Online food ordering system | everything you should know to use it

What is an online food ordering system?

It's an online solution for restaurants to make a new channel to receive food orders. Traditional restaurants today have access to simple and user-friendly solutions to make an online restaurant. If you are looking for an online food ordering system, you can read our article "How to Take Your Restaurant Online: A Recipe for Success", in which we addressed diverse issues that should be considered when you are trying to use an online order system for your traditional business. With the growth of mobile internet in recent years, there is an increased tendency for customers to use online food ordering apps and services.

Thus, it could be said that a new food market emerged in the last years through the growth of smartphones, in which traditional restaurants and other kinds of food businesses have contribute and share. This helps restaurants to increase their sales because they now can produce and supply foods for a larger number of demanding customers. Traditional restaurants can use these solutions to achieve a larger number of orders, and they also can use marketing technics to boost their sales and achieve a new level of branding. We also discussed in detail this topic here "Increase Restaurant Sales with online ordering system: 5 superb Tips", which provides a good understanding of important tips in using an online ordering system.

In the following article, we will cover and address all related concepts about the online food ordering system in detail.

What types of online food ordering systems are available?

Online food ordering service providers offer various types of systems to traditional and modern food processing businesses. These services are very useful for traditional restaurants, and various types of physical and local businesses can use these services to extend their market. You can read our article "Online Ordering System | 10 Reasons Your Restaurant Needs this system" that helps you to understand why these services are needed in today's market. However, two main types of ordering service providers are available out in the market:

• Ordering systems that provide a network of food producers to their customers. They have their customers and charge restaurants a percent of their sales.
• Ordering systems that provide an online menu for food producers. These systems offer technical facilities to traditional businesses to extend their local market to a larger number of customers across the city and other neighborhoods.

In our analysis, we introduced various cons and pros of these systems and showed that the first type, meaning those service providers that offer your food products to their customers, is not a suitable solution for brand restaurants and those traditional restaurants that have a distinctive presence in the market. This leads us to the second solution, and we tried to introduce diverse types of online menu and online food ordering system providers in our article "the top 12 online ordering system that is worth to look into".

Online food ordering system advantages

In our article about the reasons why your restaurant needs an online food ordering system, we introduced ten reasons, that you can read them in the following:

• (an online system) Makes Ordering Easier
• Better Management
• More Accurate Accounting
• Free/Cheap Marketing
• Better Insight
• Mobile Ordering
• Increase Market Share
• Being Open 24/7
• Does not need investment

Health Considerations

As you can see, several obvious advantages are introduced by these systems and you can use them even without paying any subscriptions or register price. For example, appfood.co provides professional food ordering services for almost free restaurants. This service provider offers a free subscription that restaurants can use to make their menu online, and allow them to use it freely until they achieve 100 orders in a month, then they should pay a small charge for monthly usage (less than $2 monthly).

Online food ordering system providers

In our introduction to different online food ordering systems, we covered the 12 most useful service providers and tried to show their various pros and cons. These service providers that almost all of which offer online menu systems tailored for restaurants and food processing businesses include:

• Appfood.co
• MenuDrive
• Toast POS
• Chownow
• Upserve
• Square POS
• Restolabs
• CAKE POS
• iMenu360
• GloriaFood
• Ordering.co
• eDelivery

These are the most important service providers that help restaurants to establish an online business besides their traditional food business. You can use these service providers with different charges and payment methods. Some of them offer monthly subscriptions in the range of $20 to $300, and some of them also require a setup price including buying special hardware, and are not so much easy to integrate.

As we mentioned earlier, our advice to new beginners is to start with a system provider that does not require a large investment. After all, you are trying to test a new marketing way and it may not necessarily be successful, thus, by using an inexpensive solution, you can make sure that you don’t need to invest anything for this service while you can also use its advantages. Appfood.co is one of the online food ordering system providers that offer several types of services and great options to restaurants.

How to start using an online food ordering system

In our article "How to Take Your Restaurant Online: A Recipe for Success", we explained simple important steps that you should take when trying to make an online food ordering system for your traditional restaurant. In a nutshell, we can say the following steps should be considered when you want to start this new business:

• Planning: various considerations that are important before starting the project
• Launch: getting online and making an online food ordering system
• Growth: improve your restaurant ordering system to have a reliable online ordering system
• Support: Keeping your customers happy and using online marketing for restaurants

When you start to plan this process, you should try to identify the best available solutions that suit your business. Several service providers offer branding services that could be used to enhance your brand view in your online menu, but they come very expensive, and to use some of them, you should pay an expensive monthly subscription.

Increase sales with an online food ordering system

Ordering systems are useful channels that restaurants can use to achieve new audiences and customers. When they are used along with various strong marketing technics, they might significantly help restaurant orders to gain more orders. Restaurant managers can consider the following tips that are helpful to increase sale:

• Provide a great online menu
• Use Social Media Networks
• Email marketing for restaurants
• Create incentives for ordering online
• Integrate online ordering with your POS

You can check these tips and items in detail by reading our article "Increase Restaurant Sales with online ordering system: 5 superb Tips". This article helps you to get an idea about diverse ways and methods that you can use to increase your sale via online presence. What is amazing about these tips is that almost all of them come free and you only need to be active in the field without any need for investment.

What do you need to start?

As we mentioned earlier, several types of online food ordering systems are available, each of which requires its requirements. The most minimal system that you can use includes a managing dashboard in which you can create your online menu including various types of gates that could be used on your website or social media pages. The best possible options offer smooth ordering systems that could be integrated with your restaurant's POS.

When you use advanced software solutions, the only thing you need is access to web browsers and the internet. That makes them super easy-to-use solutions that could be used by unprofessional people. Therefore, if your cashier is not great with a computer, you can yet use these systems. Appfood.co is one of the easiest to use online food ordering systems that you can find out in the market.

Last Words

After the widespread of the Coronavirus and its related lockdowns, almost all restaurant owners tried to use online solutions to sell their products. Today, thanks to the growth of mobile internet, several types of online food ordering systems are available that restaurant owners can use to achieve more sales, from service providers like Ubbereats that provide a food supply chain to various branded services that restaurant owners can use according to their marketing plans.

If you are a restaurant manager and looking to find a good suitable solution that could be shared with your local customers, you can use the free services of appfood.co that comes almost free. You can use these services to create your restaurant's online menu that could be shared on various social media pages and websites. You can use their services to create your restaurant's online ordering system that could be used by your customers. All services are free till your restaurant receives 100 orders monthly, then you should pay a charge less than $2 monthly.