Case Study: Giovanni's Fish & Chips Joins Forces with Flipdish
Background:
Giovanni’s is a family-run business based in Edinburgh. It has made its name serving the best fish and chips in town since 1969 and continues to deliver a quality service to its growing customer base. Family has always been at the heart of Giovanni’s and they are dedicated to building a business that produces excellent food in a warm, friendly environment. In 2002, Giovanni handed over the reins to sons Lorenzo and Mauro who have since expanded the menu to include a wide array of food including pizza, pasta and kebab. Speaking to Mauro about his experience in the takeaway industry we unearth the key to online success for Giovanni’s Fish & Chips...
Challenges:
These days it is expected that a takeaway restaurant can be found online. If they don’t have a website, potential customers will look elsewhere. Giovanni’s originally had a basic system in place for online orders but received most orders the old-fashioned way; over the phone. Mauro recognised that the industry was changing and younger people, in particular, were seeking more and more convenience by ordering things quickly on their mobile phones.
Giovanni’s joined food portals at the height of their popularity to gain new customers but soon found that the aggregator model was seriously flawed, squeezing restaurant owners profit margins and denying them access to their customers. Food portal listings are competitive and takeaways can be filtered out easily by the highest bidders, those with cheaper delivery charges or greater discounts amounts. It’s a cut-throat industry and even when a takeaway does receive orders, it’s barely worth it as they have to pay high commission fees on every order.
Solution:
Mauro came across Flipdish while seeking an alternative to food portal listings, “food portals are expensive, they charge 13/14% per sale. My bill comes to over £1000 a week.” “I wanted my own app. It’s the way things are going.”
Flipdish creates white label online ordering websites designed for mobile and SEO, along with personalised Apps for both Android and iOS which allow restaurants to accept online orders directly from their customers. This type of technology is invaluable for independent restaurants and chains. Where larger food chains have the resources to build their own software to generate orders, small and medium businesses struggle. Flipdish aims to make the online ordering technology accessible to all-sized businesses by keeping their sign-up fee as low as possible and cutting transaction fees nearly in half.
Giovanni’s began offering online ordering services for delivery and collection using Flipdish just over a year ago and have been thriving with overall sales having increased by 79% since May 2018.
“Our customers have had positive feedback and sales are getting better and better every week”. “We tell all our customers all the time to use the Flipdish App as opposed to, for example, Just-Eat, as they charge quite high commission rates and getting customers to order through Flipdish is better for all of us”.
Results:
The best part about having a customised online ordering platform is that restaurant owners are completely in control of their brand presence. Flipdish helps restaurants increase their total orders and improve customer retention through automated push notifications, discounts and loyalty campaigns. Restaurants working with Flipdish have a much more direct relationship with their customers and have the ability to store their data for future transactions, e.g. save card details or favourite orders.
“The apps really easy to use, we’ve got quite a lot of regular customers now who use the app at least once or twice a week”.
The Flipdish ordering system removed unnecessary steps such as creating passwords and inputting email addresses; a phone number is all that is needed to place an order.
“The app is just there on your phone and you can order in a couple of clicks including payment, it’s great!”.
The entire Flipdish team is dedicated to keeping the system running in perfect condition at all times. They are available around the clock to help with the likes of menu updates, refunds and general queries regarding the system.
“It’s been really easy. We haven’t had any major issues from the start”, “Even when things are updated and get a bit muddled, Flipdish sorts things out quickly and efficiently.”
“I’ve recommended 3 or 4 customers to join Flipdish. Whenever I’m asked who we use, I always point them in Flipdish’s direction”.
Giovanni’s is just one of 1000s of takeaways who have been transformed by Flipdish.
Interested in what we do? Check out our website at www.flipdish.co.uk
Get in Touch: Flipdish
www.flipdish.co.uk
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