During these difficult times having your own ordering app maybe a great long term solution

Having our own online ordering app/website that we can stay in control of and that doesn’t take a % is a huge plus for us at the moment. It means we can update it quickly and change our menu to react to the situation as it continues.

Having built up a strong, loyal customer base through social media means we can keep in contact with our customers and update them very quickly and pretty much for free. We’ve also built up an email list of over 5k addresses that we use to communicate with our customers.

We also have staff Facebook pages that we can use to communicate with our drivers and kitchen staff and we’ve recently introduced a staff tipping feature that customers seem to be using more than ever in these uncertain times, where they are really grateful of our staff being out delivering orders. Staff love tips so it’s a win win.

I think a lot of it for us is working with other small, independent business and being in control as much as possible of things ourselves. We mean more to the smaller businesses and so they are more likely to help us in times like this. Also not relying hugely on 3rd party apps or drivers that charge a big %, not only keeps our costs down but keeps us in control.

Payments dropping into our accounts the next day, even over the weekend is nice, and having a payment system that is good value for money and we don’t have constant problems with definitely helps 🙂

I really do believe that the stronger we can stay as a business now, will mean we can help more in the coming weeks if and when things change.