15 tips for setting up a takeaway and delivery business

In order to maintain business during this period of confinement, restaurants must adapt and reinvent themselves - without denaturing themselves - to survive the crisis. With takeaway sales now authorized by the government, restaurants and caterers must learn to organize themselves differently. Here are 15 tips for setting up a takeaway and delivery business.

For fast-food outlets and restaurateurs alike, one way to keep their business going is to set up takeaway and delivery services. But where do you go to find sources of revenue that have been absent for months? What offers should be made? How do you get into these services if you've never done them before? How can you adapt your offer operationally and deliver a quality experience to your customers? Find out in our article.

1) Define a suitable offer

Before launching your click and collect and delivery services, we advise you to review your menu and adapt it to this type of service. According to Téramène, your selection of dishes can be based on your location, customer demand, your know-how, the specificities of the dishes and, of course, your production and organizational capacity. To make your offer optimal for lunch and/or dinner, you need to work on four points:

• The length of the menu: long menus don't reassure consumers. To create an attractive menu, opt for a small number of simple recipes, based on fresh, seasonal produce.
• Rotating dishes: the shorter your menu, the more important it is to renew recipes on a regular basis. The perfect opportunity to offer seasonal produce...
• A striking menu: innovating both in terms of recipes and choice of products. A menu shouldn't just be a line-up of dishes, it should inspire desire.
• Offers to share: these are particularly popular with consumers, especially in the evenings and at weekends. In these times of confinement, families can enjoy a moment of exchange around a dish.

To find out more, download the Téramène white paper "Takeaway and home delivery".

2) Position yourself optimally in your sector

Pricing will determine your positioning. It's a strategic decision that depends on the constraints and objectives you set for yourself. You'll need to be consistent with your positioning and emphasize the image of your establishment, your values and your products, so that they stand out from the competition in the eyes of your customers. If your restaurant is a gourmet one, low take-away prices risk devaluing your brand image. On the other hand, if your prices are usually affordable, high takeaway prices will scare away potential customers. Knowing what your competitors are offering and how much they charge will help you define your offer. To attract lunchtime customers, it's important to know the average amount a customer spends on lunch. The French spend an average of €10 on their lunch break. For fast-food restaurants, the average basket is €9.70 per meal, and for traditional restaurants it represents €13.50 per meal.

3) Calculate food costs to anticipate delivery costs

To make your takeaway profitable, you need to calculate your costs in advance. On average, the cost of a dish's ingredients represents between 25% and 35% of its total value. The "multiplying factor" method involves applying a multiplying factor to the material cost of a dish, to obtain the final selling price (material cost of the dish X multiplying factor = final selling price). Takeaway sales require lower personnel costs (service, dishwashing, etc.), but higher packaging costs. Once you've taken the various costs into account, you'll need to adjust the multiplier. If you find it difficult to calculate the staff costs involved in takeaway sales, you can add the cost of packaging to the cost of the dish, and reduce the multiplier initially applied to table service. The gross margin generated should be sufficient to cover your other costs (labor, rent, etc.) and thus generate profit. Usually, restaurateurs aim for a margin rate of around 70% on food and at least 75% on beverage sales. To calculate your gross margin, simply subtract the cost of materials from the selling price.

4) Adapt your packaging

How do you maintain the restaurant experience while implementing a takeaway and delivery service? What packaging solutions exist to reduce the amount of plastic used to transport dishes during delivery? These are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself before choosing your packaging. In addition to representing your values, the packaging must be optimal for takeaway and delivery. For financial reasons and as an ecological alternative, we advise you to choose packaging that is reusable, biodegradable and made from renewable materials. In this field, Solia is developing a wide range of tableware solutions!

5) Choose the right support for online ordering

Online ordering must be as seamless as possible for the customer. To achieve this, the map must be easy to consult. If you have a website, the map can be integrated into a page on the site, or made available as a downloadable PDF file. You can also share it on your social media website, where consumers spend a lot of time.

6) Create a complete, interactive map

To be attractive and impactful, the menu must be legible, clear, short and consistent with your concept. There are a number of compulsory items on a takeaway menu:

• Prices and "service included": your card must show net prices, including taxes and services. If this is the case, you can indicate prices including VAT.
• Thawed products.
• Allergens: restaurant owners have been obliged since 2014 to inform customers of the presence of allergens in their dishes. 14 allergenic ingredients must be declared (peanuts, nuts, gluten, eggs, soy, milk, celery, mustard, sesame, lupin, shellfish and fish).
• Meat origin.
• "Drink included" or "Drink not included".
• Use of the home-made logo.

Once operationally ready, you'll need to train your teams so that they're ready to work in these very special health crisis conditions.

7) Raising team awareness of health issues

Train your employees in the new hygiene measures. Check your employees' temperature every day before letting them go to work. While maintaining safety distances, barrier gestures (wash your hands regularly, cough or sneeze into your elbow or a handkerchief, use a single-use handkerchief and throw it away, greet without shaking hands or hugging) must be applied at all times, by all staff.

If your kitchen is small, it will be necessary to reorganize the work. Particular attention must be paid to cleaning and disinfecting all surfaces and utensils in contact with food. To find out more, the French Ministry of Labor has produced a COVID-19 control kit explaining the measures to be adopted for contract catering and takeaway sales.

8) Inform customers about takeaway rules

Communicating about the procedures to be followed protects you and your customers. Be as clear and precise as possible:

• Prominently indicate the takeaway pick-up area , and mark off areas accessible to your customers with floor markers.
• Remind customers by phone of their instructions, particularly for cashiering, and place a slate or sign outside the establishment to remind them of the procedure to follow (no more than two people in the restaurant, 1.5m distance between customers, food collection area, etc.).

9) Secure order placement and delivery

Takeaway orders are often placed remotely: online on your website if it's a merchant, by phone or via a delivery platform(Deliveroo, UberEats, Just Eat...).When it comes to handing over orders, your team needs to be vigilant.

• If the customer picks up his or her order at the restaurant, provide a food collection area to ensure contact-free delivery of the order. Clean the collection area regularly .
• If the order is picked up and delivered by a delivery driver, make sure that the driver is familiar with and follows the contactless delivery procedure.

In March, the government published a guide to health precautions to be taken when delivering meals to the home.

10) Set up your click & collect solution

To make things easier for you, several startups offer their services:

• During this period, Tasty Cloud will install their online ordering solution free of charge on your website and your social media !

• Pulp's application lets your customers order and pay directly online. Save time and anticipate orders so that your customers can pick up their dishes when they visit your restaurant.
• Innovorder helps you deploy your online ordering and delivery service.

Once your teams have mastered all these steps, you can promote your approach online!

11) Work on local referencing

The first thing to do is to indicate on your Google My Business page that you offer a takeaway and delivery service. Don't hesitate to add it to the description of your establishment and share a Google My Business post as well! Frequent use of the keywords "takeaway" and "delivery", which have been increasingly searched for on Google in recent months, will help you rise to the top of the search results.With +70% web browsing since mid-March, it's becoming essential tobe visible on Google, wherever your customers - existing or future - are. To achieve this, you need to :

• Update your schedules wherever you are listed online.
• Identify your relevant keywords and distribute them on all platforms.
• Reply to customer reviews and insert your keywords. Don't hesitate to use these reviews to share your latest news and specify your new offer.
• Take photos to inspire your customers. Rename them with your keywords to improve your online visibility!

12) Communicate on social media

Keeping your customers informed is essential! What services do you offer? On which platforms? You need to answer their main questions in your profile description. And don't hesitate to include a link to your takeaway or delivery service!

• Reassure and show what you're doing to protect your teams, delivery personnel and customers. Be explicit about the implementation of your new hygiene rules and how contactless delivery works.
• Plan events you don't want to miss : calendar holidays, movie and TV series releases, events linked to your kitchen...
• Entice your customers with a variety of content: recipe videos, team photos, raw products and dishes.

13) Local sponsorship

Sponsor your posts to improve your visibility becomes even more useful in this period of confinement:

• Use the right tools like Facebook Business Manager and Instagram Business.
• Target your customers by age, gender, interests and location.
• Define a budget beforehand and repeat the process, analyzing each campaign as you go along.

14) Activate press relations

Generate awareness and present your offer through press relations. To make the most of your contacts with journalists, we recommend ..:

• Identify relevant media for your restaurant: guidebooks, women's magazines, daily newspapers, cultural magazines, specialized media, specific radio programs...
• Target journalists according to their preferred topics and obtain their e-mail addresses.
• Approach journalists effectively by explaining your approach in a concise and personalized way.

15) Collaborate with local influencers

Instagram will have over 1 billion monthly active users in 2020, and Facebook 2.7 billion. This consumption is steadily increasing among the under-35s. If your core target is young people, setting up an influencing campaign will enable you to reach the maximum number of potential customers on social media. To collaborate with influencers, we advise you to :

• Identify the most relevant ones, those that are closest to your restaurant's values.
• Check the nature of the influencer's publications: does he or she focus on exceptional places? A specific type of food: healthy food or foodporn?
• Choose your approach beforehand: one-off relays or long-term collaboration?

In a nutshell,

To learn more, we offer a digital communications training course at the end of November. It's 100% online and subsidized. You'll learn how to acquire new customers online, establish a local referencing strategy, the key steps to managing your e-reputation... To register: click here. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us by e-mail at contact@malou.io. Solidarity helps us to emerge stronger from these crises, so don't hesitate to ask!