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Online food ordering services are websites that feature interactive menus allowing customers to place orders with local restaurants and food cooperatives. Much like ordering consumer goods online, many of these allow customers to keep accounts with them in order to make frequent ordering convenient. A customer will search for a favorite restaurant, choose from available items, and choose delivery or pick-up. Payment can be by credit card or cash, with the restaurant returning a percentage to the online food company.
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Service types
While e-commerce has been around for over a decade, closing the gap between food and the Internet has taken longer. The first restaurants to adopt online food ordering services were corporate franchises such as Domino's and Papa John's. Other pizza franchises such as Pizza Hut have been quick to adopt online food ordering.[1]
Restaurant-controlled
The preexisting delivery infrastructure of these franchises was well suited for an online ordering system, so much so that in 2008 Papa John's International announced that its online sales were growing on average more than 50 percent each year and neared $400 million in 2007 alone.[2]
Local companies have teamed up with e-commerce companies to make ordering quicker and more precise. Annie Maver, director of operations for The Original Pizza Pan, Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio comments that "the system is good for customers who don't speak English."[3]
Some restaurants have adopted online ordering despite their lack of delivery systems, using it to manage pick-up orders or to take reservations.
Independent
Independent online food ordering companies offer two solutions. One is a software service whereby restaurants purchase database and account management software from the company and manage the online ordering themselves. The other solution is a Net-based service whereby restaurants sign contracts with an online food ordering website that may handle orders from many restaurants in a regional or national area.
One difference between the systems is how the online menu is created and later updated. Managed services do this via phone or email, while unmanaged services require the customer to do it. Some websites use wizards to find the best-suited menu for the customer. A good example of this is delivure, an independent food delivery search engine.
Food Cooperatives
Food cooperatives also allow consumers the ability to place an order of locally grown and/or produced food online. Consumer place an order online based on what is available for the ordering cycle (month, week) and then pick up and pay for their orders at a central location.
As an offshoot of online food ordering services, websites archiving restaurant menus online have appeared.
See also
- Pizza delivery
- Online Food Ordering Script
- Online food ordering software features
- Purple Porch Co-op in South Bend, IN
- West Michigan Co-op in Grand Rapids, MI
References
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
