Ubereats and the like still dominated the orders even with the 15% upcharge and even after notifying repeat customers that they can save money ordering direct
The convenience of having one centralized app with one account that can summon any food from any restaurant in a 10 mile area is just way too strong.
But I only order food once or twice a month- it's a little indulgence for me.
The majority of people using these apps just want to scroll some restaurants and order something quickly. Saving 10% by going through extra steps, installing extra apps, going to a company’s website, and doing custom orders isn’t what most of their repeat customers want to do.
It’s a convenience thing.
I'm the one who don't bother ordering directly to get better value, but I started noticing less and less restaurants (that I order from) having this option anymore.
They probably saw too little people using it and stopped accepting, sadly.
One benefit of these apps is companies which would never have had a driver now can be ordered, but the cost is all the businesses who did no longer do.
And it’s going to be a hard sell for a small business owner to pay for not employees that are in low demand by the consumer vs the zero fixed cost apps that manage that for you.
You could have the slickest ordering experience in the world and it won’t help you if no one sees it.s
The company that operates their ordering platform is mobihq.com (I have no affiliation with them)
For example Slice is a popular one for pizza. I know a business owner who uses it.
They have an app and optionally an online menu on your custom domain to take online orders and physical hardware for taking orders in your store. Think POS system, register, terminal, printers, etc..
For a business owner that covers you for accepting online and offline orders, and you can deliver direct to your customers.
95% of his online delivery orders go through this system because DoorDash charges him (the business owner) 30% for each order so he raised his prices there to partially offset that. Slice on the other hand is 5% cheaper than his baseline price for online orders for customers so it's a no brainer most use that. With that said, way more people call in or come in person than using the app. Probably a 90% / 10% split.