Meal delivery has become one of the biggest trends in the food industry and restaurant owners would be wise to pay close attention. These services offer customers a chance to create a healthy meal within their own home without the need to search for recipes or go grocery shopping. This has started to cut into restaurant revenue as consumers are utilizing these services for family nights and even date nights. Traditionally restaurants have had those markets cornered. While meal delivery may be here to stay, there are several steps restaurant owners can take to ensure they don’t cut too far into their business.
Efficient and Quality Delivery
If your restaurant does not offer delivery, now is the time to start. Delivery presents restaurant’s best tool to compete with these services. Your delivery options should be diverse and delivered in the same quality that your serve in your restaurant. Investing in proper packaging and delivery cases will ensure your delivery food matches that of your brick and mortar restaurant. You’ll also want to make sure you’re properly staffed as to avoid long delivery times that may deter customers.
Healthy Options
One of the biggest draws of meal delivery services is their diverse offering of healthy and specialized meals. Offering healthy options including those that line up with vegetarian and vegan diets is a must in today’s food industry landscape. Utilizing farm to table and organic ingredients will up the quality of your product and appeal to a increasingly health conscious population.
Nutritional Information
Many people have started to avoid restaurants because of their reputation for having extremely high caloric values in their dishes. Meal delivery services provide complete nutritional information along with each recipe and restaurants can benefit from doing the same.
Customer Rewards
Showing that you appreciate your current customer base and rewarding their loyalty can go a long way towards maintaining a healthy bottom line. Setting up rewards programs that provide true value to your patrons is a great way to keep them coming back.
Theme Nights
Theme nights offer incentive for families and couples to get out of the house instead of staying in to prepare their own meal. Take advantage of holidays and other significant events to shape your theme nights. You’ll also want to include something such as a 'dinner and dancing night' for couples and 'family nights' that cater to children.
Live Entertainment
Live performances have long been a successful means of drawing in new customers and making an effort to consistently have quality acts can improve the appeal and reputation of your restaurant. Make sure you hire performers that fit your customer base and will attract your target audience.
If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them
If you find that your business is being hurt by meal delivery services or if you are looking to stay ahead of the curve, you may consider offering your own meal delivery option. Since you already have the product, facilities and delivery drivers it won’t take much to get your own going.
In many cases small business owners lack the credit or collateral to access the money needed to remain flexible. Quikstone Capital Solutions provides cash for businesses. A merchant cash advance from Quikstone Capital Solutions is a business loan alternative that can help your business thrive and prosper, whether you need cash to buy equipment, cash to renovate or expand, cash to purchase inventory, cash to advertise or cash for emergencies. Quikstone Capital Solutions can help. Contact us for a consultation today.
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