The delivery experience can make or break a diner’s loyalty to a restaurant—and independents are especially vulnerable. Often, their best customers come from the neighborhood and neighbors talk.
All Day Kitchens, a distribution and delivery platform that partners with independents, is designed to support smaller restaurants and expand their customer network. Molly McGrath, head of culinary and operations at the company, leads a team that curates and optimizes restaurants’ menus to create a successful last-mile delivery experience.
All Day’s satellite kitchens are equipped with high-tech finishing ovens that enhance food quality and taste. The platform also matches packaging to each order and tracks sales data for each restaurant partner. Speaking on the Restaurant Business podcast Menu Feed, McGrath provided several strategies restaurants can use to ensure a successful delivery experience.
• Identify your rock stars. Menu best sellers will have the most success as delivery items, since the kitchen team at the restaurant has the most practice preparing them. Find the rock stars on the menu and stick to those—as long as the foods are travel-friendly. All Day Kitchens provides the finishing touches, such as melting the cheese and browning the crust on a pizza before it gets packed to go.
• Edit down the delivery menu. Six items is optimal, said McGrath. Make sure the food doesn’t slow down production by being too complicated for the staff to put together while also prepping orders for dine-in guests.
• Study your market. What are the most popular foods customers order for delivery in your area? All Day Kitchens operates satellite locations out of Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas and Los Angeles, and each city has different delivery preferences. In Chicago, it’s pizza and wings, San Franciscans love Chinese and Thai trends high in L.A. “Keep your menu selection reflective of the market,” she recommended.
• Global menu items over-index. All Day Kitchens’ data shows that Mediterranean and Asian dishes are top choices in the cities it currently serves. Chinese dumplings and noodles, Indian curries and hummus and falafel bowls have broad appeal and travel well.
• Break out eating occasions. Divide the menu into “collections” that target a craving or specific meal. Some of All Day Kitchens’ digital menus group items in categories such as Sweet Shoppe for desserts and Late Night for munchies.
“As tech and restaurants are brought together, there’s lots of connecting the dots on both sides. I’m masterful at connecting dots,” said McGrath, “but we’ll never get to the point where AI can taste and judge food quality as well as a trained team member.”
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