IntelliEagle - All About Online Order

How to Build Your Food Online Ordering System (1) – Join Food Online Ordering Networks

2009-12-24T18:21:00.001-08:00

As a restaurant owner or manager, did you ever imagine the following picture?

It is 12:30pm on a Friday, your typical busiest lunch time during a week. But your restaurant is pretty QUIET. There are no continuous phone rings that annoy your dine-in customers and make your receptionists so stressful. However, the business is NOT slow at all. Everybody is very busy to prepare food orders. The orders, as you may guess, are pouring in from Internet, and coming out through your FAX machine, your automatic email printer, or your iPhone or Blackberry…

What a wonderful picture! And it is happening in some of the restaurants now. How to make this happen in your restaurant? First of all, you need to build an online ordering system.

The word “build” does not mean you do it by yourself. I am not suggesting you to buy some software books and start learning web design and programming. No kidding here. It may sound very tempting to build a cool online ordering website yourself and somebody may tell you that “dummies can build a website nowadays”. Well, it might be true for couple static informational web pages, which can be done using some easy tools. But online ordering is much more complicated than that. It requires understandings in web-based software programming and database. So unless you have solid software development knowledge and experiences, don’t waste your time.

Here I am going to point out some options you have in the current market, and things you need to pay special attention to when you make your choices.

You basically have two ways to have an online ordering system:
1. to join one or more online ordering networks
2. to have your own online ordering website

In this article, I am going to focus on the option 1, online ordering networks.

If you have been in business for a while, especially if you are located in some big cities, I bet you have received ads from different restaurant related websites or networks. Almost all of them are offering to list your business or menu in their websites. But only A FEW can help you to take online orders. These A FEW are the ones you should pay attention to.

What they normally do is to
1. Add your restaurant and menu into their website
2. Setup the online ordering with a little setup charge or even better, for free
3. Charge you some fee per order, normally within the range from 10 percent to 20 percent. Different companies have different price structures. Do your calculation and figure out your real cost.

The main benefit of joining the online ordering networks is that they can normally bring you new businesses, because they normally have high volume of visitors. Also, some of them are providing the delivery service, so that you could take delivery orders without a driver.

Now you may have several such online ordering networks on your table. Which one to join then? My suggestion is simple: JOIN AS MANY NETWORKS AS YOU CAN. The logic is simple too: for any of them, you do not lose anything if it doesn’t bring you any business. Why not?

However, there are some situations that you may NOT want to join a network. Beware of them.

1. The network or website asks you sign some agreement that make itself your EXCLUSIVE online ordering vendor. It basically prevents you from working with other networks. In my opinion it is very unreasonable. It is like Google asks you not to use any other search engines if you use Google. (Just for example. Of course Google doesn’t do that.) So carefully check the terms in the service agreement before you join.

2. The network or website charges too much. If you do not make money after paying them, then what is the point for joining them? Your purpose is to increase YOUR business, not THEIR business. So do your calculation first.

3. The way they sending order to you does not fit your situation. For example, if they can only send orders in email while you can’t check your email in restaurant. Then it won’t work for you.

As a summary of this article, next time when you see an ad that tells you they have a food online ordering network and encourages you to join, don’t throw it away. Check it out first. If everything looks good, go ahead. It may become your sales machine!

In my next article, I will introduce how to make YOUR OWN online ordering website. No matter you join any online ordering networks or not, it should be a must-have for your restaurant in Information Era. So read on.

- By Will Zheng, Executive Director, IntelliEagle Technologies LLC

Your Automatic Sales Machine in the Information Era – An Online Ordering System

2009-12-24T06:28:00.001-08:00

If you are a restaurant owner or manager, what does Internet mean to you?

Yes, you could set up Internet access in your restaurant and check e-mails in your back office.

But a better answer would be: you buy a wireless router, connect it to the cable or DSL modem, and post on your window “FREE Wireless Internet Access” to attract more customers.

An even better answer: you are high tech savvy. You set up a cool computer network (POS, security cameras, and so on) in your restaurant and connect it to the Internet, so you could remote access your systems at home and check what's going on at midnight.

And an even better answer: You build a web site for your restaurant and put your business information, menu, and some photos on it. Then, when people call and ask where you are, you can simply and proudly say: check our web site.

All those answers can bring you something – better environment, convenience, efficiency, attraction to customers, and so on. But, are they good enough? Is there anything that really can help your business – your SALES? Bring you NEW ORDERS and NEW CUSTOMERS, not indirectly, but DIRECTLY?

The answer is Online Ordering system.

In an era in which more than 74 percent of Americans are online, in which most people would rather type text messages and e-mails than pick up the phone, in which we can buy almost everything on the Internet, it truly is surprising that most restaurants still are taking orders the same way as 40 years ago – by telephone or customer walk-in.

Why’s that? Simply because your customers are ready, but YOU didn’t provide them a way to order online.

Here, you may think there must be a reason why most restaurants don’t do online ordering. Maybe people are not used to ordering food online.

It sounds like a valid assumption but a WRONG one. Again, your customers are ready. And the reality is: more and more restaurants, including all the major pizza chains, are taking online orders right now.

And you may have heard from other restaurants something like: “Online ordering doesn’t work,” or “We tried but didn’t get any orders.” Then, does it work?

The answer is a big YES, if you design and setup your online ordering system CORRECTLY. A well-designed online ordering system is an AUTOMATIC SALES MACHINE.

We (IntelliEagle) have helped a variety of restaurants to build their online ordering systems since 2005. While working with those clients, we have had many experiences in this area and would like to share those experiences – successful and unsuccessful stories (and the reason why) – and useful tips with you, through a series of articles. So read on.

— By Will Zheng, Executive Director, IntelliEagle Technologies LLC

New website is online!

2009-11-20T12:09:00.000-08:00

It's kind of funny and shameful that we, having designed many websites in last 4 years, never completed our own website. But here we go - our cool new website www.intellieagle.com!!

Some thoughts on what we are going to do with our new website:

1. We'll keep updating it every week. So it will be in sync with our progresses.

2. The contents: There are really a lot to say about our products, services, and the ongoing projects. Also, we feel obligated to provide our clients more useful information about online ordering. We are thinking to write a series of articles and publish them on our website. So, keep checking back.

3. Some features to add on:

We'll have a demo of online ordering, so you can make an online order and see how it works
We'll make our website itself an online ordering website, so that our clients will be able to order our product and services online.

New website. New Look.

2009-11-13T11:31:00.000-08:00

The new IntelliEagle website is coming soon! Check the latest progress in http://71.43.226.82/intellieagle/