Food Aggregator or Own Platform: Which Should Restaurants Choose for Online Ordering

All food aggregators already have a substantial base of diners who use their platforms to order food and beverages and discover new places. According to Statista, the number of such users will reach 80.6 million people in 2022 and grow to 110.8 million users by the year 2027.

Being present in an aggregator alone equals to promoting and advertising a restaurant, since it connects a business with a vast audience of interested clients. Restaurant owners can adjust their plans to receive assistance from a pro account advisor and get a better position in the search results. They can also run special promotions with an aggregator, which is easier and faster than setting up a campaign on one’s own.

Food aggregators are very flexible in terms of delivery options. Depending on the needs and resources, a partner restaurant can employ its own delivery people and use the aggregator just for accepting orders, or vice versa, use an aggregator’s delivery staff while taking orders from its own platform.

For businesses that operate in a ghost kitchen format, working with a food aggregator will be a perfect option to connect more clients, grow orders, and not find oneself at a financial disadvantage at the end of the day. Food aggregators can charge up to 30% commission from one completed delivery. Given that a ghost kitchen does not spend money on waiters and front of house, it can very well invest into a good position on an aggregator’s platform.

Food aggregators make a profit by charging a restaurant and its customers a commission on each order they take and deliver. The prices and plans differ in terms of the visibility and marketing support provided by the aggregator. Lower-priced plans will include a higher delivery fee paid by the customer.

Regardless of the plan the restaurant chooses, it will have to pay a fixed fee for both delivery and pickup. The delivery fees range from 15 to 30%, the pickup—from 6 to 10%. It stops paying off in the number of new orders or attracted clients once the business has grown a loyal customer base and reached a sales plateau. To overcome this plateau and reach new heights, the restaurant eventually will have to consider launching their own platform.

Food aggregators do not aim to wrap their partners’ businesses in eye-catching packaging or build on the brand’s signature style for better promotion. They help one restaurant as much as they help another, and in this race, one won’t be able to use a unique visual presentation as a competitive advantage.

Let’s look at Miss Lily’s, a lively and vibrant restaurant, offering a modern approach to classic Jamaican cuisine. Their website stresses the vivid Caribbean gist of the place with a bright color palette and original designs, while its bland Uber Profile completely omits this important visual constituent and shows only the menu items.

Food aggregators want to benefit from all their partners, that’s why they will not help one restaurant to outshine its competitors. Moreover, they actually place competing businesses right next to each other.

The most detrimental thing that an aggregator does to a business is not sharing their customers’ data. At an earlier stage, a restaurant might not need to know the exact demographics of its client base, their personal preferences, and work schedules, but when one starts to think of running special promotions, targeted ads, or optimizing the restaurant’s overall business processes, this data becomes pivotal.

Not knowing the audience means being unable to bond with them through personalized offers. The aggregator keeps all this valuable information to itself, robbing the restaurant of the most potent and powerful instrument of growth.

Having its own platform allows the restaurant to keep its customer data and thus run more targeted and efficient marketing campaigns. If a restaurant knows that most of its online orders come from families with kids, it can tailor the menu and services to cater to this particular category, thus ensuring a stronger customer loyalty and more orders. Or, if a restaurant knows what other stores or businesses its clients support, it can partner up with them to run a joint promo campaign.

User data and direct communication channels with customers which come with having an own platform are an absolute must for any business that aims to scale and expand. Knowing the audience will ensure that one comes up with relevant offers, and having a direct communication channel will guarantee that these offers reach the target.

The development of one’s own digital platform is a long-term investment into the success of the business. Unlike with food aggregators, money spent on a custom app or website pays off in assets such as:

• User data to create efficient marketing strategies and come up with personalized offers.
• Creative freedom to try out different approaches and stand out from the competition.
• Direct reach to clients via email, push notifications, or messages to form a closer connection.

Owning a digital platform can draw not only new customers, but also new partners and business offers. A neat and efficient app or website is another signpost of a prospective business that is worth investing into. That is exactly the case of ZakaZaka, a food delivery startup. They developed a platform for taking online orders from multiple restaurants, and raised $1 million in a seed funding round.

In the end, having an own digital channel gives rise to limitless opportunities for growth and development, something that restaurants cannot obtain from third-party services.

Within their own platform, business owners are free to try out any creative ideas they come up with. This can range from using dazzling designs and animations to distinguish oneself from competitors, to implementing eccentric ideas and gauging unconventional marketing hypotheses.

The Urban Belly Website features a dynamic video background that tells the brand’s story and conveys its identity.

The Fat Choy Website implements original graphic illustrations to mark its distinct aesthetic and make it recognizable for its target audience.

Restaurant owners might be worried that the aggregators’ huge user base has gotten too comfy on their platforms and will not be willing to leave for another website or app. However, recent findings prove otherwise. A 2021 Statista report shows that 67% of consumers prefer using a restaurant’s own app or website when they order food delivery.

In order to develop a food delivery app or website, one will have to invest from $200K to $400K and wait from 6 to 12 months before the new platform is ready to see the light of day. A restaurant will also have to think about launching a stable delivery service, be it its own team, which will require extra efforts, or a third-party staff.

Once a restaurant has released its app or website, it will have to inform its clientele, and encourage them to migrate to the new platform. That might require some extra advertising and promotion efforts on the restaurant’s side, for example, showing ads, or giving out leaflets or coupons with special offers leading to the new app or website.

This task gets easier if a restaurant has already established itself as a household name with a solid client base that will follow its brand to a new space and consciously seek contact.

In order to ensure that the new platform runs smoothly and accepts orders without interruptions, one will have to have some sort of maintenance for it. The costs of that vary depending on the platform’s complexity and the restaurant’s enthusiasm to keep it up-to-date. The restaurant can have either a whole in-house IT-department, or a single backup specialist keeping it in check.