Delivery boom and how to maximize its potential in restaurants

One of the worst scenarios for a business is not realizing that it has a problem, especially during a pandemic.

The ship is sinking and you didn’t see it coming.

A good example comes from residents of cities such as London, NY, Berlin or Istanbul, that during these last months places orders for food through delivery apps and had to cancel them because they took more than an hour to arrive or it didn’t arrive at all.

And the problem is not the delivery guy’s.

The problem originates from the staff and tickets organization and planning of the restaurant. If you don’t include home orders in your workload forecast you will get a negative user experience.

It doesn’t seem like a good business decision given the exponential growth in delivery in recent months.

The global growth of home delivery ???

In 2016 the consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, published forecast and growth data for the delivery sector for the coming years. According to that report, the worldwide market for food delivery stands at €83 billion, or 1 percent of the total food market and 4 percent of food sold through restaurants and fast-food chains. It has already matured in most countries, with an overall annual growth rate estimated at just 3.5 percent for the next five years.

The actual situation is even better. Revenue in the food delivery segment is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 7.5%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$182,327m by 2024.

Third-party platforms like Glovo, Just Eat, Uber Eats and Postmates are leading the race for an increasingly established market.

As outlined in Deloitte’s 2019 “The impact of third-party platform ordering on restaurants“ report on delivery growth, “…profits shift in a similar manner to turnover, with the overall net impact again positive across all four cities. London sees the highest increases in turnover and profit for the industry, both in absolute and proportionate terms. Across the industry, restaurants’ profits are increased by £189 million (€213 million) annually, or 2.82%, due to the introduction of third-party platforms. In the other cities, profits increase by €18 million (0.64%) in Paris; €36 million (1.29%) in Madrid; and €11 million; 1.23% in Warsaw.”

This is yet another reason to establish a successful business with clear development potential and an exciting future.

The consolidation of a business model ??

Delivery is here to stay.

All the previous data confirm that delivery is a reality at the same level of relevance as table service or drive-thru in fast food business.

Particularly, if your restaurant has limited capacity or is closed during lockdown.

If you are able to deploy an effective delivery model, your food establishment will balance out the decrease of revenues and you will manage to reduce the shock on your profit and loss account.

Due to this volume of demands for improvement and development operations, any business can find itself in a situation of saturation and chaos. Surely at this point you are thinking about what you wish there was a staff scheduling software based on artificial intelligence and mathematical optimization that was capable of predicting, planning and measuring the specific demands of each restaurant, right?

Here it is.

Orquest uses advanced mathematical models to generate a thorough diagnostic analysis from which to reduce personnel costs by the efficient and accurate configuration of schedules, tasks and skills of each employee in each moment of each restaurant. Orquest software is designed to maximize the potential of delivery in all your restaurants.

Our management solution sizes up your business allowing you to compensate for the drop in revenue due to limited capacity to avoid the spread of Covid-19.

How do we do it?

Thanks to the analysis of your company data, Orquest generates a forecast by hours able to adapt continuously to the variations of your business. Based on this forecast, restaurants can size their staff and their needs by measuring the number of tickets and the product mix per employee. In addition, we have the added value of including within this total number of tickets all the restaurant tickets, take away tickets, drive-thru tickets and delivery tickets.

Following this scale of business, the restaurant gets an optimal planning of tasks and schedules that trigger productivity and improve customer service and employee satisfaction. You can check the success of Orquest workforce management software in this case study about the implementation and development since 2015 in McDonald’s Spain.

If you would like to receive more information or request your free initial diagnostic analysis, you can do so by clicking on the button below.