🔥 Bonji Hot Takes Volume 34 🔥
Welcome back to another edition of Bonji Hot Takes! Happy Thursday, we hope your week is going well and you are excited for another fast-approaching weekend. If you want to learn more or look back at our previous tips/hot takes, head over to our website! Aside from producing the best quality, gourmet Açaí, Coconut, Pitaya, and Mango-Pineapple smoothie bowl bases, our blog has been ranked as a top 100 restaurant blog, feel free to check it out for yourself! __________________
Takeout is Key
We all know what happened over the past few years, but enough of the pandemic talk, we are here now and takeout/delivery isn't going anywhere. Today, we want to hone in on restaurants' takeout strategies. To be honest, there are a ton of restaurants that seem to struggle when it comes to takeout. Have you ever called in food from a restaurant and then spent 20-30 minutes waiting when you showed up? Of course, we all have. Just recently we spent 20 minutes waiting for deli sandwiches after calling them in, what's up with that? Finally, even when you order through Doordash, a major reason why food may come later than expected is because of the restaurant's pickup process. We aren't writing this to be bitter and angry, but we want to help in any way possible. From experience and research, here are some helpful takeout management tips.
The Takeout Management Formula
1. Choose Your Takeout Menu Wisely Sometimes, takeout food can be vastly different from your regular menu. Ensuring that the food is still in good shape when your customer is finally eating is essential. Things like pizza and burgers have been delivery/takeout staples because there is little value lost from a drive home. Understandably, you may not want to design an entirely new menu and that's fine. However, when you offer takeout food, be sure to remove certain heavy-duty items from the options. We've had plenty of experiences ordering a full dinner for takeout, but when we open the box it's half of what we expected. Keeping customers happy is the number one goal in any business, so be sure you don't lose quality when food is on the go. Lastly, takeout and delivery is the perfect opportunity to up-sale. A lot of times, delivery won't even turn a profit for your business. Therefore, any opportunity to include another menu item, like a side of fries, a drink, or a bag of chips, should be sought after.
2. The SHAQ Outlook The SHAQ method is essentially a formula for managing your relationship with customers, especially via takeout. Speed: Everyone is moving at light speed these days and customers want their food fast. Specifically for takeout, nobody wants to wait around for their food when they have places to be. This means you need to not only have the orders ready for pickup but also create a quick and easy process to do so. Hospitality: What you say and how you say it is the most basic version of hospitality. Driving customer loyalty, hospitality cannot go overlooked, even with takeout. Stemming back to training, you must ensure your guests feel welcome regardless of how much time they spend inside your establishment. Accuracy: This one should be rather obvious, but customers want accuracy. But more specifically, “Deliver what guests want to buy, not what the company wants to sell.” Special requests and customizable dishes are becoming regular, so be aware that you may need to meet some more demands. Quality: With expectations constantly rising, you have to keep your customers coming back and not shifting to competitors. All it takes is one poor dish to send potential customers out the door to never return. 3. Improve Order Taking / Pick-Up Process As mentioned earlier, the pickup process at many restaurants needs to be better. Maybe you take the route of having a pickup shelf like a Chipotle, or maybe an entirely separate counter and entrance. Although we'd love every restaurant to have a specific pickup area, we get it, not every business has those capabilities. Instead, maybe just set up a pre-paid pickup table or offer to run it outside. Now, this does lead up to the order taking process. Ordering online has boomed and if you don't currently have an online ordering system in place, it is an absolute must. Calling into a restaurant to place an order is still popular, but you'd be surprised how many people would prefer clicking a few buttons on their phone or computer. This doesn't exactly mean get on Grubhub now, especially considering they take a percentage, but at least offer some form of online ordering. In fact, two-thirds of people surveyed say they prefer ordering online directly with the restaurant, of which 61% say it's to specifically help the restaurant. All in all, you should reevaluate your current ordering and pickup systems to see if there are any minor or major adaptations you can make for this new world of takeout.
