My business is Franchises. Ratings. Success stories. Ideas. Work and education
Site search

The most effective advertising for food delivery. How to develop a food delivery service

Artyom Khalimonenko wrote a column for the site about the stages of the company’s development. The business managed to stay afloat after rival company Tanuki set a minimum food delivery time of 30 minutes. Khalimonenko claims that success was achieved thanks to the integration of telephone service and CRM system.

Founder of FoodBand.ru Artyom Khalimonenko

Since 2007, I started advertising a pizzeria in St. Petersburg for a percentage of orders. I found a partner, ordered a website for $50 as a freelancer, and paid $50 to run through directories to rank the site higher in search results. At that time there was no competition in pizza yet, and in about three or four weeks he took fifth place in the search. Calls were sent to the pizzeria.

In the first month, about 300 thousand rubles worth of orders came from the site, and I completely recouped my investment from the commission. I began to develop further in this direction and create other sites. Later, my friend and I opened a small advertising agency. The maximum amount of orders that we submitted to the pizzeria in a month was about five million rubles. I started working with other pizzerias in different cities.

In 2012, friends offered to buy a share in an operating pizzeria in the capital. Initially, it was agreed that I would help put the advertising in order. As a result, I had to deal not only with her, but also with management. After some time, I was forced to leave this project and created my own company with my own delivery service with a friend.

Production equipment and order processing at the initial stage

I don’t know, maybe there are other ways, but in my opinion, it’s normal not to start a business without automation. When you first open, the main task is to think through a structure that can then be easily scaled. It is important to have some kind of inexpensive solution to quickly deploy and cover 90% of the needs.

Our first launch was modest, as we opened with a limited budget. We found a room that already had some equipment. The equipment was partially purchased on Avito. Then, within six months, everything was replaced with a new one.

You can’t do without a factory, otherwise there will be nothing to sell. But there is a point that many people forget about - order processing. Therefore, it is necessary to immediately solve problems with telephony to the maximum. For example, a call queue is required so that customers do not go to competitors when all operators are busy.

It is absolutely necessary to record conversations in order to evaluate the quality of service and train your employees on specific examples. You can’t do without call tracking with the ability to set different numbers for different sources advertising so as not to waste your budget on channels that do not bring in customers.

It doesn't seem like there are many requirements, but that appearance is deceiving. There are virtually no companies providing such a service that easily integrates with CRM and can exchange any data with it. You can go the other way and connect several products from different companies, but this is also dangerous: you don’t know how these products will make friends with each other and how this will affect your business.

Automation of data accounting

Further, when the company is already on its feet, it is necessary to work more closely on analytics and automation. To improve the quality of service, it is important to know where (source, request) and at what time the call came, which operator accepted it, whether he made an upsell (offered additional sauce, drink, dessert, and so on). That is, this is fine-tuning for specific business tasks and processes.

We launched with a CRM system on Fast Operator, and this year we moved to our own CRM and are now actively developing it. The transition took us about four months. We were very afraid that we would lose some data. For example, a client has several phones: how to transfer them so that he can be found not only by the main number, but also by the one indicated in the comment. All this must be taken into account.

Increasing competition in the food delivery market

What happens when the market is underdeveloped? It is enough for you to be no worse than your competitors. You will definitely get a share of clients. But as it appears best offers the customer becomes more demanding. A few years ago, food delivery to your home could take an hour or an hour and a half. And the client was fine with it.

Then Tanuki representatives said that they would deliver the rolls in 30 minutes or for free. They have set a new bar, and the client is already indignant at companies that do not meet this deadline.

“Tanuki” can afford it: they have many points around Moscow and the promotion is valid for a specific set, which they prepare in advance. In our case, the products need to be prepared, packaged and transported, which is impossible to do in 30 minutes if there is no extensive network. Competition has become tougher, and those who could not oppose anything have lost ground.

Changing advertising tools

Clients quickly get used to new things, so advertising tools “burn out” over time. I remember that leaflets used to work well, but gradually people practically stopped taking them. The leaflets were given a second life by immigrants from Africa. They were a novelty to everyone, and they were willing to take advertising from them. Then everyone got used to them, and this also stopped working.

Ads in contextual advertising It is also important to constantly change. At first, classic ads worked, then provocative phrases became more effective. Remarketing, video retargeting, and so on are now working. When a new tool appears, the client initially reacts well to it, but quickly gets used to it and has to use something new.

Food and service are the components of a successful food delivery business

A delivery service, in principle, cannot live as a fly-by-night. It costs more to attract a customer than one order brings in. This is happening throughout the industry. That is, if people order from you and then don’t come back, then you don’t even have to open: it will be working at a loss.

Therefore, it is very important to provide service during the first order so that the client becomes your fan: he tells his friends how great he was served, and then constantly orders only from you. That is, two conditions must be met: the food is delicious, the service is excellent.

Delicious food is not easy. We constantly have vacancies for chefs. People come, we test them, they learn our menu. There is no cook who can work for us right away. Sometimes it’s easier to teach from scratch than to retrain, because a person already has his hands full. New employee comes to us, tries to work in the old way, but it doesn’t suit us.

In business, two components are important. Soul and automation. The soul is a person who cares about the product, goes to bed and gets up with thoughts about it. Business automation is quality control at all stages, technological maps and standards that simply do not allow you to do anything bad.

There must be a harmonious combination. After all, if you overdo it with automation, you can lose your soul. And there will no longer be all sorts of things for which the company is loved, which attract customers. What will remain is just the product.

If you go towards the soul, forgetting about standards, then it is very easy to forget about margins and profits. This is also unacceptable, since it means that you will complete five orders perfectly, but the sixth will end up with burnt pizza, and you will lose the client. I saw something similar in the company I left. By the way, it was closed.

There is a book called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Its main idea is that if you took something better from one, then you stole. If you took the best from several and mixed it in the right proportion, then you are already an artist. Many famous musicians, poets, and writers first imitated their idols until they found their own style.

Once every two months I gather the top managers of FoodBand.ru, each time at a new address, and we simultaneously place an order from eight different delivery services, including our own. This is how we check our quality and compare ourselves with our competitors. For example, a technologist sees that some company has caught up or made pizza better. For him this is a challenge. Naturally, he strives to ensure that by the next test we surpass our competitor.

We also have a brand chief, marketing, advertising, and IT service. And everyone, in their own way, strives to make the company a leader. After all, pizza is not just an oven, but a team of people who do everything to ensure that the service is tasty and convenient for customers.

Surprising means selling

From our clients we receive feedback. If everything is good, we try to consolidate our success. If there are complaints, we do everything to make the person satisfied. The most loyal clients are obtained precisely in situations like these, when something didn’t suit you, and we called, found out, and fixed it.

However, our loyalty program is at a rudimentary level. There is a birthday promotion. We are also developing mobile app in order to personal account were personal offers, depending on order history. It will be possible to receive gifts not only from us, but also from partners. For example, clients will have the opportunity to attend quests, concerts and other events for free.

When working with clients, it is very important to exceed expectations, add some pleasant little things, cute little things. When we launched, we chose which chewing gum to include in orders. We decided to add Love is, because this is a whole story from childhood for us. Then some customers wrote in reviews that they were pleased to receive Love is in their order.

We are also working to ensure that clients remember the company name. When calling those who ordered for the first time, we not only ask for feedback, but also provide a promotional code for a gift that contains the name of our company. If there are no repeat orders for a week, we send a message on behalf of FoodBand.ru. It is very important not to overdo it advertising offers, otherwise it is easy to cause irritation.

In this regard, of course, it’s great if the customer receives a refrigerator magnet or something similar upon their first order. This is especially true for those who do not like mobile applications. Although the application is much more convenient for the company: it is easier to distribute, it is always at hand for the client, who does not need to remember where he ordered pizza.

Setting up the collection of data about clients and the work of managers in one system

All information on orders is collected in CRM: customer data, where he came from, what request brought him in, and so on. All this is possible thanks to the telephony functionality from UIS and its close integration with our CRM system.

It is very important for us what percentage of new customers made a repeat order and how quickly they did it. We measure this indicator once a month for different periods of time: 7, 14, 30, 60, 90 days. Additionally, we look at the total volume of repeat orders.

We also want to add automatic tasks for various events. For example, if a regular customer does not place an order for longer certain period, then a task is created to listen to the last conversation with him. Based on this information, the manager already decides what to do next and what to offer the client.

We set up the call processing scheme taking into account the integration of telephony and CRM. Each incoming call is immediately sent to all available operators. Statuses are tracked in CRM. Whoever answered the phone first received the order, and therefore earned money.


This is motivation for employees, and customers don’t have to wait long for an answer. With the help of integration, we are going to more accurately track the effectiveness of managers. All information about the client, as well as a recording of conversations, is attached to the order. When the operator picks up the phone, he immediately sees who he is communicating with and what the person’s preferences are. In parallel, suitable scripts are displayed to the manager. If a customer orders pizza, the system prompts them to offer sauce. Not only a certain phrase is important, but also intonation.

We have video tutorials for couriers: how to open a door with a pizza bag in your hands, how to hand an order to a client, and so on. We carefully work through this, and if a person has been trained, then the pizza will definitely arrive unharmed. If suddenly something happened to her, it means that the courier did something incorrectly. We show the training video again and part ways if he makes a mistake again.

During the conversation, the employee can immediately add comments - whether the client reacts positively or negatively to upsells and whether he should offer new menu items. And when this client calls next time, no matter which manager accepts his order, he will see the previous comments and will be able to use them.

If there is no integration of telephony and CRM, then every call seems to be from a new client. In this case, the conversion is lower and the order receipt is smaller. There is no need to talk about customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The head of our call center monitors the statistics of each employee and selectively listens to calls. It tracks which operator is doing better at selling. Based on these observations, changes are made to the scripts, so all managers are constantly learning.

Development plan

First, we will increase the depth of analytics. We will make selections by operators to better monitor their efficiency, and by dishes, so that we can take urgent action if something is wrong. Let’s say we lose customers who ordered a certain pizza.

Secondly, we will open 15 branches in Moscow and ensure prompt delivery to anywhere in the city, including outside the Moscow Ring Road. We are currently working exclusively in delivery format. Perhaps in the future we will have our own establishments. The emergence of a restaurant is a good step in the development of the brand. But first of all, we will develop delivery.

Material published by user. Click the “Write” button to share your opinion or talk about your project.

Today it is not at all necessary to go shopping, because everything you need can be ordered online. Moreover, there is no need to even spend time preparing food - it is much better to order food delivered to your home.

A business created in this service sector can become very profitable, and it has many prospects. Undoubtedly, there is competition, and even more, but with desire and hard work, you will find your niche, which will make you successful.

Food delivery: features and nuances of business

Food belongs to this type of goods that under no circumstances leave the market, because “everyone always wants to eat”, all the time, despite the crisis or other troubles. Food delivery services, although they appeared relatively recently, are quickly gaining popularity for many reasons:

  • busy people in big cities do not have time to buy groceries at the store or do not find time to prepare food;
  • some companies provide their employees with the delivery of ready-made meals, so-called business lunches (or office and corporate employees themselves order this type of service);
  • many establishments (pizzerias, sushi bars or restaurants, etc.) immediately have their own production and delivery (you can eat there or arrange courier services);
  • on a large scale, this business is already called catering and assumes that you can serve large events (banquets, various holidays, meetings or special events).

Of course, you can and should start small, because not everyone will be able to conquer the market right away. Before you start home delivery of food, you need to carefully prepare. It is best to create a business plan, because this way you can distribute all the points step by step and not miss anything.

  1. To make your business profitable and successful, conduct an analysis of this market segment, collecting all up-to-date information in your city.
  2. Decide on the form of your business. There are several options:
    • use ready-made food from a restaurant (cafe), but sell it at a certain markup due to the delivery service;
    • cook yourself (it can be absolutely family, home business, when you do everything at home or in a specialized kitchen). In this case, you can also sell your services in different ways, that is, either involve other relatives in the business, or hire a courier with a car;
    • sell not only ready-made food, but also semi-finished products (you need to be able to prepare them), as well as independent products, doing business through online orders and delivery.
  3. Each of these options has its own advantages and disadvantages. To choose where to start, evaluate your financial capabilities and try to analyze everything possible risks. After this, go prepare the material and legal base. Serious work awaits you.
  4. Already during the organizational process, you will have to look for a place suitable for preparing and storing food, suppliers of goods, decide on transport and other working issues.
  5. Next you will need to do advertising and find clients. This is very important point, because it will be possible to talk about the payback or profit of a business only if there is an established client base and constant development.

As you can see, implementing this idea will require a lot of effort, time and money. But, having a clear action plan, you can begin to bring your idea to life.

Where to begin?

Before you open a food delivery business, you need to figure out how you can stand out from your competitors. To succeed, you need to constantly be on top, pleasantly surprise your clients and make them come to you again and again. It’s good if you can organize a full cycle of services, that is, from preparing food to delivering it.

If you already have your own restaurant or other establishment (cafeteria, canteen, pizzeria), then you can simply add new service– food delivery by courier. Then you won’t have to search for premises, suppliers and personnel. The issue of obtaining permits and other documentation will also be removed, and the business concept will be clear.

However, owning a restaurant is not acceptable for everyone. Perhaps at the initial stage you do not have the required amount or experience to start such a business. Then how to open a food delivery service as small company or a family business - quite realistic. That is, you can start from the other side, and having developed and gained a foothold in the market, you can already invest in the establishment of your dreams.

We create our own website

You can order website development from scratch or buy it already finished project. The second option will cost you less, and besides, you can start working with it right away.

The best option in terms of money and speed of creation is to use the services of freelancers. Also, feel free to entrust them with any tasks that you have as you create and grow your business - writing articles, creating a logo, finding clients, etc. It is best to use a specialized platform, for example, Ispolnu.ru, where the process of interaction with performers will be simple and safe.

Try to think of an interesting design for the site and work out various marketing strategies, so that it doesn’t just “hang” on the Internet as a dead weight, but actually works and attracts customers. Based on the fact of attendance and interest, it will be possible to judge in what other directions you need to move.

Everything is according to the law: the main points of legal preparation

Package Contents necessary documents will depend on whether you are already the owner of any enterprise organizing Catering. Some entrepreneurs do not want to initially start fiddling with legal registration and they begin to do this only after some time has passed or in the event of unexpected troubles. But you need to understand that you can’t just cook in your kitchen at home and sell food to people: you may have serious problems with the law.

You should register your business correctly:

  • register with tax office, choose a form of taxation and prepare a package of documents for registration;
  • pay the required state fees and submit an application for inclusion in the Unified State Register of Individual Entrepreneurs;
  • if you plan to make non-cash payments, you need to open a bank account;
  • obtain the appropriate permits from the sanitary and epidemiological service for the premises you have chosen and the implementation of all planned services (food preparation, food storage, transportation, etc.). The SES checks both working conditions and food preparation conditions. Your employees must have valid medical books, where data from medical examinations and confirmation of completed hygienic training / certification will be entered;
  • obtain permission from the fire department, whose employees will also inspect the premises and document that it complies with the necessary standards and requirements, and that your workers have passed the necessary certification and can work with food;
  • papers authorizing your activities must be signed by the committee for consumer market, and in Rospotrebnadzor;
  • register cash machine and purchase a stamp.

Remember that your entrepreneurial activity must be related to delivery services (you also need permission!), because you will have to enter into supply agreements, sign waybills and waybills for drivers.

Here's what you need to start a food delivery business from scratch. However, you will only need a complete package of documents if you are purchasing and equipping your own premises.

Important organizational issues

You need to decide how you will start working: can you get by on your own at first or will you hire a staff of workers? It is also worth considering the order of work, that is, how and where you will purchase, store and prepare food. There are several options.

  1. Products are purchased in advance and stored in cold storage rooms and other appropriate equipment. Of course, this means that the money has already been invested. However, there is a plus: you can post information on the website about the availability of a particular product, and the buyer will immediately become interested. A pre-menu is also made for customers based on their requests.
  2. The second option involves purchasing products and preparing food with subsequent delivery only after the order has been accepted. On the one hand, you have less risk of being at a loss, but on the other hand, you will not be able to quickly accept and fulfill customer orders, which will lead to them leaving in search of someone more efficient.

Equipment and raw materials

If you yourself equip your premises for a full production cycle, then you will need to spend a lot of money to purchase at least the most necessary things. The names and amount of investment will depend on the specifics of your food, how you will prepare it, what figure you are counting on, etc. Initially, you don’t have to buy imported and expensive equipment, because at a much reasonable price you can buy it used u.

However, you will definitely need:

  • all kinds of kitchen utensils (pans, pots, graters, knives, forks, spoons, cutting boards, etc.);
  • get at least one good multifunctional food processor that will replace your meat grinder, blender, mixer and other necessary appliances;
  • gas or electric stove;
  • microwave or pressure cooker (ideally both);
  • special refrigerators and freezers for storing food.

In addition, be sure to take care of the equipment for the food delivery (transportation) itself: purchase special containers, thermal bags, etc. You can order napkins or plastic dishes, which will contain the logo (brand) of your company. This should be done before opening food delivery.

What's on the menu?

The assortment depends on the specifics of your business: do you prepare a varied menu for every taste or only dishes of a certain cuisine? Here we can advise you not to focus on just pizza or sushi, since the competition with permanent establishments of this kind is very strong. It is better to focus on the variety of choice. This will help you attract more clients.

You can purchase products yourself (at wholesale centers and markets) or negotiate with suppliers. Remember that all products must be fresh and of high quality, be sure to check the documents.

Assemble a decent team

For your business to succeed, you will also need to find good employees. Give preference to people who have work experience and relevant recommendations, as you cannot risk your reputation.

At full cycle production (from accepting an order to its preparation and delivery), you will need to hire:

  • operator (dispatcher) who will receive calls and place orders;
  • cooks (one or more - depending on the situation);
  • couriers (usually they hire employees with their own cars);
  • the rest can be hired as needed when your business begins to grow and expand (security guards, warehouse workers, cleaners, staff accountant etc.).

Your employees must be honest, diligent and responsible.

In the future, it will be possible to purchase special vehicles, which will be equipped with a thermal body. Transportation costs will need to be factored into the cost of food, but you should also calculate the real costs of car depreciation and fuel.

tell us about yourself

Competent price policy with various loyalty programs (discounts, bonuses and promotions) and a well-thought-out advertising concept will be able to attract people's attention and bring you your first stable earnings.

Don’t forget to talk about yourself on the Internet. It’s good if the site has positive reviews from your customers, because word of mouth is the best advertising campaign.

Estimated Costs

Business profitability indicators are quite high (up to 60%), and it can pay for itself even in six months (maximum in a year and a half).

The figures are presented in rubles.

conclusions

Now you know how to start food delivery step by step. Despite the fact that at first you may even have to work yourself, performing all the functions and responsibilities, very soon your business will pay off and begin to bring in stable income, and over time you will be able to expand the business, gaining good momentum and replenishing your client base regular customers.

Artyom Khalimonenko wrote a column for the site about the stages of the company’s development. The business managed to stay afloat after rival company Tanuki set a minimum food delivery time of 30 minutes. Khalimonenko claims that success was achieved thanks to the integration of telephone service and CRM system.

Founder of FoodBand.ru Artyom Khalimonenko

Since 2007, I started advertising a pizzeria in St. Petersburg for a percentage of orders. I found a partner, ordered a website for $50 as a freelancer, and paid $50 to run through directories to rank the site higher in search results. At that time there was no competition in pizza yet, and in about three or four weeks he took fifth place in the search. Calls were sent to the pizzeria.

In the first month, about 300 thousand rubles worth of orders came from the site, and I completely recouped my investment from the commission. I began to develop further in this direction and create other sites. Later, my friend and I opened a small advertising agency. The maximum amount of orders that we submitted to the pizzeria in a month was about five million rubles. I started working with other pizzerias in different cities.

In 2012, friends offered to buy a share in an operating pizzeria in the capital. Initially, it was agreed that I would help put the advertising in order. As a result, I had to deal not only with her, but also with management. After some time, I was forced to leave this project and created my own company with my own delivery service with a friend.

Production equipment and order processing at the initial stage

I don’t know, maybe there are other ways, but in my opinion, it’s normal not to start a business without automation. When you first open, the main task is to think through a structure that can then be easily scaled. It is important to have some kind of inexpensive solution to quickly deploy and cover 90% of the needs.

Our first launch was modest, as we opened with a limited budget. We found a room that already had some equipment. The equipment was partially purchased on Avito. Then, within six months, everything was replaced with a new one.

You can’t do without a factory, otherwise there will be nothing to sell. But there is a point that many people forget about - order processing. Therefore, it is necessary to immediately solve problems with telephony to the maximum. For example, a call queue is required so that customers do not go to competitors when all operators are busy.

Recording conversations is absolutely necessary to evaluate the quality of service and train your employees using specific examples. You can’t do without call tracking with the ability to set different numbers for different advertising sources, so as not to waste your budget on channels that don’t bring in customers.

It doesn't seem like there are many requirements, but that appearance is deceiving. There are virtually no companies providing such a service that easily integrates with CRM and can exchange any data with it. You can go the other way and connect several products from different companies, but this is also dangerous: you don’t know how these products will make friends with each other and how this will affect your business.

Automation of data accounting

Further, when the company is already on its feet, it is necessary to work more closely on analytics and automation. To improve the quality of service, it is important to know where (source, request) and at what time the call came, which operator accepted it, whether he made an upsell (offered additional sauce, drink, dessert, and so on). That is, this is fine-tuning for specific business tasks and processes.

We launched with a CRM system on Fast Operator, and this year we moved to our own CRM and are now actively developing it. The transition took us about four months. We were very afraid that we would lose some data. For example, a client has several phones: how to transfer them so that he can be found not only by the main number, but also by the one indicated in the comment. All this must be taken into account.

Increasing competition in the food delivery market

What happens when the market is underdeveloped? It is enough for you to be no worse than your competitors. You will definitely get a share of clients. But as better offers appear, the customer becomes more demanding. A few years ago, food delivery to your home could take an hour or an hour and a half. And the client was fine with it.

Then Tanuki representatives said that they would deliver the rolls in 30 minutes or for free. They have set a new bar, and the client is already indignant at companies that do not meet this deadline.

“Tanuki” can afford it: they have many points around Moscow and the promotion is valid for a specific set, which they prepare in advance. In our case, the products need to be prepared, packaged and transported, which is impossible to do in 30 minutes if there is no extensive network. Competition has become tougher, and those who could not oppose anything have lost ground.

Changing advertising tools

Clients quickly get used to new things, so advertising tools “burn out” over time. I remember that leaflets used to work well, but gradually people practically stopped taking them. The leaflets were given a second life by immigrants from Africa. They were a novelty to everyone, and they were willing to take advertising from them. Then everyone got used to them, and this also stopped working.

It is also important to constantly change ads in contextual advertising. At first, classic ads worked, then provocative phrases became more effective. Remarketing, video retargeting, and so on are now working. When a new tool appears, the client initially reacts well to it, but quickly gets used to it and has to use something new.

Food and service are the components of a successful food delivery business

A delivery service, in principle, cannot live as a fly-by-night. It costs more to attract a customer than one order brings in. This is happening throughout the industry. That is, if people order from you and then don’t come back, then you don’t even have to open: it will be working at a loss.

Therefore, it is very important to provide service during the first order so that the client becomes your fan: he tells his friends how great he was served, and then constantly orders only from you. That is, two conditions must be met: the food is delicious, the service is excellent.

Delicious food is not easy. We constantly have vacancies for chefs. People come, we test them, they learn our menu. There is no cook who can work for us right away. Sometimes it’s easier to teach from scratch than to retrain, because a person already has his hands full. A new employee comes to us and tries to work in the old way, but it doesn’t suit us.

In business, two components are important. Soul and automation. The soul is a person who cares about the product, goes to bed and gets up with thoughts about it. Business automation means quality control at all stages, technological maps and standards that simply do not allow you to do something bad.

There must be a harmonious combination. After all, if you overdo it with automation, you can lose your soul. And there will no longer be all sorts of things for which the company is loved, which attract customers. What will remain is just the product.

If you go towards the soul, forgetting about standards, then it is very easy to forget about margins and profits. This is also unacceptable, since it means that you will complete five orders perfectly, but the sixth will end up with burnt pizza, and you will lose the client. I saw something similar in the company I left. By the way, it was closed.

There is a book called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Its main idea is that if you took something better from one, then you stole. If you took the best from several and mixed it in the right proportion, then you are already an artist. Many famous musicians, poets, and writers first imitated their idols until they found their own style.

Once every two months I gather the top managers of FoodBand.ru, each time at a new address, and we simultaneously place an order from eight different delivery services, including our own. This is how we check our quality and compare ourselves with our competitors. For example, a technologist sees that some company has caught up or made pizza better. For him this is a challenge. Naturally, he strives to ensure that by the next test we surpass our competitor.

We also have a brand chief, marketing, advertising, and IT service. And everyone, in their own way, strives to make the company a leader. After all, pizza is not just an oven, but a team of people who do everything to ensure that the service is tasty and convenient for customers.

Surprising means selling

We receive feedback from our clients. If everything is good, we try to consolidate our success. If there are complaints, we do everything to make the person satisfied. The most loyal clients are obtained precisely in situations like these, when something didn’t suit you, and we called, found out, and fixed it.

However, our loyalty program is at a rudimentary level. There is a birthday promotion. We are also developing a mobile application so that your personal account contains personalized offers depending on your order history. It will be possible to receive gifts not only from us, but also from partners. For example, clients will have the opportunity to attend quests, concerts and other events for free.

When working with clients, it is very important to exceed expectations, add some pleasant little things, cute little things. When we launched, we chose which chewing gum to include in orders. We decided to add Love is, because this is a whole story from childhood for us. Then some customers wrote in reviews that they were pleased to receive Love is in their order.

We are also working to ensure that clients remember the company name. When calling those who ordered for the first time, we not only ask for feedback, but also provide a promotional code for a gift that contains the name of our company. If there are no repeat orders for a week, we send a message on behalf of FoodBand.ru. It is very important not to overdo it with promotional offers, otherwise it is easy to cause irritation.

In this regard, of course, it’s great if the customer receives a refrigerator magnet or something similar upon their first order. This is especially true for those who do not like mobile applications. Although the application is much more convenient for the company: it is easier to distribute, it is always at hand for the client, who does not need to remember where he ordered pizza.

Setting up the collection of data about clients and the work of managers in one system

All information on orders is collected in CRM: customer data, where he came from, what request brought him in, and so on. All this is possible thanks to the telephony functionality from UIS and its close integration with our CRM system.

It is very important for us what percentage of new customers made a repeat order and how quickly they did it. We measure this indicator once a month for different periods of time: 7, 14, 30, 60, 90 days. Additionally, we look at the total volume of repeat orders.

We also want to add automatic tasks for various events. For example, if a regular customer does not place an order for longer than a certain period, then a task is created to listen to the last conversation with him. Based on this information, the manager already decides what to do next and what to offer the client.

We set up the call processing scheme taking into account the integration of telephony and CRM. Each incoming call is immediately sent to all available operators. Statuses are tracked in CRM. Whoever answered the phone first received the order, and therefore earned money.


This is motivation for employees, and customers don’t have to wait long for an answer. With the help of integration, we are going to more accurately track the effectiveness of managers. All information about the client, as well as a recording of conversations, is attached to the order. When the operator picks up the phone, he immediately sees who he is communicating with and what the person’s preferences are. In parallel, suitable scripts are displayed to the manager. If a customer orders pizza, the system prompts them to offer sauce. Not only a certain phrase is important, but also intonation.

We have video tutorials for couriers: how to open a door with a pizza bag in your hands, how to hand an order to a client, and so on. We carefully work through this, and if a person has been trained, then the pizza will definitely arrive unharmed. If suddenly something happened to her, it means that the courier did something incorrectly. We show the training video again and part ways if he makes a mistake again.

During the conversation, the employee can immediately add comments - whether the client reacts positively or negatively to upsells and whether he should offer new menu items. And when this client calls next time, no matter which manager accepts his order, he will see the previous comments and will be able to use them.

If there is no integration of telephony and CRM, then every call seems to be from a new client. In this case, the conversion is lower and the order receipt is smaller. There is no need to talk about customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The head of our call center monitors the statistics of each employee and selectively listens to calls. It tracks which operator is doing better at selling. Based on these observations, changes are made to the scripts, so all managers are constantly learning.

Development plan

First, we will increase the depth of analytics. We will make selections by operators to better monitor their efficiency, and by dishes, so that we can take urgent action if something is wrong. Let’s say we lose customers who ordered a certain pizza.

Secondly, we will open 15 branches in Moscow and ensure prompt delivery to anywhere in the city, including outside the Moscow Ring Road. We are currently working exclusively in delivery format. Perhaps in the future we will have our own establishments. The emergence of a restaurant is a good step in the development of the brand. But first of all, we will develop delivery.

Material published by user. Click the “Write” button to share your opinion or talk about your project.

Thousands of companies - from information businesses to retail - manage their customer flows using the Callibri ecosystem of services. For many of them, our services help to significantly increase sales and reduce costs. It was for them that we came up with the Market Expertise project. In it, we and our partners share our best practices on marketing and analytics in a specific industry and tell how to build digital marketing, if you work in the field of medicine, food delivery, auto repair, etc. Our partners tell us what the market looks like from the inside and share real Callibri cases.

Delivery of prepared food. Market analysis

Over the past few years, the turnover of the catering market has been falling. People are increasingly saving money and refusing to go to restaurants. In a crisis, the most resilient segment may be the least obvious piece of the market. In our case, this is the delivery of ready-made food to homes and offices. It was this segment that showed sensational growth in 2016.
Source: Rosstat, calculations and forecast - RBC Market Research.

The segment’s development boom occurred in 2013. Already in 2014, growth was significantly calmer. However, even so, by 2015, the delivery of ready-made food accounted for 18% of the total catering turnover (according to RBC Market Research analysts). Despite the overall market decline of 5.5% over last year, food delivery lost only 2.6% of its turnover. And some indicators even increased. For example, pizza delivery turnover increased by 6% (according to NPD data).
The number of requests for food delivery in Yandex increased by 14.1% compared to 2016. Inquiries by keywords“pizza delivery” increased by 8.7%, and “sushi delivery” by 3.6%. (c) RBC market research. Catering business.

How should a new regional food delivery service behave in such a competitive market? There are not enough couriers, the promotion budget is not comparable to the budgets major players. Survival in such conditions is possible only with very thoughtful marketing, which works in conjunction with other business processes.

How to build marketing in the highly competitive food delivery market and what features need to be taken into account, read on:

  • How to quickly calculate the profit from marketing investments and draw conclusions
  • Peculiarities of demand and ad display settings
  • USPs and offers: what approaches work in the food delivery market
  • Share of mobile traffic and how to get the most out of it
  • How to order most often: call, application, online consultant
  • How to survive the bidding battle in contextual advertising
  • How to save your budget by 1.5 times when the volume of orders grows by setting up geolocation
  • Case study of Callibri: how the service helped improve the efficiency of communications with the client

Fast money

Food delivery is “quick money”. The visitor got hungry, entered a request into search engine, went over, saw and bought. As a result:

  1. Revenue is calculated not, as everyone is used to, per week/month/quarter, but daily.
  2. Demand is spontaneous, and orders are most often placed on the first visit to the site. This means you don’t need to bother with complex conversion attribution models.

This is very good for marketing - you can quickly make decisions and change campaign settings in real time based on available data.

Lifehack: You can check from which visit visitors place an order on your website using the report in Google Analytics, which is called Time to Conversion. You set the goal “order” and see how many days pass before the order. If the majority of your audience has “0”, it means they order on the same day.

Quick decisions based on emotions

American economist George Loewenstein found that angry, hungry or sexually excited people make decisions faster than well-fed, calm and satisfied people. They are impulsive, so they are easier to control through marketing. Attractive images of food in the ad, color, placement and call to action on the order button - even minor changes to these elements can significantly increase the conversion rate of a food delivery site. Unlike, for example, the B2B industry, where decisions are made over time, carefully and rationally.

Conclusion: experiment with changing even minor elements on your landing pages.

Features of demand

Demand peaks on Fridays, weekends and public holidays. Falls - for periods of religious fasting. Demand is also unevenly distributed throughout the day.
This is what the schedule for the distribution of target actions during the day looks like for the Pizzasan.ru pizza delivery service:

How to save money knowing these patterns?

Discounts and bonuses as an offer

Most food delivery services use the same move - promotions and bonuses for new customers. This is an “offer” - the bait with which the client is caught. But in any market, discounts and bonuses reduce a company's profit margin. If you first paid money to bring a client to the site, and therefore gave him a bonus so that he would make an order, then you will probably not earn anything from this order itself. All profits went to attracting a client.

USP versus offer

Unlike an offer, a unique selling point (USP) not only attracts the customer's attention, but also sells, even if your prices are higher than the market. The USP allows you not to buy customers, but to pave a reliable path to their wallets, putting the brand positioning in their heads.

USP:

  1. Provides important benefits for the client
  1. Based on a unique resource
  1. Competitors cannot or have not yet thought of repeating this.

In the food delivery market, such a breakthrough solution at one time was “Delivery in 45 minutes or free.” The first one who thought of doing this:

  1. Placed a bet on an important benefit for the client - speed of delivery
  1. I involved the client in an experiment that was interesting to him: will the courier be on time or can I not pay?
  1. Significantly changed the rules of the game for all market participants. Competitors were forced to adapt.

There have never been similar breakthroughs in the industry. But there is an example of how a new pizza delivery service quickly entered and captured the market due to the attitude of openness and the reputation of the owner. It's about about the founder of the Dodo Pizza chain, Fyodor Ovchinnikov, who became popular and attracted investments, primarily as the author of a blog for entrepreneurs, “Mind Power.”

The power of mind of the founder of Dodo Pizza

The share of orders from mobile traffic is very high

Hitwise has released a report showing that Food & Drink is the most popular mobile search category in the US. The data is based on a study of hundreds of millions of searches in 11 categories between April 10 and May 7, 2016.

In Russia's largest food delivery service, Delivery Club, 72% of orders come from mobile devices.
Statistics for “Pizza delivery” requests in Yandex from desktop computers:


And these are the statistics of requests from mobile devices:

Statistics on orders on the website of our client, a pizza delivery service Pizzasan.ru , says that they order more often from tablets and smartphones.

And here are the statistics on orders:


Conclusion: You definitely need to have, if not a mobile application, then at least an adaptation of the site for mobile devices.

Lifehack: If you have not yet adapted your site for mobile devices, then install the Callibri widget on it. Large buttons, the ability to place an order via messenger - all this will allow you not to lose such expensive and highly converting mobile traffic.

This is what the widget looks like on the main page of the delivery site proper nutrition SMART-FOOD and chat in mobile version:


The ability to order food through instant messengers, social networks and communication with the operator in Telegram:

If your website has a Callibri widget, then visitors can place an order in the way that is convenient for them. They can order a call back, write to chat, leave a request or continue communication in in social networks and messengers. And your operators will accept and process all applications within single office Callibri. As a result, customers are loyal, conversion increases, and not a single request is missed.

How do you most often order - phone, application, chat?

Battle of bets in Yandex.Direct

Obviously, no sane person would adhere to the strategy of “standing in the first special placement for the highest frequency queries” in such a competitive market. Which management strategy to choose and how to maneuver between bets?

In conditions of fierce competition, it is very difficult for small businesses and market newcomers to survive.
For example, in Yekaterinburg there are five competitors (three large and two small). Three large companies can easily:

  1. Transport to any part of the city, regardless of traffic jams;
  2. Work around the clock.

Geolocation-based bid management

We need to cut off unnecessary audiences as much as possible. For this:

  1. Let's go to Yandex.Audience and create two audiences:
    • the first will target undesirable areas.
    • the second - to loved ones, where it is profitable for us to deliver. According
  2. After passing moderation, we move on to the campaign settings. In the “rate adjustment” field, set your values. Opposite the undesirable areas we write “reduce the rate by 40%”, opposite the necessary ones - “increase by 20%”.

Budget savings by 1.5 times with increasing orders

When a person from an unnecessary location types “pizza delivery”, the rate is automatically reduced. In this case, our ad may not be shown in special placements or even in guaranteed impressions. If the transition and order does occur (and such transitions always happen, although not in such large numbers), then we will not overpay for attracting a client.

If “pizza delivery” was selected by a visitor from an area that is profitable for us, the system will identify him and raise the bid. Our ad will be placed in a more prominent position, and we will receive a large influx of orders from the areas we need.

As a result:

  1. Budget savings 1.5 times. Thanks to the settings with geolocation, now the daily budget will be enough for the whole day or only half of it will be spent.
  2. Growth of orders
  3. More satisfied regular customers, to whom we always deliver their orders on time.

How the Callibri service increased the efficiency of communications

  1. A complete picture of missed calls and recording of conversations of all managers. It turned out that not all employees are polite to customers, and sometimes they don’t answer the phone at all. We had an instructive conversation and cleaned up the staff.
  2. Analysis of referral sources. We saw the performance of every channel, every campaign, right down to the query. And they constantly reconfigured advertising campaigns.
  3. Understanding which office of the two accepted the order. Thanks to this, geolocation-based bids were managed more effectively.
  4. Understanding how much the order was placed for.

Summary:

Food delivery service - very competitive market, promotion on which requires constant monitoring of performance and very intelligent bid management. What you should pay special attention to:

  1. Connect all possible analytics tools. Constantly turn off what is not working and redirect the budget to where it is more effective.
  2. Conclusions and adjustments to campaigns can and should be made very quickly, without waiting for monthly results.
  3. Determine what unique resource your USP is based on and build communication with the consumer based on your positioning.
  4. Adapt the site for mobile traffic, or at least install the Callibri widget, which will allow you not to lose users from mobile devices.
  5. Give your users the opportunity to order in the way that is convenient for them: call, application, online consultant. This will increase the overall conversion of the site
  6. Manage your bids wisely: if it is unprofitable for you to deliver to certain areas during peak hours, lower your bids for audiences in that area
  7. Use the ecosystem of Callibri services and increase the overall efficiency of your communications with the client!

You earn completely different money from an order of 500 and 1000 rubles, because a significant part of the costs is the physical delivery of the order. Increasing the average check is one of the key tasks.

Our solution

We offer the guest a gift; the larger the order amount, the more expensive the gift he can choose: when ordering over 1000 rubles. There are three dishes to choose from, for 1500 and 2000 three more are added.

On the website this idea is supported by a scale. When adding items to the cart, the order amount increases, the scale is filled, and the client visually gets closer to the next level of bonuses.

If necessary, the operator spells out the terms of the promotion and “holds out” orders: 800 to 1000, 1300 to 1500, 1800 to 2000.

Bonus system

The bonus system is a powerful tool for increasing guest loyalty. the main objective- encourage you to order more often and for a larger amount.

Our solution

Each client who makes the first order automatically becomes a member and begins to accumulate points, at the first level 5% of the order amount.

We encourage you to order more and more often

To do this, we make several levels; the greater the amount of orders in the current month, the more bonuses the client will receive in the next month.

Up to 2000 rubles - 5%, up to 4000 - 7%, more than 4000 - 10%.

We remind you about ourselves

After a certain period, bonuses expire. If the client has forgotten about us, we send an SMS a few days before the expiration and offer to place an order so that the bonuses do not expire.

Sales channel efficiency analysis

Before you spend money on an event, ask yourself how you will know how effective it was? You should treat all spending on advertising as an investment: you spent 1000 rubles, you received 2000.

The easiest way to measure effectiveness is to have agents ask customers how they heard about you.

Tracking orders placed through the website deserves special attention. Internet advertising is wonderful because its effectiveness can be accurately assessed and determined how much income a particular sales channel brings you:

To build such reports, you need UTM markup of links from all advertising campaigns on the Internet, a configured “E-commerce” module in the Google Analytics system, and, obviously, your website must be modern and convenient in order to be used and have something to measure: )

Believe me, measuring performance is critical. Knowing the real result, we make the right decisions and do not waste money. We had cases when we placed client advertisements on large regional websites, and after the placement the manager said in a joyful voice that we had 527 hits to the site and the campaign went well. But we know that all these transitions were fake, but in reality we received only a couple of orders and will never be placed on this site again.

Our solution

This one effective method advertising on the Internet. It is critical to set it up correctly advertising campaign in Yandex.Direct and Google.Adwords. Hire professionals, don't waste your time and don't trust amateurs. Cost optimization and new orders will quickly recoup the investment.

Delivery service aggregators

In large cities there are intermediary services, the essence of their work is to take orders and transfer them to the delivery service.

Of course, a very tasty piece of the pie is to stand between you and your customers and receive 10-14% of all orders. By and large, only delivery-club.ru succeeded in this, and they occupy the lion's share market.

If you are a young delivery, you can work with them for a while. For more effective placement, provide an item from your menu as a points bonus to rank above other delivery services.

Giving 12-14% for customers who would otherwise order from you is not at all interesting; this is almost a third of your profit, if you take into account all expenses. Therefore, it is important to analyze the results and refuse cooperation at the right time, because the further you go, the more you become hooked on this channel.