborhood and use your website and social media to their full potential to boost those online sales.