Online Food Ordering System (Problems that may arise?)

I'm trying to pull of the same sort of thing that campusfood.com is doing at the moment, but a lot more localized (only one university to begin with).

I have the entire system in place to run an open beta test, but my partner says he has problems with the way things are going to be handled.

We've approached restaurants on other topics previously, but none wanted anything to do with us. As a result, I decided our best route to take for this project would be to simply place orders that we receive from customers, over to the phone to the restaurant.

However, my partner says we will get into trouble with restaurants cause we are profiting off their food. In reality, we are charging the same price, but tacking on a convenience fee for our services. We are paying the restaurant for their food, so what kind of legal problems can there be?

Isn't that how most of the merchant industry makes their money? But reselling products created by manufactures.

 

I don't see a problem with this at all.

The restaurant has no way of knowing that it is you that called them rather than the end consumer.

Presumably you pay them at the point of placing the order?

If my partner calls me up and says, "I'm working late, can you phone through an order to the local pizza shop and I'll pick it up on my way home", what's the difference?

However, you are introducing an immediate flaw into your business process. This mechanism won't scale so as soon as you start taking enough orders to make money, you're going to spend all your time on the phone. That doesn't sound like fun! You're never going to be able to take a night off! And a convenience fee, if big enough to enable you to employ phone staff is likely to make the meals too expensive - especially if your target market is students.

The service doesn't actually save the end user much effort does it? By the time they've navigated around your site for 20 mins choosing details, filling out credit card details, whatever, they could have just called the restaurant themselves.

Personally, I'd revisit and look at why your pitch to the restaurants failed.

Maybe you didn't pitch strong enough on what was in it for them?

Oh, and of course, you would be breaching the restaurants copyright on their menu. They might not like that.

 

Thanks for the reply. I've got a system that translates the order invoice to pdf to fax the restaurant automatically, but haven't been able to find restaurants to deal with that want to accept it this way. (this is how campusfood does it)

However, for the restaurant, doesn't it just increase business allowing people to buy from their restaurant through us?

 

I spent some time last night out to dinner with my partner. We talked about your idea. Particularly why the restaurants wouldn't buy into it. As we didn't yet know how you get the orders to them, we assumed it must be a problem with the mechanism you chose. For example, had it been email - perhaps they had no convenient (and hygenic) way of accessing email in between servicing customers and so on.

The fax solution is imaginative - but I suspect, is impractical for them. They don't keep their fax machines at the counter. It'll be in some back office part of the building. So sending someone back there every 5 mins just in case an order comes in isn't going to work. And if they miss one, well that's an upset customer.

You're right that you can potentially increase their business. But the fact that you didn't reply with "Because our research shows we can place on average, 'N' orders a night with each and every restaurant we list, with an average order value of $x" shows that your pitch to them might not be strong enough?

You need a pitch that makes them not only think about why they should join, but also about the risk of not joining when all the competition gets your business. And it has to translate into serious $$.

Getting back to the mechanics, my partner and I thought that perhaps the best notification method would be to provide the restaurants with something they could keep close to the counter in the restaurants/takeaways. Something like providing a Blackberry or similar email enabled PDA?

Though that's going to take a little investment.

It seems to me though, that it is going to mean getting back out there and talking to the proprieters a little more. Find out from them why they're hesitant. Solve their concerns.

Clearly CampusFood pitched their idea in a way that restaurants immediately saw the benefit. So it can be done. You could always call one of the directors of that site and ask him how the hell he managed it! Flattery can go a long way. Presumably your not in direct competition? (ie. you're in a different location). Often people like to play the big Entrepreneur and will talk quite openly about how they achieved success. If worried that they might not talk to competition, you could always prentend it's research for a business studies course at Uni!

Best of luck with the idea though!

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

While the idea of providing some sort of counter notification sounds awesome, the investment would be to high for what i'm trying to achieve here.

Do you have any opinions on launching with just 5 or 6 restaurants initially without speaking to restaurants, to actually try to get some real data to use in sales pitches?

 

Why dont they want to do business with you, i can see no reason they reject this. Strange

 

^ i second this. why wouldn't they want to do business with you? i think it's odd that they'd downplay a possible business relationship

 

I think it's odd as well. I'm thinking it's because I don't have any solid facts about how this will improve their business, so they just push me off to the side.

 

Are the restaurants you have asked already using campus food?

 

There was some overlap, but camusfood only has 5 restaurants for our campus. I must of approached at least 30.

 

Why don't you charge a higher premium? for delivery? and Give the restaurant an additional buck or two? That'll start the incentive!

Of course, if the restaurants are close why would they want to do business with you if their businesses are already good? Your best bet is with restaurants that does not seemingly have a great amount of customers to began with.

Seems like your targets are students on campus. What about the local neighborhoods? Are they going to these restaurants you say you want to work with? If not, that might be another avenue as well. Not sure why you would pay the same amount of price for food either. I would have bargained for a discount if I'm buying food in bulk.

-Swapw

 

What I really want to start doing is letting people place delivery orders through us for restaurants that don't deliver already. But, to get that started, I need to raise some money, which is why I want to do regular ordering.

Also, I'm not buying food in bulk, I'm simply the middle man between the customer and the restaurant (that doesn't have a web interface)

 

I just had another thought.

What about those restaurants that require you to sign a receipt or show a credit card upon delivery?

 

Come up with a better plan, address the problems your partner has with the way things are going to be handled and repropose your idea, there must have been a fatal flaw for all the restaurants to say no.

 

I don't understand, what's the benefit of going through campusfood, when you can just call and order yourself? Seems like an extra step where things can get messed up. For example, when an order is messed up, who's fault is it?

 

Wow, this is pretty interesting. I am also starting a business, with this same concept. I've been on this for the past three years mostly on the programming side of things. Second, lack of money has me stuck. Nevertheless, In my opinion, this is one of the best services a restaurant can offer their customers. Here are 2 benefits, (and you can use this to pitch it to your potential customers). 1. Language barrier. Too often we get wrong orders when placing them over the phone, because of miscommunication. It could be that the person placing the call has an accent and then the person on the other side (restaurant) may not understand them well or vise-versa. Maybe there busy multitasking and make a mistake when taking the order. 2. While the restaurant is investing money into this service, the savings are astronomical when compared to having someone picking up the phone to take orders and paying them for doing the same thing a computer does better. In the meantime, the person that would be taking orders can actually help out the customers that are physically in the restaurant. So in short just these two reasons saves the restaurant money by having their people service in-house patrons better. You'll always have happy "delivery" customers because their orders would be correct every time. Aside from the pitches to the restaurants, you need to build a solid program for them to use, that they feel comfortable would be reliable. Remember these are business people that understand their needs well. You need to listen to them. They know best.

Good luck! I know what you're going through.