Food delivery software has solved a lot for restaurants, whether it be reaching a new customer base or providing restaurant owners the opportunity to create new brands and succeed. At the best of times, third party platform software helps manage orders just a touch better, but there could be more…
We dive into what makes food delivery management software great, and what, will make it better:
Experiential:
Functionally, delivery apps have one purpose: to allow the consumer to order food from a local restaurant and have it delivered straight to their door. But what is needed for the restaurant to make this process as smooth as possible for their paying customers? 🤔
Sign Up Process 📔
There is nothing worse than an extended sign up process, especially if you are on multiple delivery platforms. Each delivery platform has its own sign up process, and each delivery platform has its own requirements, such as: photo specifications, menu options, registered authorities on the account, preparation times, and the list goes on.
For an experienced restaurateur, this isn’t a problem as they have most likely been through this process before. However, for a new business starting online delivery for the first time, it’s a daunting and painful process especially when the sign up process takes longer than expected.
A solution here is aggregation software. If you’re a restaurant with multiple delivery platforms, you’re most likely frustrated by the multiple devices you have to manage as well as the multiple requirements you must fulfil to appear on these platforms. With aggregation software, you are able to consolidate all aspects of your initial sign-up process to one seamless process, and are often off boarded to a dedicated customer success team member.
Main Screen 📺
Let’s set the scene; it’s a busy Friday night, you have a multitude of delivery orders coming left, right, and centre from one of your many delivery platforms (all with different designs 😑)
All you want is to clearly see the incoming and outgoing orders without darting back and forth playing tablet roulette. So what are the essentials you need to maintain sanity?
- Order Dashboard – that shows you your new, current, and finished orders.
- Past Order Dashboard – that shows your previous orders
- Brand/Restaurant Dashboard – that shows a list of your brands
- Location – shows your business details and opening and closing times
- Menu – that shows your menu and modifiers, including pictures, as well as out of stock abilities.
- Restaurant Profile – that shows your restaurant logins
- Integrations – (if you have multiple delivery devices) showing what brands are connected to third party delivery apps.
These are all ideal functions in an interface, however not all food delivery platforms offer this, especially the integrations and brand dashboard. Why? Because platforms are not cross functional unless they are aggregated, and this is one of the biggest issues facing restaurants. Reducing device fatigue by aggregating platforms will give you the relief you deserve! 😩
Ease 😌
Having an easy to use interface for delivery platforms is paramount, because when you’re busy you need to seamlessly manage your flow of orders. In addition to this, there are multiple elements of a food delivery platform that are needed to give the user not only a favorable operating experience, but control of the situation.
Orders 🧑🏽🍳
The only thing that matters! Having order’s flow in is great for your business, but are fine details of incoming orders disrupting your flow? If your restaurant is on four different delivery platforms (i.e. Foodpanda, Pick-a-Roo, GrabFood, Uber Eats), most likely you have four different devices receiving orders, with four different ways they appear on screen, with four different ‘incoming order’ tones. Utter chaos when you’re busy.
Order Management Process ✍️
In addition to incoming orders, order management is a paramount part of operating on a delivery platform. Again, with each delivery platform having a different way to cancel orders, accept orders, mark orders as ‘ready for pick up’, mark items Out of Stock and call customers.
These functions allow for the ease of operating a restaurant on a delivery platform:
- Identical order display/print out – so there isn’t any second guessing in the kitchen
- Single device for order management – to avoid device fatigue
- Marking Out of Stocks – to avoid orders being placed for OOS items
- Order Management – to accept, cancel, ready, filter any orders from multiple delivery platforms
- Contact details – for the customer and the driver to keep them informed
- Prep times – to ensure seamless dispatch of a delivery driver
These functions are hard to incorporate if a restaurant is on multiple delivery platforms due to the restrictive nature of each device, however order aggregation software like klikit’s can manage all of this in one device. This avoids the unnecessary strain on your business during busy periods, giving you peace of mind that disruption to your order flow will be minimized.
Features 📋
Extras in your delivery platforms are also a nice feature to distinguish one delivery platform from another. Some good, some bad, but at the same time, you wish that one feature was in one device and vice versa. There are some definite ‘should-have’ features for delivery platforms and some ‘nice-to-have’ features as well:
Should-Have Features ✅
- Ability to cancel the order
- Ability to change users (i.e. admin to staff to manager)
- Ability to manage your brands within the device
- Auto-accept feature
- Out of Stock feature
- Menu Management feature within the device
Nice-To-Have Features 💯
- Financial account management
- Push notifications to users about discounts and menu updates
- Access to data and analytics to make future recommendations to customers
- IM feature for customers and drivers
- Live sales reporting
- Food Cost Calculator
All of these features are needed to remain competitive in the online food delivery space, especially if you are running multiple delivery platforms as well as multiple brands/restaurants from your location. The klikit delivery platform is able to integrate all your brands and delivery partners into one single device and have all the ‘should-have’ features listed above, and more. To find out more about klikit, please visit klikit.io/contact to book a demo today!
