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
Follow us on Twitter
Fan us on Facebook
Seamless * Accurate * Fast

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
Follow us on Twitter
Seamless * Accurate * Fast

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
Follow us on Twitter
Seamless * Accurate * Fast

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
Follow us on Twitter
Seamless * Accurate * Fast

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
Follow us on Twitter
Seamless * Accurate * Fast

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!

The MealClick Team
Follow us on Twitter
Seamless * Accurate * Fast

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
Follow us on Twitter
Seamless * Accurate * Fast

MealClick celebrates ten years of service to the restaurant industry through its Online Food Ordering System

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Irvine, CA – March 1, 2010 – MealClick, a pioneer and a trusted name in the online food ordering systems, is celebrating today ten years of serving the hospitality industry on a global level.  With its excellent customerservice and all-inclusive plans, MealClick has redefined the meaning of online food ordering systems for restaurants.  MealClick service plans offer zero transaction fees and no hidden charges.

“Our plans are intended to provide immediate and easy access for restaurants to take advantage of online food ordering in order to increase sales while providing their customers with a convenient method to order from them.” said Mona Michel, Chief Marketing Officer at MealClick.  “We are proud to be a technology pioneer in internet food ordering for restaurants. MealClick has the right plans, knowledge & experience to service restaurants of all sizes. We help restaurateurs boost their sales without burdening their budgets while offering a first class service to their customers.”

To make it more convenient to restaurateurs, MealClick offers three service plans including the Real-Time Email Plan, Real-Time Fax Plan and Real-Time Print Plan; no per order charges, no fax charges and unlimited orders. MealClick offers seamless integration, unlimited notifications and backup notifications capabilities via print, fax, email, and cell phone/pager in addition to a backend control panel for menu configuration, website look and feel customization, reporting, customer loyalty, coupons and promotions, and much more.

###

MealClick is the industry leader when it comes to restaurant food online ordering systems. With thousands of installation worldwide since 2000, MealClick offers its customers an easy-to-use system at an affordable price.  For more information, visit www.mealclick.com, or call 949-955-3050.

Why Online Ordering?

We are living in a fast paced world. Any minute we can save is worth it. That is exactly when technology comes in place to provide us with all the tools to make our life easier and our day smoother.

Online food ordering is one of those tool to help many, if not all of us, run a smoother day. The following is a list of who is using Online ordering and how it is being used:

- Busy Parents for birthday parties, lunches and dinners, and social gatherings.

- Schools and Colleges for catering purposes (parties, events, meetings..) and fundraising.

- Clubs and sports team for group lunches, event dinners, meetings, fundraising, and parties.

- Businesses for office parties, meetings and events; group breakfast and lunches, catering for clients, and more…

The bottom line is that almost EVERYONE is busy. Therefore, using Online Food Ordering definitely offers a solution.

The MealClick Team
Follow us on Twitter
Seamless * Accurate * Fast