The first food delivery app of the modern type that we are familiar with to come to London was Deliveroo. It entered the market in London in 2013. It sounded like a great idea to many restaurant owners. Gaining the ability to have their food delivered in selected areas of the capital without the need to have a fleet of drivers and vehicles sounded fantastic.
The headache of large overhead has historically not allowed many London food establishments to expand. This could be the opportunity.
Currently there are approximately one hundred restaurant choices on some of these platforms in each of London’s affluent postcodes. No one goes through a hundred choices of restaurants when they are deciding where or what they will be eating tonight. What happened is understandable. Every restaurant has joined at least one or as many of these delivery apps as possible. The challenge here is that if you run a restaurant in a given area you are basically forced now to spend a considerable amount of money fighting your position on the app. There is big difference in being the first or twenty-first business on a list of a hundred of competitors.
Had the food delivery apps managed their quality control better and curated their lists based on merit this would not be such a problem. They have not done this and for many of them these bidding wars over the rankings in the searches on their apps are a big source of revenue.
On top of this they might take up to 30% commission per order.
The Private postman has worked with many local restaurants as well as restaurant chains over the years. Many of our long-time clients have come to us asking for advice since they find it close to impossible to stand out on the delivery apps. They are now wondering how they can get their old customer base back and how to get more control over the acquisition of new business.
We have developed a response to this. Since no restaurant can reliable deliver hot food beyond approximately a 2 mile radius the issue that needs solving is local. Not global. And local marketing is what we do.
As such we have developed a repeated drop system with a specific approach to the design of each leaflet that is designed to develop brand recognition in the 2 mile radius around your restaurant. With the approach that we have taken we have seen both the increase in direct visits to the restaurants we work with but also an uptick in their orders on the apps.
If people don’t see a restaurant in top positions on the app they have on their phone the restaurant basically doesn’t exist for them. We can however side-step the bidding war the apps have created and instead develop brand recognition first and have them actively looking for you. This works and has proven to be one of the better system we have employed over our 10 years of existence. Our food centered clients are gaining their local areas back and building their customer base via a clever flanking maneuver.