The Italian restaurant was really a blur of activity. Chefs furiously cooked pizza and pasta at both ends of your store, waiters busily took phone orders and a procession of food couriers picked up deliveries. There is one problem: few in-store dinners had food on their own table.
By my count, at least two-thirds of restaurant patrons were waiting for food. Some had that, “please feed me before I faint” look. Others were “hangry” (hungry-angry) from an absence of food, overpriced menu along with a flood of delivery orders that crushed your kitchen.
Virtually every pizza cooked went in a home-delivery box and pastas were stacked rich in plastic containers and delivery bags. I don’t determine if the restaurant prioritised forskolin where to buy or if the orders just fell that well. But in-store dining seemed a reduced priority.
I have seen a similar problem a few times this coming year. Popular restaurants are now being swamped by online or phone orders and struggling to balance the needs of in-store diners making use of their takeaway or home-delivery customers.
I suspect more family restaurants will neglect to adapt to development in online food ordering and delivery – and unwittingly wreck their in-store experience and brand.
Would it be taking longer to receive food ordered in restaurants?
Will be more orders being manufactured for pick-ups or home delivery?
Sometimes you may feel in-store dining is now less appealing as increasing numbers of restaurants gear up for online orders and deliveries.
It is actually fascinating to watch smaller restaurants get accustomed to the foodstuff-ordering boom that Menulog and delivery companies including Foodora, Deliveroo and Uber are driving.
The suburban restaurant that catered to local residents and maybe a tiny takeaway market now serves a bigger market via online food-ordering platforms. Some even promote their business to a wide radius of suburbs, creating a potential consumer base they cannot hope to serve properly.
Their kitchens usually are not set up to handle a lot of online orders at once, they don’t have plenty of staff after they need them, along with their in-store dining and on-line components tend to be poorly co-ordinated.
Their cost base and business model is still built around in-store dining, though more of their revenue is coming from online orders. One local restaurant owner explained 80 % of meals they cook are now for home deliveries or pick-ups.
Granted, this is an excellent problem for smaller restaurants. Those that successfully market via food-ordering platforms have found a bigger client base and surviving inside a difficult, competitive market. Of course, they need as many online orders as is possible.
The prospect of churning out meal after meal for any takeaway market, often at only a little discount to in-store dining, looks far more lucrative than relying on in-store diners.
The possibilities of churning out meal after meal for the takeaway market, often at just a little discount to in-store dining, looks much more lucrative than relying upon in-store diners, waiters, and the expense and hassle that accompanies that. And much less risky.
But smaller restaurants should think through how continued fast growth in online food ordering and deliveries will alter their industry, and adapt. The ones that respond just by cooking increasingly more meals, with the same business model and infrastructure, may ultimately damage their client base.
My guess is they will alienate in-store diners and push many people towards ordering deliveries or buying pre-cooked meals. It’s not surprising that David Jones plans a huge push in this field: the industry is ripe for higher-quality, pre-prepared meals.
Overseas, food delivery giant Deliveroo, reportedly worth greater than $US1 billion, is opening kitchen spaces in places not well-served by restaurants – a technique it calls “food delivery 4.”. It’s changing how takeaway meals are prepared.
Deliveroo along with other food-technology innovators are able to see the possibility: many people will order food internet and already have it home delivered, and cook less, in future years. Although the market is still geared mostly towards people ordering and consuming (or obtaining) food in-store.
As I’ve written before within this column, smaller restaurants have to rethink their strategy to the meal-ordering boom: virtual brands, shared kitchens, industrial-style cooking facilities 46dexipky smaller menus (that happen to be faster cooking) for the online market.
Store layouts will have to change: separate areas for food couriers clear of in-store patrons, different kitchen configurations, and various staffing in busy periods. And more considered how in-store diners are served, or whether or not the business should downscale in this field.
Yes, there will definitely be requirement for in-store dining and several restaurants do a fantastic job. But as increasing numbers of of the revenue comes from online orders in coming years, the marketplace will have to adapt faster to capitalise with a fantastic opportunity.
Thus far, the only people being disrupted from the online food-ordering boom look like in-store diners – and then in time, the important supermarkets as people cook less.