Steps to Go Green with Online Food Ordering

Environment safety is a concern of many, including your clients, believe it or not!  As a restaurant owner, you should appeal to everyone and support customers who care about the environment. Chances are, you are missing out on a big market, but not doing so.  As a matter of fact, caring about the environment gives you an advantage over those who don’t.

There are multiple steps to follow in order to migrate your restaurant into an eco-friendly move.  You can start by changing the way you run your business by taking your surrounding into consideration:

• Recycling that includes but isn’t limited to: waste paper, glass, tins, plastic bags…
• Migrate to receiving order by email instead of fax
• Consider using eco-friendly containers for take-away orders
• Ask your staff to help and contribute by encouraging customers to place orders online that go directly to email so you can save a tree or two a day; online food ordering can help!
• Reach out to local gardeners/farmers market for daily supplies.

Those are simple ways of making sure that you are contributing to our environment by keeping it clean. 

We are sure there are many more ways to contribute.  Share by posting your comment below.

The MealClick Team
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Are you customers intrigued enough?

As a restaurant owner, you go out of our way to make sure you are offering quality and the best customer service.  You work hard on building your reputation and customer base!

Regardless of what you do, if you are not intriguing your customers, you need to do more.  Here are three ideas to consider:

• A free beverage will go a long way and encourage your customers to re-order from you.
• A point system is also a great way to build loyalty.  Reward  your customers X points for every dollar they spend.  They can redeem those points for discounts, free desserts, or even a free meal.
• Keep track of your customers’ favorite meals. Extend offers on those specific meals.
• Engage your customers on social media with contests, polls, questions and more. Make note of their comments and improve on your menu based on their feedback.
• Survey your customers, once in a while, and develop on your menu based on their feedback as well.

The list could go on and on, always revolving around one common element: No matter what you do Keep Your customers in Mind!



The MealClick Team
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Is Traditional Marketing Dying? (via The MarCom Network’s Blog By Manal richa)

So true… Restaurant owners, keep in mind traditional marketing while implementing Online Marketing in your efforts. It pays off!

 If you have been reading my blogs, you know me by now. I believe in networking and its power. I also believe that I can learn something new from every encounter and every connection. This week has been an extremely busy one for me… no complaints!  I had multiple coffee and lunch meetings with multiple professionals from different industries.  And since I live and breath marketing, the topic came up; and most specifically, one question: “Is t … Read More

via The MarCom Network’s Blog By Manal richa

Do you have a Website Yet?

If you are reading this post is because you probably still don’t have a website, but you are considering having one.

Our main core of business is to help restaurants, globally, get set up with an online menu.

For those who aren’t familiar with building sites, WordPress has created an amazing platform and a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for more than just blogging. With WordPress, you can build a blog, a website, or both providing you with the following advantages:

- Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

- Easy access and update of content on website without knowing HTML

- Great variety of choices on themes and plug-ins

Furthermore, companies such as BuildMySiteforFree.com offer  free website builder for small businesses and individuals. 

What makes BuildMySiteforFree.com a great resource is that it is the ultimate destination providing everything needed for those who want to build their own WordPress website.   Whether you need a blog or an Ecommerce website builder, BuildMySiteforFree.com offers hundreds of graphic designs, feature plugins and articles providing everything you need to build a site in less than 10 minutes. 

Do you have any tips on how to easily and quickly build a website? Please share with us below.

The MealClick Team
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Create Interaction with Your Online Menu

MealClick - Online Food Ordering Solution

 

Hundreds and hundreds of restaurants are realizing on a daily basis the importance of building an online presence; Simply having a “business card” website does not mean much anymore. As a matter of fact, we live in an era where we are witnessing a major shift in the whole marketing process for every single business and industry.  

With the presence of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and more, clients are expecting from your website nothing less but a fully-interactive experience!  

If you haven’t yet, you should start venturing into adding an interactive online food ordering solution to your operation; in order to allow your clients to:  
- browse your menu, learning about the choices you offer, AT THEIR CONVENIENCE
- go through the succulent images of your dishes
- Add-on sides and customize their orders
- place advanced and group orders
- re-order from history
- apply coupons and discount codes
- fill out surveys and voice their opinion  

While social networks are a two-way communication between businesses and followers/fans, your online menu should offer similar interactive features giving your clients the power to browse, select, order, and more… while allowing you to listen, monitor and analyze your clients’ preferences, needs, and demands.  

The MealClick Team
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Leveraging Online Food Ordering Through Social Media

You are all set – Your online menu is up. You integrated a clear message about your online presence through your marketing messages. You trained your staff to encourage callers to order online. You are receiving orders through your online ordering system on a daily basis. Now what?

If you have not tapped into Social Media yet, this is the time to start researching it.  It might be an overwhelming process for some taking into consideration the multiple available platforms to choose from, putting a strategy together, tracking and adjusting your plan, and be interactive with your followers and fans.

The following is a list of some platforms to consider and what you can do:

#1 FACEBOOK

Since Facebook has the social taste into it, it is an amazing option to consider.  Start by implementing a FAN PAGE on Facebook and then put a plan to include the following:

• How often you should post
• Types of posts
• Creating a real sense of community
• How to incite comments and interaction
• Ways to promote your Facebook fan page

#2 TWITTER

If you are looking for the real interaction, Twitter is the tool for you. Your tweets, limited to 140 characters, you can generate a conversation with your followers, listen to their feedback, announce new menu additions, and more… including:

• Interacting with 140 characters
• Replying to @ messages and DM as well
• Scheduling tweets through SocialOomph, for example
• Monitor and listen
• Creating Twitter lists
• Types of posts
• Using Twitter favorites

#3 YOUTUBE

As for YouTube, it is an amazing resource to connect with your clients and prospect through videos while helping spreading the word and establishing higher ranking for Search Engine Optimization.  Here are some ideas for what you can do:

• Publicize event about your restaurant
• Introduce a new menu
• Demonstrate a new recipe
• Record clients’ endorsements

Regardless which platform you decide to use, one or more, make sure that your combine your messages and stay consistent to your brand.

The MealClick Team
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Efficiency Through Online Food Ordering

While it is still important to implement print advertising and material in your marketing strategy, it is crucial to get on board and use the Internet to progress faster and spread the word quicker while generating a 2-way communication with your target market.

Consumers are at a point where they are using the Internet as a main resource for information, reviews, feedback and more… Also the Internet is amazing when it comes to tracking and measuring hits and interactions.

Once you implement Online Food Ordering in your strategy, you can use the back-end of the system to generate and broadcast email messages to all of your customers at once keeping them up-to-date with your latest, offering them special discounts, announcing a new menu, and more…

Also, the right Online Food Ordering System would give you control over your customers’ contact information – name, address, phone, email address… and maybe more!  How powerful is that!  Building a database is very essential for every business, regardless of size, in order to keep in touch with customers and stay connected with them. Don’t you agree?

One of our favorite Marketing Blogs, The MarCom Network by Manal Richa, does an amazing job discussing having a Strategy for Your Newsletter! Read this blog for excellent tips and ideas on how to implement a powerful strategy in order to connect with your customers through your Online Food Ordering System!

The MealClick Team
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Who is Using Online Food Ordering?

The following is a break-down of different categories and group who are already benefiting from Online Food Ordering:

Busy Parents Lunches/Dinners Birthday Parties Social Gatherings Family Get-Togethers Clubs/Sports Teams Group Lunches Post-Event Dinners Meetings Fundraisers Parties/Events Businesses Office Parties/Events/Meetings Group Breakfasts/Lunches Catering for Clients Drug Reps. Ordering for Office

Schools/Churches/Colleges Catering for Parties, Events, & Meetings Group Breakfasts/Lunches Fundraisers High-school/College Students Lunch/Dinner When Home Alone Share One Family Account Easy, One-Click Reordering Busy People! Lunches/Dinners Social Gatherings/Parties

Does your target market fall under one or more of the mentioned categories? If so, why holding off? Get on board today and offer your Online Menu to your clients, for additional convenience and satisfaction.

The MealClick Team
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Your Staff and Online Food Ordering

There are multiple elements that help your restaurant in achieving success; your staff is one of the most important elements.  If happy and excited about what they do, your team will be most productive helping you take your restaurant to the next level.

During rush hours, every single member of your staff is extremely busy by either taking orders, fulfilling them, responding to customers, serving tables, payments, picking up phones…  They have to take care of everything!  The whole experience might be overwhelming for some causing a lot of stress and unhappiness, which would soon enough reflect on your operation and come through to your customers.

Implementing Online Food Ordering in your daily operation helps you streamline the ordering process and relieve the pressure off the staff by lowering the probability of human mistakes.  Offering Online Food Ordering as an option to your customers makes their experience easier and more enjoyable.  This option will simply allow your customers to browse your Online Menu without being rushed into completing their order.  They can order for delivery, pick-up or even dine-in. The first step would include selecting a food item from the menu, adding it to the cart, and click the button to order. The restaurant will receive the order by fax or email. The customer will receive an order confirmation.  Your staff will then gear their efforts towards contributing to the success of your restaurant. Everyone is happy!

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Your Website and Online Menu

Building an online presence has become very crucial.  Consumers are using the Internet more frequently than ever.  If you are not online yet, you are missing out on a big share of the market.

All you need is a basic website with few pages including: a Home page, About Us, Contact Us, and Online Menu.

While building your website, make sure that you are consistent with your marketing messages and branding as well.  Make it easy and simple to navigate. Remember the purpose of being online is for consumers to find out and learn more about you. That does not mean though that you should over-load your pages with information. Include enough content to make it appealing enough to get your clients to browse more through your menu and order from you.

As for your online menu, it needs to be simple and easy to navigate as well. Make sure to include succulant images of your plates. Detail the items into categories and groups. Upsell by including additional items such as drinks, chips, and cookies as options within each item.  Keep the customer updated throughout the ordering process by providing a summary of their order on each page. As for the check out process, make it quick and easy by providing multiple payment options.

Although Flash is nice to look at, keep in mind that loading pages with Flash could be a problem which would prohibit users from accessing your website.

In addition, while working on your website coding, make sure that you keep in mind all the elements for Search Engine Optimization.  You need to include titles, keywords… all to help with your SEO efforts. Although having a website is great, but what is the purpose of having one if no one can find you? Correct?

The MealClick Team
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