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Why Should You Have Online Ordering & Delivery For Your Restaurant?

For many restaurant owners, this is the biggest question! Some are dealing with the “big” apps for delivery so they think they have this solved… but when you had your customers over to the big apps – they aren’t coming back. You give up all your data, your customer loyalty and behaviour data, customer contact information, and even detailed order data. If you’re not online one day – your customer isn’t coming back. Most will simply choose the next closest restaurant in the app you sent them to.

Here are some important 2024 statistics that you should consider when deciding whether to add online ordering and delivery for your restaurant.

  • 60% of US consumers order takeout or delivery at least 1 time per week. 51% of Canadian consumers report ordering delivery in the past month and 1/3 order weekly.
  • According to Deloitte, restaurant orders are up to 20% higher when ordering online vs phone orders. For pizza restaurants, for example, online orders are 18% higher than phone orders. 34% of users spend at least $50 when ordering online. Our average cover on the Dine Local platform is $53.60.
  • Digital ordering and delivery has grown 300% faster than dine-in traffic since 2014. 
  • 70% of consumers would prefer to order direct from a preferred restaurant channel like Dine Local rather than a third party delivery app like Uber or Skip. While overall e-commerce restaurant sales are down slightly since the pandemic, they remain 2-3x higher than before the pandemic.
  • 60% of restaurant operators say that offering delivery has resulted an increase in sales.
  • Even using the “big” delivery apps, 39% of customers choose to order online and pick up their order to save on delivery fees. At Dine Local where the real cost of delivery is transparent to the customer, we see almost 2/3 of customers choosing to pick up their order after ordering online.
  • Customers who place an online order with a restaurant will visit that restaurant 67% more frequently.

Online ordering and your online presence has so much more reach and importance than just the online orders you receive. Our restaurant partners report increases in phone orders and dine-in traffic as they build their online ordering presence with customers reporting that they appreciate being able to quickly and easily review the menu and menu options before ordering or visiting the restaurant.

Let’s talk about how Dine Local can help you reach more customers today!

Frequently Asked Questions

We have tried to answer many of the common questions we get to help you decide whether Dine Local is the right platform to support your restaurant.

Are you available in my area?

Dine Local is currently operating across Ontario, and we will be available across Canada in early 2025. Delivery services are available in most cities and towns – we are set up to operate in any market that DoorDash Drive or Uber Direct is operating their driver network.

What commission do you charge?

We know we have said it on every page of our website… but we still get asked. There are NO COMMISSIONS on sales. Dine Local was built to support local restaurants, not gouge them.

So seriously… our commissions are 0%. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. We don’t take any commission.

Like… for real.

How do I get orders?

Your orders are available through the Dine Local restaurant app or any web browser logged in to your order processing account. If you are using our app you will receive a visual notification as well as a (very annoying) audible notification that a new order has arrived. You also receive an email notification with the details of every order.

In the event that your app or tablet is not working (for example it wasn’t plugged in and went dead), we have phone notifications. You will receive an automated robocall at 1 minute and 3 minutes after an order is received to your store. At 5 minutes we will issue a robocall to a manager or owner cell phone and our team will start to personally ensure that you are aware of the order.

Where does my customer data go?

With Dine Local, your customers are your customers. We never hide or mask any of your customer data including name, phone number, email, and delivery addresses. With every order we will even let you know key customer loyalty information to help you know your customer and enhance your service. All of your customer data is also available to you as part of your sales and delivery reporting which can then be used within your own marketing efforts (retargeting, customer profiling, email marketing etc).

Dine Local also provides detailed reporting on your customer’s usage and behaviour on your order page to help you better understand what promotions are working and how your customers are using your page.

How do payments work?

Dine Local has partnered with Stripe and their Connect platform to provide secure, fraud resistant, and reliable payment processing and fund transfers. You will create a special Stripe Connect account prior to going live with your orders, and that connection will allow us to process Credit Card payments on your behalf and transfer funds to you for gift card sales. Money is deposited daily directly to the bank account you connect to our platform through Stripe.

We recognize that 5% is higher than what you pay for in-store payment processing, however this increased cost allows us to provide faster straight-through payments to your account, gift card payments, automatic delivery funds routing, and offer enhanced fraud protection on your sales.

How do deliveries work?

Dine Local has integrated with the DoorDash Drive and Uber Direct driver networks, and we are always looking for new partners to improve our service availability and reliability. When you accept a delivery order on our platform and are set up to use our delivery system we automatically dispatch the best driver  network for your order based on the customer delivery location. No phone calls to a dispatcher – everything is automatic.

Customers pay the full cost of delivery (flat rate) unless you choose to pay a portion of the delivery cost based on order size. Delivery fees and driver tips are automatically routed to the delivery provider from the customer payment so you have no extra bills to manage or cash for drivers. Delivery price is optimized for the customer location and ranges based on the distance of the customer from your restaurant. Generally deliveries range from $8.49 to $14.49 and will extend up to 12km from your restaurant location.

How does printing work?

Dine Local supports printing in a couple of different ways depending on how your restaurant works. We have some restaurants who use a computer to access their orders on the web who print our standard Customer Invoice when they receive an order which is used for food preparation and goes with the order to the customer.

We also support “chit” printing from supported receipt printers. When you accept an order through your order tablet, the app will automatically print the order chit to a printer you have set up in your restaurant. With network printing, you can have the printer in the kitchen with the order tablet at your front cash to simplify operations.

How does support work?

Dine Local offers 24/7 support for your restaurant operations via phone and email. Your front-line staff always have our support phone number available in our app for immediate access to help whenever you need it. Customers also have access to our telephone and email support and we will work with you as a partner on customer concerns to make sure that things are made right.

If you are looking to make changes to your menu, specials, or promotions, you have full access to make updates to your menu and promotions as part of your manager access to the system. We have full documentation available to help you if you need to make immediate or frequent changes. Menu pricing and changes submitted to our support team will be updated in 24-48 hours on your menu, and often faster.

Do you guarantee orders on my site?

Short answer. No.

Dine Local provides you the capability to do online ordering and delivery for your customers. While we have done everything we can to make the ordering experience simple, to optimize your search engine positioning, and to connect you to customers through integrations like Order with Google™, we don’t guarantee that you’ll get orders.

Your Dine Local ordering page belongs to you and your restaurant, and while we can provide ideas and support on what works for other restaurants building their takeout and delivery business, it is up to you to execute your marketing and drive traffic to your order page.

We will gladly work with your marketing partners to provide everything they need to promote you, and are available at additional cost to support your marketing initiatives in print, social, and digital form as required.

Do you integrate with my POS system?

At this point, Dine Local operates as a stand-alone ordering and delivery platform and does not integrate with any point-of-sale solutions. We have looked at integrations for Square, Clover, TouchBistro, and a few others, but to this point have not been happy with what is possible through these platform integrations.

Generally our restaurant partners find that the volume of their online orders does not create an issue for them to either enter the orders through their POS system manually, or use the Dine Niagara printed chits and reporting to handle online sales accounting at end-of-day.

We’re happy to be convinced otherwise though… if you are interested in a custom integration our team is available to help get you connected. The Dine Local platform has been built to support complex integration patterns – let’s talk about your needs!

Do I need to have a website?

No! Many of our restaurant partners actually use their Dine Local ordering page as their website, linking it to their Google Business page and social media pages directly. If you do have a website, we make it easy to link your customers to your order page including providing buttons and link code as required.

What about SEO?

Dine Local has spent a lot of time optimizing our order pages for inclusion in search. In most cases you will find that your Dine Local order page is one of the first pages in search when your customers are looking for you. We have also made your search optimization flexible so we can work with your marketing partners to optimize how you are represented to align with your brand and messaging.

Book A Demo

Want to see Dine Local in action and talk about how we can help you build your takeout and delivery business? Go directly to our calendar and pick a time to book an appointment now!

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