Just like online shopping has boomed, ordering food online and getting it delivered to your door has become increasingly popular in the last couple of years when restaurants and cafes have not always been able to open for dine-in customers. In fact, WordPress recently reported that this market expects to see revenue growth of 16.6 per cent in 2022.
People love convenience, so if you want to attract customers to your food delivery business, it’s important to give them the ability to order online. Other benefits of online ordering include freeing up staff from taking phone orders and retaining customers who would have gone elsewhere if they couldn’t get through on the first call.
But how do you set up online ordering?
If you’re running a WordPress website, there are plenty of excellent free or affordable premium plugins that take care of the entire process for you. They enable you to do things like displaying your menu, accepting or declining orders, adding delivery fees, printing thermal receipts, sending email notifications, varying menu by location, advising of delivery timeframes, and, of course, accepting payment. Not all plugins have every feature, so it’s important to decide which ones you need most when selecting the right plugin for you. Here’s a list of some of the most popular plugins:
WooFood – a fully-featured premium plugin for sites that use WooCommerce.
WP Food – an affordable premium plugin for non-WooCommerce sites.
GloriaFood – a free plugin that offers paid features as add-ons if you need them.
RestroPress – a free plugin with an easy user interface.
Food Online – another WooCommerce plugin that’s free for up to 50 menu items, with a premium version available for bigger menus.
This list is just a small sample of WordPress plugins available for online food ordering. The benefit of keeping your online ordering system in-house is that you have total control of how you set it up, and you don’t have to pay any third-party commissions. However, it does not give you the marketing reach you get if you integrate with a third-party platform.
Third-party ordering system
Online ordering platforms can be like giant, virtual food courts. Hungry diners can browse through a range of cuisines and get an overview of all the delivery restaurants in their area. Belonging to one of these platforms can open up your business to a whole new set of customers, but it comes at the cost of whatever commission the platform charges.
Usually, these platforms will integrate with your business’s POS system, so you don’t need to worry about manually entering the details of each order yourself.
Here are some of the third-party online ordering platforms in New Zealand:
UberEats – available in all major cities and supplies their own delivery drivers
Menulog – services over 2,000 New Zealand restaurants and offers businesses a choice of doing their own delivery or using Menulog’s drivers
Delivereasy – available in over 20 cities and towns (although not Auckland) and supplies their own delivery drivers.
Regulr – available New Zealand-wide but does not supply delivery drivers.
If you’d like to set up an online delivery system for your WordPress website, or you’d like a site created for your food business, Moreweb can help. Get in touch with us to find out more!
