Food Delivery Management: What are the common software in the market?

Food delivery recently becomes more popular thanks to technology in connecting restaurants, shippers, and users.

As the pandemic is happening worldwide, to avoid direct contact and remain 2 meters distance, food delivery is in high demand. For a restaurant owner, it is time to consider using food delivery management software. With the aid of this software, your operation would be more neat and efficient. In this article, we want to help you in choosing the right solutions for your business. Let’s take a look.

Online food delivery system: Definition and Basic mechanism

In a neighborhood, several food delivery platforms provide multiple systems for restaurants. Delivery management software commonly functions as a hub that gathers orders from all the third-parties. For a more advanced one, it also enables restaurants to connect those orders with the point of sale systems (POS) so that the staff can prepare and deliver food with a high level of precision. With powerful food delivery management, processes become automatic, your food and beverage business can run more smoothly and more efficiently.

How does food delivery management work?

To clearly explain the mechanism of this software, we can use the order process to see at which step that food delivery management software tends to be necessary. There are three main steps in the process: Order submission, Driver assignment, and Delivery confirmation.

• In the first step — Order submission: the online food delivery system gathers requests from all delivery platforms and puts it onto a single screen at the point of sale for staff to read and prepare the order. It makes the task much more comfortable for the users since it allows them to manage orders in one place rather than watching 3–4 screens at the same time. It will reduce buffer time and increase food-prep accuracy.
• In the second step — Driver assignment: It has been done in third-party delivery platforms so that restaurants do not need to pay attention to this. You can only see whether the right driver comes to the store or not in preventing mistakes in delivering food.
• In the third step — Delivery confirmation: an online food delivery system will help restaurants to put in the business records a completed transaction. It will later become inputs for revenue/profit analysis for the business.

What types of businesses need food delivery management?

Typically, independent restaurants and restaurant chains are most likely to use the online food delivery management system because of its necessity in their day-to-day operation. However, if you are in the food industry and own a food or beverage business of any kind, this will definitely benefit you.

Besides the established business, there are also virtual kitchens that only provide service online. Customers choose the kitchens’ dishes on the delivery platforms and then receive the food through the delivery management app, provided by the same providers. A similar mechanism can happen at retail businesses such as grocery stores or supermarkets.

Custom food delivery management software

Advantage of having custom software

Obviously, exploring the choices of the most suitable food delivery management is a headache, and we know that. That’s why we provide you with an overview of available options in the market so that you can have a better understanding of the industry. However, with more specific needs, we recommend you to take a consultation for custom software development.

The custom option gives you the advantage of including the features that you actually need rather than buying all the ‘fancy’ ones and never using them. The dedicated development team can analyze your working process and come up with tailor-made software solutions.

How to choose the right software outsourcing vendor

A process of shortlisting food delivery app development companies should go through a screening task, so you can ensure they match your requirements. These are the tips for you to choose a partner wisely:

• Find the vendors in the countries that have the reputation of building such an on demand delivery software.
• Always request a demo so that you can actually evaluate the software development solutions.
• Try to gather as much information as possible, especially from other restaurants that have used the vendor’s products. Ask them for their experiences.
• Build a concrete and cleared request so that they can show you their expertise
• Require them to submit their pricing and client services policies so you can protect yourselves throughout the project as well as compare between vendors to choose the best policy. After all, it all lies in the human-to-human interactions that can make both sides work closely together.

Common features

Finally, the best POS system for your restaurant does exist. You should look carefully into the offers available and remember the online food delivery system of your choice should contain these main features (but not limited to them based on your real situation):

• Full-stack POS management (order, payments, and checkouts)
• Business performance report (customer insights, data analytics)
• Inventory management (menu, recipe, and stock management)

Subscription food delivery management software

Now that you have a basic knowledge of the delivery management software, you might wonder how to choose the right solutions. The first criterion is pricing. Like any other software, the food delivery app development company can charge once for life-time permission or can be purchased via a subscription model where you have to pay every month or year to use the service. With the subscription model, you can pay a small amount of money at a moment and have the power to cancel anytime you feel like it. Let’s see which are the most common food delivery management solutions for you.

1. Square POS

Main features

Square is a user-friendly POS system that provides the restaurant with 4 main features:

• Square POS offers multiple payment selections of processing from credit cards to contactless payment methods. These transactions are also protected and well-managed with encryption, fraud monitoring, and dispute management.
• Checkout with item organization and customization systems keeps your clients happy. The checkout feature also integrates with third party’s food delivery management platforms (food delivery platforms and eCommerce platforms) that manage all of the orders in one place.
• Customer services included in this system are useful with a customer directory that allows users to index and monitor customer interactions with the store.
• Operations features such as dashboards and inventory management help the store’s staff manage their work and simply transfer to one another. The team roles are also available for customizing to prevent data loss incidents.

Highlights: This POS solution integrated delivery management is easy-to-use and affordable for most restaurants or food stalls. It saves you time and effort to train your staff or even yourself to get used to it.

Pricing: The FDMS from Square is currently priced under the case-by-case pricing model. The client is charged with the processing rate of 2.6% of the transaction + 10¢ per tap/dip/swipe, no monthly fee, and no fee charged for the hardware installation.

2. Oracle POS

Main features

One of the best POS systems for restaurant, developed by the industry giant — Oracle, the Restaurant POS System is a full-stack system that provides your restaurant with various functions:

• Inventory management is one of the most advanced features of this software as it provides restaurant owners with a high level of transparency about stock levels. It tracks, monitors, and provides real-time prediction. It even gives the user the sweet spot to order from your suppliers (the contact feature is also included)
• Restaurant menu management functions support ordering and checkout onsite. It can be installed with suitable hardware (if requested).
• Restaurant loyalty programs are similar to the customer service or CRM software features of other competitors but it is designed to best serve high-profile customers who are very neat-picking about their restaurant choices.
• Labor management is a feature for you to effectively manage your hourly charged staff, who usually have volatile working schedules and low commitment to the employer.

Pricing: The pricing is customized for your own needs. Oracle provides potential clients with free consultation and quotes, which is one-click away.

Highlights: Although Oracle’s is one of the most comprehensive solutions available in the market, it still leans more on large-scale restaurants or restaurant chains. Its features are very detailed and complex, which is not suitable for a POS system for small restaurants. The SMEs owners might not need that many details or might be overwhelmed.

3. Zomato base

Main features

Zomato Base is a friendly Android-based, Cloud-based POS system with the commonly known main features: Recipe Management, Menu Management, Inventory Management, CRM, Food Delivery Management, Analytics. They are similar to the mentioned solutions. It is a rising star in the industry that originated from MaplePOS.

Pricing: Zomato only provides quote-based pricing that is different for all clients.

Highlights: Zomato has a very high score from many review sites and possesses the advantage of being a cloud-based platform that is highly flexible and low-risk for the users’ data.

4. OpenTable

Main features

OpenTable is an outstanding option for your choice as it is the booking platform and a POS integration provider. You can definitely benefit from this advantage because they can provide you with valuable insights from customers without any third parties. Their features are only limited to Customer monitoring and Business data analytics as it leans more on the customer side. You should consider carefully before choosing it because it requires your restaurant to have an existing POS system.

Pricing: OpenTable provides 3 monthly pricing options (Basic, Core, Pro) ranging from $39 to $449 based on the features you want to include.

Highlights: OpenTable is so far the only hybrid in this list. But due to this reason, it is more suitable for small entities or boutique restaurants who want to expand their customer base.

Conclusion: In the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that is still threatening the industry, it is a smart move to set up a new food delivery management system or to upgrade your existing food delivery software to accommodate the food delivery trend. To summarize, if you are looking for a powerful software solution that can support your food delivery operation, keep in mind these POS solution names as well as always open for custom software development service.