How Delivery Management Software is Changing the Food Service Industry

How Delivery Management Software is Changing the Food Service Industry-feature image
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Eating habits are changing around the world. The advent of user-friendly apps along with changing dining preferences has unlocked food delivery as the most preferred option. In the present time, food delivery has become a major market worth over $150 billion. The major reason for this enormous boost was Covid-19 lockdown and physical distancing requirements. Well, given the customer’s love for convenience, the food delivery space is up for further evolution.

In the past, restaurants directly handled the limited food delivery that was required. However, advanced tools are required nowadays to smoothen the increasing number of food delivery requests. This is where the need for delivery management software comes into the picture to automate day-to-day operations and run a food business successfully.

Before diving into the importance of food delivery software in today’s time, let’s quickly look at these reports from different research agencies.

  • Online food delivery is expected to reach $200 billion by 2025
  • Approximately 70% of the people prefer online food delivery than visiting a restaurant
  • The number of users in the online food delivery segment is expected to reach around 2897.1 million by 2025

Food delivery management software helps businesses cut down several steps in the delivery process by automating operations like dispatching, auto order allocation, management of drivers, real time tracking of orders and more. It reduces the need for hours of manual activities.

In this article, we will further discuss what delivery management software is and how it is changing the food service industry in providing a better and cost-effective service!

What is Food Delivery Management Software?

How Delivery Management Software is Changing the Food Service Industry inside

Food delivery management software manages and automates delivery management processes to ensure all orders can be delivered on time and in the most cost effective way possible. It basically serves as an aggregator of third-party food delivery platforms. The software provides important modules for managing orders, designing food delivery routes, tracking orders, and ensuring on-time delivery of food.

The growing demand for online food ordering has led to food businesses utilizing delivery services to boost their sales as well as reach out to customers quickly.

Who Can Benefit from Delivery Management Software?

Manually managing the delivery process is a highly complicated task. But to your surprise, there are many restaurant owners who still depend on traditional food delivery methods due to multiple reasons like inexperience with third party delivery systems, fearing higher logistic costs, etc. However, unknowingly it is impacting their business.

With the rising competition in the food industry, the only way to stay at the top and relevant in the market is by implementing an effective delivery management software solution. Whether you are a small business restaurant owner or a bigger food delivery service company, it is important to streamline your process to ensure high conversion, simplified business operations, less struggle in planning delivery routes, effortlessly tracking orders, among other things.

Suggested Read: How Restaurant POS Billing Software Improves Food Delivery

Importance of a Food Delivery Software

Benefits of investing in restaurant technology comes with a long list of advantages that can level up the delivery operations for your business.

For merchants:

  • The order management module automatically allocates the order to the rider considering factors such as proximity, rider history and more
  • Real time order tracking helps avoid problems like late deliveries
  • Vendors can monitor the number of deliveries, customer ratings and other details and generate valuable insights to improve delivery performance
  • Powered by technology like AI, the software shows customer’s favorite food items to make them order food quickly and as a result increase customer retention rate.

For riders:

  • Instant update on driver app whenever an order is assigned or arrived
  • Efficiently optimizes delivery routes to ensure maximum orders can be delivered by one rider in the least time possible
  • Update order status which syncs with the software and alert restaurant owners that the driver is available to pick the next order

For end customers:

  • Order tracking is available in real time as well as the facility to call the rider and enquire about the order
  • Real time in-app chat option to contact the customer support team to raise a query or concern, if any.

What are the Challenges of Meal-Delivery Business?

How Delivery Management Software is Changing the Food Service Industry

The online food delivery service business is growing exponentially and by 2024 the food ordering marketplace’s total revenue is expected to grow at 8.8%. However, due to the varied customer demands, here’re a few significant challenges for the food delivery industry.

  • Meeting the customer’s expectations in getting the same service in terms of food quality, freshness, hygiene, food temperature, etc. as in the dine-in experience.
  • Planning delivery route manually can cause a lot of long road times resulting in high delivery expenses.
  • Unexpected delivery delays that can happen due to numerous issues like road blockages, traffic, absence of delivery partners, among other things.
  • In case a delivery is delayed, nothing can be worse than leaving customers waiting for their food order. Hence, maintaining transparency with the customers is crucial in the meal delivery business.
  • In an established food business, handling multiple orders simultaneously is another crucial challenge. It can be overwhelming for business owners to map the best delivery route that the driver must take for different orders.

Top 5 Food Delivery Management Software

We have shortlisted the most used food delivery management software for restaurants that you must consider for your food business.

  1. Upper Route Planner

Why do you need it?

Upper delivery management software helps you right from dispatching the food to delivering it to the customer. This route-optimized software provides you with multiple features for setting driver’s preferences, priority levels & more that can help save up to 95% of your planning time. In addition, customers also receive updates regarding their food delivery in real time. All in all, Upper software’s fully automated process can make things simpler for your team.

Upper Delivery Management Software Highlights:

  • Real time updates to customers regarding deliveries and status
  • Proof of delivery
  • Estimated time of order arrival

Suggested Read: Restaurant Management Software: Worthy or Not?

  1. Shipsy

SaaS Based Delivery Management Software

Why do you need it?

Shipsy’s AI enabled delivery management platform enables restaurant business owners to automate delivery process. This simplifies day-to-day restaurant operations by expediting order allocation and also the driver’s job by facilitating them with the best routes. Not only that, but its advanced features save the hassle of multi-stop delivery by keeping drivers from getting stuck in heavy traffic areas. In addition, it sends real-time notifications to customers to enhance their experience and retention rate.

Shipsy Highlights:

  • Real time visibility of delivery status
  • Deliver multiple orders by enroute clubbing
  • Live tracking links for customers
  • 100% mobile support with a driver app for field operations
  1. POSBytz

Why do you need it?

POSBytz food delivery system provides you with an interactive dashboard that contains details such as purchase and return histories of customers, inventory reports, etc. which help you evaluate how your restaurant business is performing. You can also monitor multiple delivery destinations at a given time. Further, with POSBytz, you can set up your own ordering channel and monitor real time order progress.

POSBytz Highlights:

  • Route optimization
  • Real time tracking
  • Integration with popular delivery partners such as Zomato & Swiggy
  1. Sapaad

Cloud POS & Restaurant Management System

Why do you need it?

Sapaad helps manage every aspect of your food delivery process with utmost ease. You can track orders from a store till it reaches your door and everything in between. Besides, instant insights into food preparation, pick-up and delivery time help identify issues. Thus, you can always stay in total control of the quality of your food delivery service! Overall, Sapaad helps restaurant owners manage all order channels through one centralized Cloud POS.

Sapaad Highlights:

  • Personal mobile assistant for drivers
  • Real time SMS alerts to customers
  • Track customer’s waiting time
  1. Onfleet

Why do you need it?

Onfleet suggests the optimal route to delivery agents by automatically considering factors like location, time, traffic & more to reach the customers on time. This advanced route planning software distributes the food order delivery tasks effectively among the delivery drivers and guides them with optimized routes.

It ensures faster delivery while also providing excellent customer service. In addition, this software also has a driver tracking feature that provides live driver locations with correct ETAs (Estimated time of arrival) to view and track while they are on the move for merchants as well as customers.

Onfleet Highlights:

  • End to end route planning
  • Auto assigns the right driver at the right time
  • Proof of delivery
  • Analyze and improve performance with powerful analytics

The Impact of Delivery Management Software on Food Service Industry

How Delivery Management Software is Changing the Food Service Industry

When you implement food delivery management software into your business, you are essentially improving the way you offer customer support options. Automating the delivery process can help you reap the benefits in other areas of your business as well.

  • Track orders in real time effortlessly
  • Less struggle in route planning thus saving ample time
  • Reduced delivery delays due to unforeseen circumstances
  • High conversion of loyal customers
  • Increased number of recurring orders
  • Improved customer experience

What a Delivery Management Software User Has to Say

“Partnering with food delivery management software was one of the best decisions we made for our business. It includes a bunch of management modules that makes it easy for us to monitor delivery orders. 30 days after implementing the system, we evaluated the quickness in delivering orders and the result truly surprised us. My restaurant staff agreed that the food delivery software helps in automating tasks like allocating orders, tracking delivery partner vehicles, dispatching orders, planning and optimizing routes & what not.” – Manager, Restaurant in North Delhi

Wrapping Up

Restaurant delivery management software enhances operational performance and efficiency of your restaurant business. It offers several tools to ensure on time delivery of the product to customers, generate more customer engagement and eventually promote the brand. Overall, fully integrated food delivery software takes a holistic approach right from planning, tracking, and executing delivery to the end customer.

Related Categories: Inventory Management Software | Food Delivery Software | Catering Management Software

FAQ’s

  1. What are the benefits of food delivery software?

    Some of the major benefits of using food delivery management software are getting real-time order notifications, less struggle designing food delivery routes, high conversion of customers among other things.

  2. When should one start opting for food management tools? 

    Food management tools can help you automate many manual and repetitive tasks for your restaurant business. This includes labeling, recipe management and more that can increase the efficiency of your restaurant. As food delivery is an integral part of operating a restaurant, one should opt for food delivery software to streamline operations and increase day-to-day sales.  

  3. How to pick the right software for managing food business? 

    Choosing the right software for food delivery business depends on several factors. Some of them are its ability to integrate with major food ordering platforms like Zomato and Swiggy, pricing management options, etc.

  4. Why is it necessary to have a delivery management software?

    Delivery management software automates activities like allocating tasks, tracking delivery partner vehicles, dispatching orders, planning and optimizing routes, and more. By doing this, businesses can get accurate ETAs, and make on-time deliveries to the customers at a cost-effective rate.

  5. What is the future of online food delivery service? 

    As per reports, Indian food delivery industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.9% during 2020 – 2026. This clearly signifies that the industry is growing at a rapid pace and the factors that are compelling the growth are consumers’ changing lifestyle and eating habits.

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