What is online food ordering?

Online food ordering is the process by which customer’s order the food using a mobile app or website, and the food is delivered at their doorstep within a short period. The main products offered by such a system includes

  • Ready to eat food product like food from the home kitchen, ghost kitchen or restaurant.
  • Raw food that is not prepared for directional use like fruits or vegetables directly from the farm,

The rise and growth of online food ordering in the US

The food system has gone through the revolution during the past few years. Online food ordering system began in 1994 in America when pizza hut first introduced the concept. They first time delivered the pizza to their customers.

The food ordering market has grown tremendously. In terms of percentage, about 40% of adults in America has once placed an online order for food. Based on the customers demand online food market delivers food prepared by either independent people or by restaurants. Due to the online food ordering the customers can also receive the groceries by sitting at home.

World wide waiter (waiter.com) in 1995 launched the online food ordering service. Initially, they were providing their services only in northern California, but later the company expanded its business and invested in other cities of America.

By the end of 2000, top pizza chains running successfully in the US, built their mobile apps and their annual revenue increased by 20% to 30%. With the significant rise in digital technology like smartphones and an increase in third-party platforms like uber, the food delivery market has been reshaped. Due to this growth, the snapfinger in 2010 adopted the system of mobile food orders, and they received 17% more orders within a year.

In 2015, online food ordering and delivery turned into the phone ordering.

In China, the annual growth rate of online food ordering and delivery industry was 0.15 billion Yuan and raised to 44.25 billion Yuan in 2015.

However, in September 2016, online food delivery increased restaurant transactions by 3% of 61 billion US dollars.

Service types of online food ordering

Restaurant controlled online food ordering.

In restaurant online food ordering, the restaurant owners allow the customers to place an order using the website or app and they deliver the food through the delivery vendor. The website created for the restaurant must have the capability to manage the online menu and multiple orders at one time. A restaurant hires a delivery vendor and pays them either daily wages or monthly fee.

Customers can choose one or more items from the menu to place an order, and then they can either take away the food themselves or delivered by vendors.

Process of online ordering

  • The customer first selects the restaurant,
  • thoroughly search their menu items,
  • select the food item of their choice,
  • Place the order and finally good to receive the delivery.
  • On delivery or pick up, the restaurant then accept the payment either by debit card or credit card or in the form of cash.

The customers only have to streamline their operation, and they can receive all the information regarding quality, the time required for the preparation of food, when the food is ready to pick up and also informs about the time needed to deliver the food at the door.

In Papa john’s restaurant, online delivery is available. Customers may have to place the order on their app or website, and the papa john’s hired delivery vendors deliver the food. Later in 2010, papa john’s recreated their website and developed the mobile application compatible for all the android phones, blackberry and iPhone. After this, they paired the system with online ordering.

According to papa john’s international, in 2010, the annual revenue of the company by online sales increased to about 2 billion dollars.

Independent online food ordering system

If a person can independently cook the food, then he/she can provide the numerous services to the consumers via website or app. The consumers pick up the right meals and allow the cook to send the food items either at their office or home.

Reason to choose: people prefer independent food ordering because they are usually busy and don’t find free time to cook a meal, want to enjoy home-cooked food even in offices or looking for the healthy choices in food to lose weight.

For instance, DineWise, Chef’s Diet and NutriSystem are the most famous for their independent food services.

Food cooperatives

Food cooperatives such as Macomb Co-op give their customers the ultimate convenience of getting groceries and locally grown food items delivered directly. Then the consumers pay for the food items at the central location.

Food riders and drivers

Drivers and riders are independent. They can decide what services they want to provide and also they can determine their work hours. In Australia, riders having specific uniform provide services for Foodora food app and sometimes work for 24 hours. Riders are considered as employees for Foodora.

Insurance services, sick pay and protective gear are not provided to food delivery riders. Some of the riders demand these services. So delivered food app services provide some favors to their riders such as they provide helmet along with GoPro camera. If the driver faces any problem, the GoPro camera will record it. Riders also have a golden chance to raise safety concerns.