Each and every restaurant will have unique needs. This is why DoorDash comes with a wide range of partnership options towards helping them meet respective business goals. As a part of the commitment, the company came up with the concept of Self-delivery in 2021, which allowed restaurants to use their own in-house delivery staff to fulfill DoorDash orders.
Upon launching this product, a number of restaurants – from famous chains including Jimmy John’s to regional famous names including Lou Malnati’s, and even local gems including Cocky Teriyaki – had made use of the platform of DoorDash for reaching out to new customers. They also aimed at supporting as well as retaining the existing in-house staff of the restaurant.
Challenges Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic
There is no denying the fact that the modern restaurant industry has been facing new as well as prolonged challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, DoorDash continued listening to the respective restaurant partners. Some of the major takeaways of the company are flexibility and requests for additional assistance to resolve staffing concerns. To effectively meet the ever-rising needs of the modern restaurant industry, the company has come up with the Self-Delivery solution for incorporating the notion of flexible fulfillment.
Flexible fulfillment is regarded as the ability to switch between leveraging the robust network of Dashers and making use of in-house delivery staff for fulfilling the orders of the company. Flexible fulfillment on Self-delivery solution enables restaurants to supplement the delivery drivers with Dashers. It is regarded as highly crucial as restaurants continue adjusting the respective business and growing the delivery fleet. All of these take place amidst the challenging labor and economic conditions due to the global pandemic.
Because of this, restaurants are capable of increasing the overall operational capacity to meet increasing demands, ensure balanced staffing, expand the customer base, and grow order volume.
Restaurants That Benefit from the Solution
The solution of flexible fulfillment on the Self-delivery system by DoorDash will not be benefitting restaurants that already have access to fully-established fleets. However, the solution will be encouraging smaller shops or outlets to look out for cost-effective operations. With the help of flexible fulfillment, restaurants can look forward to having both flexibility as well as ample control. This helps in determining which orders will be making the most operational and financial sense for its staff to ensure delivery. Restaurants can also analyze which orders can be fulfilled by Dashers for an additional fee of flat fulfillment on a per order basis.
Restaurants are now capable of identifying unique criteria that will help in automatically assigning orders in the form of either Dash-fulfillment or self-fulfillment depending on the requirements of the store. For instance, restaurants can easily identify time of the day or delivery distance for either expanding the delivery zones towards reaching customers within a new radius or better adjusting operations and staffing during slow or busy periods.
While the existing criteria offers control and predictability, running a restaurant effectively will require the ability to adapt to ongoing and unexpected changes. For restaurant owners that make use of a tablet, they can think of using an in-tablet button for toggling to full Dasher fulfillment instantly –in real-time. At the same time, when a restaurant would like to switch to regular operations, it can do so by simply toggling off and the restaurant is now ready to make use of the in-house delivery staff all over again.
The option of self-delivery with flexible fulfillment is now available to all restaurants that are interested in nations like the United States of America, Australia, and Canada. The option of flexible fulfillment will be made available automatically to all the new restaurant partners with the help of self-delivery, and existing restaurant partners will have the ability to make use of the ongoing feature.
Competition Between DoorDash and GrubHub
In addition to the Flexible Fulfillment option by DoorDash, GrubHub also made the announcement of a feature that will be effectively executing the same functionality. The Just Eat Takeaway aggregator has come up with the all-new feature of Supplemental Delivery, which allows restaurants that make use of the self-delivery option of the company to supplement the respective drivers with that of GrubHub’s. This will enable them to expand the delivery radius effectively.
Kevin Kearns – Senior Vice President for restaurants, GrubHub – explains that the company always keeps looking for innovative ways to better serve the respective restaurant partners while helping them to drive more orders. This is the reason why the company is now offering the option of Supplemental Delivery.
The company knows that a number of restaurant owners and businesses are currently struggling with staffing amidst the ongoing pandemic. Therefore, the company takes pride in offering additional support to restaurant partners on GrubHub. Through the solution, businesses will be allowed to continue focusing on the respective operations and they can look forward to garnering more diners and capitalizing on businesses that were untapped previously at the same time.
In a recent survey, it was reported that a majority of consumers reported their shopping habits changing since the advent of the pandemic. It also revealed that around 58 percent of consumers continue ordering food online from restaurants, much more than prior to March 2020. In addition to this, the study also revealed that around 46 percent more consumers are now ordering food from restaurants with the help of aggregator services than they were previously before the start of the pandemic.
The new features keep coming, and a wider range of restaurant technology trends aims at delivering improved flexibility such that restaurants are able to select in real-time what specific products or services will be making the most sense for the entire business. It is estimated that in the next five years, as a restaurant owner, one can select the type of currencies the business will be accepting and much more.
