The past two years have brought along a variety of ways for customers to order food and drinks. Digital ordering solutions have seen accelerated growth and both hospitality operators and customers have left their comfort zones to embrace new technologies such as TableSnappr!

While the choice between different sales channels and customer journeys is a great opportunity for venue operators to optimise their processes and increase customer spend, it can be confusing to understand what the options are and when they fit best. So, let us help you put some logic to this. 

The first basic distinction is whether your customers are on-premise or ordering from outside your venue.

CUSTOMERS ARE ON-PREMISE (INHOUSE ORDERS)

Depending on your overall concept (and staff situation!), there are two ways to enable online ordering on-site:

• Order-to-table: Your customers scan a QR code on the table, place their order and pay. Food and drinks are then served at the table by runners - who BTW can serve lots of tables at the same time because they are not taking orders or payments anymore. And - tada! TableSnappr has a clever UBER-style alert system that lets multiple food and drink stations call a free runner. Needless to say a table may as well be any other location you’d like customers to order to - be it a hotel room, a sun lounge, an office or a bowling alley.
• Customer self-pickup: But what if you don’t have sufficient staff to do the runs? Or what if your customers are not neatly seated at tables - for example at a festival? Easy! After having placed their order via a QR, simply alert customers on their mobile when their order is ready for pick up. TableSnappr shows them a real-time tracker of the order progress and uses a secret code to make sure the order gets picked up by the right person.

Whatever option is more appealing to you, our tech lets you go both ways - and switch if necessary! Order-to-table can be your default order fulfilment mode, but when things get busy and you don’t know how to serve tables anymore, you can switch all food orders to customer self-pickup and keep serving drinks, or vice versa. All at the click of a button.

So, why are we not listing kiosk solutions for inhouse ordering here? Because we think they are a thing of the past. Your customers have increasingly smart devices on them - and they are increasingly capable of using them for any kind of online purchase. Let’s use this opportunity instead of investing in expensive hardware!

CUSTOMERS ARE OFF-PREMISE (TAKEWAY)

Now, show us one person who has not ordered takeaway food over the past two years… and show us one hospitality business that does not think the commissions of the big delivery platforms are just ridiculous. Well, many operators have used TableSnappr to offer their customers a hassle-free and affordable way to place their orders online. 

• Click & Collect: Customers order online via your website, social media or via a QR that you have put in their letter boxes. They choose a pickup day and time and then drop by to collect their order (in store, kerbside, etc.). We are a big fan of Click & Collect as it naturally promotes local neighbourhood ordering instead of getting orders driven all across town.
• Delivery: If you have a good volume of takeaway orders and someone to do the rides - why not! Customers provide their address in the checkout process and can enjoy the comfort of their sofa whilst waiting for their meal to be delivered.

With TableSnappr, a takeaway menu is just a click away when you have set up your inhouse menu. Simply decide which items are suitable for takeaway, set your opening hours and preparation times and start selling your food and drinks online YOURSELF!

We hope this sheds some light on what your options are and how all online sales channels come together on one platform (*cough* TableSnappr *cough*).

If you would like to change the way you currently operate, our team is more than happy to discuss with you about the right model that suits all your needs!