Adding Uber Eats to our restaurant

For years, we never delivered our pizzas to the local’s neighborhood like other pizza restaurants. I did not want to deal with all of the insurances and liabilities that come with delivering. We were so busy with our walk-in and site down customers I just did not want the hassle. After all, our customers were so used to either dining in or taking-out.

But our societies eating habits are changing and they’re changing fast. Not only has the average time a family eats out per week tripled. But the average time a family orders delivery per week has now doubled. Some say it is not only because families habits are changing. I believe a few of the major factors in this increase of home delivery of dinner is because.

1. Whether they offer in-house delivery or outsource delivery. Every restaurant seems to offer delivery. Especially with all of the companies that specialize in delivery like Uber Eats and Bite Squad.

2. The American families dinner habits have changed.

After a while, I began to realize that if we do not offer delivery we were going to start losing customers. We would lose those customers to other local restaurants that utilize these external companies that specialize in delivering. They have created a market to where the customer can get online and order from any restaurant and have it delivered (even McDonalds). Even if they wanted to order from our restaurant, they would still order from the store that delivers.

A general rule of thumb is that when a customer orders from a restaurant. They tend to order from that same restaurant up to 3 times in a row without coming back to your restaurant. So if you don’t deliver, you not only lost that sale. You also lost that customers next 2-3 sales.

So, I finally gave in and decided that I had to offer delivery to stay current. But after doing some research and crunching some numbers. It did not take long for me to realize that it was going to be very costly for me to deliver pizza to my customers. The costs just seemed to go on and on. There is the extra payroll, Insurance for the delivery vehicle, the extra in general liability, the hassle of hiring and firing a bunch of new employees and on and on…..

That’s when I decided that I had to find a better and more cost-effective way to execute this move. That’s when I started to look into 3rd party delivery services like Uber Eats, and Bite Squad. Let me tell you, there are a lot of them.

On the service, they are pretty similar to each other. They all take an average of 30% of the top. That was the biggest mental hurdle for me to get over. As a restauranteur, you typically only making an average of 10% profit. Now they are asking me to give them 30% of the entire order? That was a hard fact to swallow. That just hurt me to the bones. Knowing that I had to offer delivery but my only choices were not good.

Then I started to go back to my previous notes for delivering in-house. I quickly realized that after looking at all of the costs and hassle attached to in-house delivery. That the 30% was actually starting to make sense. Between the labor and insurance, I was already over 30% of the entire check going to just those 2 things. Then add on top of that all the hassle I would have to deal with. It started to add up real fast. Outsourcing delivery was the way to go.

Now, it was about finding the best delivery provider for my restaurant and our needs. So, I started to look into UberEats and all of the options that they offer.

Uber eats delivery actually offered a lot of other services, besides delivery.

When I went back and really looked at what they where gonna bring to the table beside delivery. I was pretty impressed and decided to look a little deeper. What I found was that they offered my restaurant a great opportunity for branding and marketing that was unavailable to a restaurant like mine before.

• Uber eats sent a professional photographer to my restaurant to take photos of every item on my menu.

They did this so they could add photos of every meal we make to the Uber eats delivery online menu. I was also able to keep a copy of the photos for me to use is my own marketing. This would have cost me $500 if I paid for it myself.

• They reached a market that I was not able to target without spending large amounts of money.

I did not advertise at all that we were starting delivery in any way. But we did over $4,000.00 our first full week delivering with Uber eats. This means that I was not going to get those sales in the first place. The people who ordered Uber eats delivery that day where on the Uber eats website to get delivery and see our menu. They were not going out to eat and where not coming to our restaurant, These families were getting delivery no matter who was available for Uber eats that week. I have come to realize just how large and diverse the customer base Uber eats caters to is.

• They handle all of the customer services for their orders themselves.

I was amazed to learn that Uber eats handles all of the customer issues that might arise throughout the entire process. Even if it is our fault in every way, Uber eats delivery will take care of it and make it right with the customer. Keep in mind if you constantly screw it up and become a liability, I’m sure Uber eats delivery will decide to not serve your restaurant.

• They pay for 100% of the order even if they refund the customer.

Yep, you read correctly. Even if Uber eats delivery has to refund the customer all of their money for any reason. They still pay our restaurant the full amount. This is very nice because the customer stays happy and Uber eats took care of the issues from start to finish. I wish everything in this business worked like that!

So after taking a second look and considering all of my options. Even though Uber eats takes 32% off the top. With all of the other things they offer, I have decided to give Uber eats delivery a try.  Check back for an update on how my partnership with Uber eats delivery goes.