Should your restaurant start offering delivery?

As the digital era continues to take over Filipino life, more opportunities are becoming available to food brands looking to get their menu offerings into the hands (and mouths) of hungry customers all over the metro.
Food delivery is going beyond its status as simply an add-on for restaurants, becoming a necessity in the industry globally. According to international information firm The NPD Group, foodservice delivery in the United States has been taking in sizable gains in terms of visits and sales over the last five years, despite the general weakness of the market.
“Delivery has become a need to have and no longer a nice to have in the restaurant industry,” Warren Solochek, The NPD Group senior vice-president for industry relations, said. “It has become a consumer expectation.”
“Convenience is among the chief reasons that consumers visit restaurants, and delivery brings a heightened level of it,” Mr. Solochek said. “We forecast that delivery will grow over the next five years and the growth will source to non-traditional delivery outlets and dayparts.”
In the Philippines, the availability and the growth of services like Foodpanda, Honestbee, and The Delivery Guy is proof enough that such international trends are making their way here. The restaurant landscape is changing fast, and sooner or later Filipino brands will have to adapt.
When ride-sharing and logistics services giant Grab Philippines unveiled its smart city vision to “empower a future of seamless mobility,” on-demand food delivery services were one of the company’s top priority services to be integrated into its app.
According to Grab, its existing and new delivery partners from its already-thriving GrabExpress courier service, can generate additional income and job opportunities from delivering food orders on top of delivering parcels.
The company also plans to go beyond just delivering food, by providing restaurants with their own online and mobile storefronts. By leveraging their fleet of delivery partners, Grab hopes to help eliminate the need for restaurants to rely solely on foot traffic for their revenues.
With more and more Filipinos moving online, small food enterprises might want to look into mobile services that can help them make the digital leap and tap those migrating consumers.