11 Ways to Offer Free Delivery to Boost Your Restaurant Sales

Did you know that 70% of consumers ordered online delivery in the past month? And that restaurants with an online ordering system increased their profit by 30%?

It is no secret that allowing clients to order online will significantly increase your revenue. But the key to success is to persuade people to choose your business over the competition.

In this article, we will share the nine handy ways in which you can offer free delivery to boost your sales:

1. Know Your Margins

Your ability to become one of the restaurants with free delivery depends on two things:

1. Cost of delivering the order
2. Profits that you can still make on that order

While it’s pretty challenging to predict this, you can review your average order value (AOV), as well as the costs of delivering your orders.

Having an estimate allows you to know whether you can comfortably offer a free delivery option to customers. The impact of free delivery on sales can be negative if you don’t know how to approach this strategy.

If you need help determining your restaurant’s costs, check out our detailed guides:

• How to Identify, Calculate & Reduce Restaurant Fixed Costs
• What Are Variable Costs for Restaurants & How to Keep Them Down
• 5 Tips on Efficient Management of Restaurant Labor Costs

2. Set the Minimum Order Amount Intelligently

Only offer the free delivery option if it reaches the minimum purchase value.

You need to find a balance between a minimum purchase value that will ensure your profit and one that will persuade customers to take advantage of the free delivery offer. Follow these tips:

• Know your threshold first: You can do this by calculating your current average order and setting the free delivery minimum just slightly above it. Doing so will encourage your customers to add at least another menu item to their cart to qualify for this option;
• Do not set the threshold too high: Let’s say that your average order value is only $20, and you’ve selected the free delivery minimum at $200. That won’t work. Ensure that you don’t set the limit too far away from the average order value. Ideally, it should be just enough for your customers to order a couple of items more.

Read more: Restaurant Delivery Fee: What Are Your Options & How to Reduce Costs

3. Offer Free Delivery as Part of Your Loyalty Program

Loyalty programs can be valuable if you want to strengthen your relationship with your customers. You can also use this tactic to boost your average order value.

Offer free delivery as part of your restaurant’s loyalty program to enjoy the following benefits:

• Gather valuable information about customers: this includes common customer demographics, best-selling products, and more. Mind you, these insights could come in handy in your next promotional campaign;
• Get people to return: if clients enjoyed their experience at your business, they are likely to return, especially if they have an offer to take advantage of;
• Get more recommendations: clients are likely to suggest your restaurant to their friends and family to encourage them to try your dishes and promotions.

For example, you can offer an exclusive loyalty membership to people who’ll register for your loyalty program.

Then, members who purchase from your restaurant are offered free delivery, along with other perks of being a member.

Read more: Restaurant Loyalty Marketing: How to Ace Customer Success

Quickly add delivery zones to your restaurant with this detailed video tutorial and discover how this technology is revolutionizing the takeout experience.

4. Use Free Delivery on Select Items

If you want to minimize the negative impacts of the free shipping strategy on your overall profits, consider offering it on select items only.

Does free delivery increase sales? Yes, if you know how to do it right:

• Choose carefully which particular orders you want to deliver with free delivery. It’s usually the items in your menu with relatively low margins that suffer losses from shipping costs.
• The key here is how you can communicate this effectively to your customers. Being transparent and upfront with them about certain restrictions lets them navigate your page quickly and with trust.

5. Offer Free Delivery for a Minimum Order Amount

You can also have free delivery only when an order reaches a certain amount or for a purchase of more than $X.

Doing so allows you to boost your average order value and your profits within specific order categories. You can have this running throughout the end of the month.

You can also leverage the free shipping strategy on all your orders during a particular day. It’s just a matter of working with reliable service providers in your area.

So, if your business is based in California, that could mean working with a California fulfillment services provider.

6. Offer Free Delivery as a Promotion

The thing with free delivery is that you don’t need to offer it all year long or for all of the items on your menu.

You can also use it as a welcome boost to your sales. Whether it’s during the holidays or a business anniversary, offering it for a limited amount of time gives your customers the incentive to buy now.

Read more: 15 Unique Restaurant Promotion Ideas that Will Increase Loyalty in 2021

7. Use Free Delivery as a Bonus

You can also use free delivery as a bonus or incentive when a customer does something for you.

Let’s say you’re offering free delivery to customers who have signed up to your email list.

But to execute this perfectly, you need to charge the delivery rate per order. Imagine what would happen if every single one of your customers signed up to your email list.

You’d lose money on delivery costs, especially if it’s not based on the total retail price. So, technically, this only works once. The next time, your customers will no longer have this option.

8. Offer Free Delivery to First-Time Customers Only

The free shipping strategy works well with first-time customers too.

What you can do is send a code via email. For that, you’ll need an auto-responder tool that will allow you to auto-send emails to new customers with the free delivery code.

Check out these tips on how to get more people to take advantage of your first-time free delivery promotion:

• Don’t run this promotion while offering unconditional free delivery at the same time. That’s because it’s unlikely that customers will sign up to your email list;
• Add a banner on your website advertising the free delivery promotion for newcomers to persuade clients.

9. Include Delivery Costs in Menu Item Prices

Think of the time you got irritated because your hotel room got charged with hidden fees during check-out. Or those additional fees that you didn’t know about when you wanted to buy a pair of jeans in an online store.

The last thing you want to do with your customers is surprising them with hidden fees. Hence, you should include delivery and other taxes from the get-go.

Basically, you should not hide any fees. Otherwise, it can lead to cart abandonment.

To prevent that, you can include the delivery costs along with the menu prices. That way, customers don’t have to worry about a surprise waiting for them as soon as they hit the check-out button.

The rate of cart abandonment can decrease since there’s a lot of transparency from search to check-out.

Read more: Restaurant Menu Pricing Strategies to Help Your Business Thrive

10. Promote your free delivery offer on social media

Social media is a great place to discover new restaurants. Many people will be looking for restaurants offering free delivery because it is such an attractive offer.

Let people know you are currently running a free delivery promotion by adding posts with mouth-watering pictures and persuasive descriptions. To encourage people to order, add a direct link to your menu.

Read more: How to Attract More Customers to Your Restaurant Using Social Media

11.Mention your active promotions on Google Business Profile

What is the first thing you do when you are looking for a place to eat? Search on Google, of course. That is why “restaurants with free delivery near me” and “restaurants with their own delivery near me” have a high number of searches.

If you want to rank high for these types of searches, update your Google Business Profile with your free delivery promotions. Don’t forget to also add a direct link to your menu so clients can immediately take advantage of the offer.

Read more: Top Benefits of Google Business Profile for Restaurants

Wrapping it Up

Online food delivery has become the norm. Afterall, hunger can strike anywhere, and clients expect to be able to order their favorite food from anywhere.

If you want to tempt people to order from your restaurant to increase your sales, implement the variety of ways to offer free delivery we detailed above. You will not only notice a boost in profit, but also in loyalty.

This article is a guest post.

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