When a restaurant owner responds to orders, he must begin to think beyond preparing the food, packaging it, and serving customers. Delivery of goods is now at the core of his operations.
Many restaurant operators find relief when they discover that a gap can be filled by a third party who carries the food from the restaurant to the customer.
Customers at a specific location can order food or groceries, and they’ll have them delivered to their specified addresses.
Engaging the third comes with some new realities for restaurant operators. Usually, it means more sales, but it also means a profit cut at the same time.
There are different delivery service providers, and each one of them has its pros and cons. Which one is best depends on what an individual user is willing to sacrifice.
We’ll discuss four of the delivery services that are best for restaurants.
They include DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates, and Delivery.com.
- DoorDash
DoorDash can be considered one of the leading delivery service providers in America. It has more than 300,000 restaurant chains in nearly 4,000 cities worldwide, and more than 80% of them are based in the United States.
DoorDash has created a fully functional ordering application with a friendly user interface that allows users to order any type of food over the network.
With this application, customers can easily find a specific type of food to order and a restaurant to order from. You can view the prices of various popular foods and related shipping costs. You can rate a restaurant based on the ratings displayed based on the different experiences of different buyers at each restaurant in the past.
If you are a regular user, you can sign up for the DashPass service in the DoorDash application and use the regular free transport. The subscription is only $10 per month. On the other hand, if you don’t want to pay a subscription fee, you can enable notifications to let the app inform you at any time that there is a promotion at a nearby restaurant.
Depending on your location, the average sending time for a DoorDash sender is approximately 30 minutes or more.
In addition to food costs, there are several other costs associated with using DoorDash: transportation costs, tips for drivers, and more.
- Uber Eats
Uber Eats is another recommended catering service provider. It has more than 320,000 restaurant associates in more than 500 cities around the world. The average delivery time for Uber Eats is estimated at 30 minutes or less.
The app will help you sort restaurant options based on your previous orders, but you can also sort them by preference based on the most popular, the highest rated, price range, lead time, shipping costs, and dietary requirements.
The Uber Eats app gives the user the ability to track where their driver is in real-time if they choose to do so.
As a way to encourage users, Uber allows you to participate in Uber Rewards and earn points, allowing you to use earned points across the Food and Ride platform, which contributes to free shipping.
- Postmates
Postmates cover more than 4,200 cities in the United States. and has more than 500,000 restaurant chains.
The Postmates ordering application allows you to sort by recommended, accelerated, favorite, or kitchen type. As a service charge, Postmates may charge you an additional fee of between $1 and $10.
One of the main advantages of Postmates over other service providers is that it gives you a 24/7 opportunity to provide service while the restaurant you have ordered from is still open.
With Postmates, you can place orders for pharmaceutical products from places like CVS, Walgreens, Costco, and more.
As a regular user, Postmates also offers you a subscription offer of $10 per month or $100 per year. With it, you can enjoy free shipping on every order.
Delivery from Postmates may take approximately 45 minutes. Postmen are best known for their transportation offers.
- Grubhub
Grubhub has coverage in nearly 2,700 cities in the United States and has a network of 140,000 restaurants.
On Grubhub, you can search for food by class and track results by price, rating, distance, shipping cost, and delivery time.
Grubhub’s delivery time can be up to 1 hour. Interestingly, Grubhub supports almost all payment options, including PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Grubhub is best known for its variety of payment options.
- Delivery.com
Delivery.com operates in more than 1,800 cities in the United States and has a network of approximately 15,000 restaurants.
Delivery.com differs from other delivery service providers in that you can order food and other items such as alcohol and dry cleaners on the Delivery.com platform.
You can order food by searching for a restaurant, food class, or cuisine and filtering by rating.
Conclusion
The best delivery service for restaurants depends on a lot of factors. You may have to consider their charges, the delivery time, menu options, and other things that are important to you. However, DoorDash seems to have an overall market share of over 45%. There must be something it’s doing right that others may have to learn.
Why Are Delivery Services Not the Best Option for Restaurants?
If there’s any reason why delivery services are not considered an option for many restaurant owners, it’s the exorbitant and outrageous charges they collect for the services they offer. This odious act of many delivery service providers came under close watch when the pandemic was ravaging across America. In reaction to this, states like Chicago passed laws against delivery services, placing a bar on what they should not go beyond.
