Food delivery was booming before the pandemic, and now it’s skyrocketing. With so many restaurants not able to serve in-store customers, they have adapted by signing up with as many third-party food delivery services as possible.
This has been great for the food delivery companies, but with great success can come great challenges. Although leading third-party ordering and delivery platforms have customer experiences covered, both with online ordering and on-time delivery, they needed to find a way to scale rapidly and get orders to restaurant kitchens as quickly as possible.
The Problem of Online Order Management
Restaurants often don’t anticipate the added steps to their workflows that a new partnership with a third-party delivery platform can create. Online orders typically come in on a tablet in the front of the house, and then the staff has to communicate that order with the kitchen. Handwriting orders or keying the order into the point of sale (POS) system for transmission to the food prep area is time-consuming and error-prone. The most efficient, accurate and quickest way to get orders to the kitchen is to send them directly to printers.
Under normal circumstances, managing online orders can be a challenge, but during the rapid increase in restaurant online ordering during the pandemic, it could quickly become overwhelming. Furthermore, a business’ ability to get orders from the front- to the back-of-the-house promptly and efficiently could directly impact the success of this revenue stream and customer loyalty – and keeping customers happy and cash flowing was crucial during difficult economic times.
The No-Friction Way for Third-Party Delivery Companies to Equip Restaurants With Printers
As is the case with many software companies, providing printers or other hardware is beyond third-party delivery platforms focus. It has been especially true during a time of high-volume onboarding and scaling that occurred due to restaurant restrictions during the pandemic.
One leading third-party delivery company is leveraging ShopPOSPortal to manage hardware sales and distribution through a branded hardware microsite. ShopPOSPortal partnered with Star Micronics to provide compatible printers to restaurants partnering with third-party food delivery platforms.
By visiting the custom-branded microsite, restaurants can easily find the compatible printers they need and purchase them without the online ordering platform having any involvement in the sale of the hardware.
ShopPOSPortal drop ships the products directly to the end user’s address and handles everything else related to the hardware sale, including inventory management and customer support.
Want to Provide Hardware Without Managing It?
The ShopPOSPortal model has proven to be successful for other software companies that need to ensure their users have the correct, compatible hardware for the best user experiences but don’t have the resources to manage the hardware. Software companies providing solutions for point of sale (POS), warehousing and logistics, healthcare and more can benefit from turning the problem of providing your users with hardware over to a company that makes it its primary focus.
Partnering with a company that manages hardware sales and customer support gives you more time to focus on development, meeting your customers’ demands and optimizing releases while having confidence that your customers have the exact hardware they need at the best prices.
