Are restaurant aggregators like Just Eat and Grubhub here to stay?

Is the battle lost? Are Restaurant Aggregators here to stay? Is the argument really over?

Well... The short answer is YES. Aggregators are here to stay as they provide a valuable marketing resource to restaurants and make finding services easy for the consumer. The interesting thing is how restaurants are having to adapt, learning to co-exist, and how services like Fast Food Cart are making this possible.

If restaurant aggregators like Grubhub and Just Eat are here to stay then why are restaurants still developing their own online sales platforms or using services like Fast Food Cart?

Well the answer is simple. It's all about finding an upside, creating a profit and building stronger relationships with a restaurants core client base.

Building your own online restaurant sales platform makes sense, since restaurants that focus only on using aggregators like Just Eat and Grubhub to mange their sales loose a monster amount of profit in sales commissions and can actually put their entire business at risk by relying on a 3rd party platform for all their sales. If all your eggs are in one basket then what is your fall back plan when the basket breaks. If you don't control the relationship with your clients then you could loose them all if your aggregator goes offline or stops existing as a business.

But.. don't get me wrong. Using restaurant aggregators is a great idea as long as you also have the capacity to build your own client base, collect your own client data, manage your own online orders and manage your own sales.

In a previous articles we mentioned that the average cost of using Just Eat is over 19.75% of each order you process via their platform (as per the data provided by article on the Financial Times website). Thats a huge slice of your income to be sending to someone else for what should be your own loyal customers. 

So... How to get your own online sales platform is the question and what makes most sense. To put it into perspective a good looking modern, mobile friendly website for a company can cost anywhere upward of £1500 and the monthly hosting (if its a good service) upwards of £120 a year.. if its a managed service which includes support and maintenance then you would be looking at a figure closer to £1080 a year as a minimum. If you have a more sophisticated website built that handles your online sales such as an ecommerce store then a figure closer to £4500 would be a reasonable price to pay for an entry level online sales system.. If you wanted something that works as efficiently as Just Eat then you would be looking at a rather more serious pricetag. 

This would put most small businesses off and make the development of such a system out of their reach..

The other option is to get a Fast Food Cart account which will provide you with every possible online sales facility a restaurant could need at a fraction of the cost of building your own system. Its an online restaurant ordering and delivery system that takes the pain out of managing your own website and makes processing orders, managing drivers and notifying clients easy. 

Fast Food Cart has been built with restaurant order processing at its core and it even comes with the facility to launch your own IOS or Android app. 

The monthly cost of a Fast Food Cart is extremely low and with no additional commission fees charged on any sale it makes you a massive saving.

Now you can have the best of both worlds. You should have a restaurant aggregator which enables you to reach out into the market and to attract new clients.. while also having your own Fast Food Cart online sales system to manage all your existing clients. With every order you deliver you should be promoting your own website and app and driving your customers to order from your directly. 

In terms of your Food Aggregators you need to keep the following 3 points in mind if you are going to use these tools as revenue generating engines for your restaurant. It is well known that the percentage of profit charged by restaurant aggregators can make it for restaurants to turn a profit but it is possible.

Following these 4 steps will increase your revenue potential from restaurant aggregators.

1)  Understand the Restaurant Aggregators Pricing Model

The pricing models of most restaurant aggregators may seem impossible to understand but you need to come to terms with them. Often they dont even publish their costs on their websites and agree them with restaurants on a case by case basis. Once you have some actual numbers from the aggregator you should use the Fast Food Cart Savings Calculator to generate a projection of the costs associated with any Restaurant Aggregator and generate a future projection on the associated costs. You can set your average order value, the sales commission, the payment processing fees and per transaction costs associated with your existing provider. Then set the number of average monthly orders using the slider provided to calculate the actual cost. Use our Growth section to set the % of monthly growth and you can generate some accurate numbers for your online yearly sales. You need to know what each aggregator is charging you so you can plan and manage your business. You can always adjust the advertising or position of your restaurant within each aggregator to increase or decrease your visibility on their platform but remember that this will affect the commission and cost of using their system. Make sure you select an aggregator that is flexible with its pricing model and that you are not locked into a long term contract. It could make a massive difference to your bottom line over the course of a year.

2)  You Should Use Multiple Restaurant Aggregators and Multiple Marketing Channels.

Understand your client base, their needs and match this to the aggregators that you use. Its perfectly reasonable for you to use multiple aggregators to attract new clients but you need to make sure that you are converting them over to your own platform and getting them to order from you directly if you are going to claw back your profits. There are even systems that make it possible to integrate all the sales you make from your different aggregators. You should think of using restaurant aggregators like any other marketing platform. You should integrate them into your standard plan for on-boarding new clients, just as you do from your Facebook, Twitter and other social accounts. or your directory listings and advertising campaigns. Every lead or client you attract is as valuable as the number of times they re-order from you again at no additional marketing cost. Its vital to combine your efforts into the single most profitable sales platform and make sure you stay in control of your own sales, your own money and your own restaurant. It's your reputation after all.

3)  Decide how you manage your Delivery Drivers?

If you have your own drivers then all well and good. Fast Food Cart can manage your delivery drivers and the costs associated with delivery. If you are using a 3rd party like Uber Eats or Deliverroo  to pick up and drop off food then be aware of the additional costs associated. In some cases this can be as high as 30% per delivery. 

4)  Have your own website, and your own mobile app for IOS and Android?

If you use aggregators to sell food then you already know that your clients use apps and like to order from them. You should be making life easy for your best clients and having your own Fast Food Cart app is one way you can do this. Once your website is up and running and you are selling online you need to think about integrating your menu and your promotions with your own app. Talk to the Fast Food Cart team about your needs.