What's better than getting delicious food delivered right to your door? A lot goes into making that experience seamless and enjoyable for your customers and for your business. I'm Samantha Renée. I help entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses at Bricks to Clicks Collective and I'm a business tutorials producer at Shopify.
Today I'm going to talk about how your restaurant can offer local delivery and pickup all on your own. We'll also touch on a few tips for packaging, operations, and connecting with your customers. What we'll cover today.
Let's dig in. First, let's talk about the ways that you can offer local delivery to your customers. We didn't plan on a global lockdown. But restaurants have been some of the scrappiest businesses I've seen embrace the change and technology to continue serving their communities.
Food delivery services like UberEats, Skip the Dishes, or whatever is local to you, have become a lifeline for restaurants. These apps offer that palm-of your-hand convenience, which is a great option for restaurants who want to start taking orders fast.
But it's not your only choice. On Shopify, you can set up your own local delivery service right from your website. You could offer your own local delivery along with the food delivery services you're already using, or you can be completely independent. You'll have full autonomy on your delivery experience, and you'll save the fees from delivery apps. With the Shopify local delivery app, you can manage the logistics of your deliveries and you'll get automated status updates.
Pizza Pilgrim is a UK-based restaurant that had multiple locations before they were forced to close down due to the pandemic. However, they quickly moved their business online and started offering pizza for delivery. They also created an entirely new product for their customers: a frying pan pizza kit.
This is just one success story of a restaurant using delivery and pickup. Let's talk a bit more about the local pickup options you can explore for your restaurant. If you don't have the resources to offer local delivery, pickup is a great way to stay connected with your customers and still generate revenue.
Just like the delivery option, you can set up local pickup in your Shopify store. Food apps like UberEats and Skip the Dishes allow you to set up pickup orders, but they'll still take a cut. If your restaurant didn't offer local pickup before, and this is something new, make sure you're telling your customers.
Many businesses choose to update their websites with this information. Social media is also another way to keep your customers up to date about how they can order from you. Now we'll take a look at a few quick tips for your local pickup and delivery operations.
If this is your first time offering out-of-house dining, you probably haven't thought much about takeout packaging in the past. But no worries, a bit of research on Google will help you make the right choice for your restaurant. If sustainability is important to you, consider an eco-friendly container.
If you have sauces or really liquid-y dishes, consider something durable, with an airtight lid. These are just a few ideas to get you thinking. Next how can you redeploy your staff. Matt is the owner of Brodflour, a bakery in Toronto. They switch things up to only offering bread and flour.
So a lot of the front house staff move behind the counter to mill flour and bake bread. Think about the ways that you can still utilize your restaurant staff like having them manage deliveries or pack orders. And lastly, think about the specials that you can offer through delivery. With many locations changing regulations on alcohol delivery, restaurants are creating unique specials like a wine pairing or an uncommon beer choice with a meal.
Being adaptable is key. I really hope this was helpful in thinking about the ways that your restaurant can offer local delivery and pickup. For more tips and tutorials check out some of the other content on Compass.
