5 secret tips! of How-to start Food Delivery – survival, profitable with no negative outcome 

Apr 05, 2021
Restaurant entrepreneurs mostly concern about how to start Food Delivery as crucial way for business to survive and to further enrich their operations. Some are still stumbling in the dark of where to start or how to keep moving. This brought us special help to you as Chef Job - Natthinee Phrodthong, specialist and restaurant adviser of Makro Horeca Academy, whose profession in consultation of restaurant businesses. Chef Job will show us the importance of Food Delivery including advice that entrepreneurs should keep in mind and to adjust with their businesses.

How important of Delivery and survival through it 


“Before beginning of our decision today, we would first inform of the start of Food Delivery in Thailand that has been used for many years. Before the outbreak of Covid-19, entrepreneurs have already turned to start doing service of Delivery, but back to those days, it could generate only 20 percent of total revenue of restaurants.”

 “At that time, every restaurant only focused on dine-in service, but we started to see the upcoming trend that some emerging SMEs, outstanding restaurants, turned to delivery service for 100 percent without actual store. Since the outbreak of last year Covid-19 till present lockdown, previous number of restaurants had never adjusted to start selling through app, lost the one step of level scale of sales figure. It can be said that these restaurants got no choices to survive.”

“Till these days, restaurants are aware of survival resolution through Delivery as a result of consumer behavior has been changed, because we cannot wait for customer to come to us first. We need to bring ourselves to customer home. As they may not come to our restaurants or are confident to dine at ours like before. Everyone needs to save ourselves.”

Not every delivery would make it


Although most entrepreneurs were starting to realize the importance of 'survival' of delivery process, not all of them would succeed in selling through or even it went well after calculating of expense account found no profitable as expected or loss. As such many people may have not yet known of means of thinking and managing with this important matter. Today Chef Job have shared 5 tips which are the ideas that entrepreneurs need to keep in mind.

  1.  Too many lists of menus? – perfect or ready to deliver from restaurant to customer?
Some entrepreneurs are accustomed to dine-in or front-store selling. They would put every list of menus in app when starting delivery on it, but some foods may not be suitable or lack of precise managing process to deliver to customer with stable quality and taste to dine-in experience. 

Too many lists of menus aren’t advantage – Choose appropriate list of menus.

“For example, you have Pad Thai in restaurant which is well-cooked from kitchen to dining table less than 3 minutes. Noodle is not sluggish and tangling with fresh vegetables on side dish, this is what we considered as delicious Pad Thai. This based on experience of your restaurant even customer who order for take away would make no complaints.”

Do not forget that when customers order to take away, you cook it good and hot as since they carry it away - it's then their responsibilities. Whether it sluggish or tangling is not restaurant responsibility because we never know that customers are the one that volunteer to buy it themselves as we have no idea when they are going to eat, and it’s automatically accepted as their responsibilities to take care of it. But it’s another story for delivery that they expect from it for deliver delicious taste with quality when they receive it."

Therefore, the first important idea is quantity of food menu that we have chosen to be on the app platform, whether it too much and appropriate or not, how we make sure that the food stays delicious from the first minute it leaves the kitchen to the customersor if it’s less delicious, it must at least stay at medium level that everyone would accept without further complaints of taste and quality. Another thing is that some customers may reckon name of restaurant by their experiment of delivery order, if they got bad experience from the first order, they may not order again. Or even so, not going to visit our front house restaurant unfortunately makes its loss of the opportunity. "

To sum up, excess list of menus is not advantage as one aspect of uninvitation to customer decision making as it’s too many options to order. As such specific chosen list of menus that are best is easy to handle for delivery process to customer with delicious taste and most importantly it makes good profit.

  1.  Packaging implement and package suitability
Packing implement and packaging selection have impact to customer experience.

Different types of restaurant must concern regarding to packaging implement and package selection that what kind of packaging will maintain the quality of food, delicious taste and good look. As means of packaging and package selection partly affect to customer experience, once it has been delivered to customers, will decide whether they would come back to use our service next time. Supposed that food package’s quality is not good, customers may not return to our delivery service ever again.

3.Cost management

Entrepreneurs who decided to start delivery with apps are well aware of inevitable GP cost which will definitely level up. First, we should understand that many delivery apps have price for their expense to run system and to do marketing for us which each of them has its own cost, in case if setting GP was based on foundation of fairness, this should be okay and acceptable.

"As we have already understood the early point, cost of business should be taken in mind later on to what we can do to make profit upon this expense. Theoretically, putting upper price of food on app than restaurant front of house may upset customers as main question is that selected menu or product to be on app has profitable gap and then how we are going to make profit through food design of sales on app. For example, single menu of stir-fried basil may need adaptation like stir-fried basil with 2 fried chickens as set compounded for new price becoming new item that unavailable in restaurant front of house. This has already been calculated with GP cost. Proper menu design for delivery must include every costs and GP charge and also satisfies customer expanse of their orders, helping restaurant problem of cost management as well.

4.Necessary of Promotion

Many restaurants often do nothing after their restaurants are on app by letting customers scrolling their fingers to click the order - If that so, they are lucky. But they need to understand that there are so many competitors in the industry of delivery, they need to set up budget and to research application gimmicks for promotion to get on trend of the industry.

For example, application “Robinhood”, it does not request for GP charge, but there is a function of LS that gives each restaurant discount to customers directly. Providing promotion of discount can draw attention of customer especially new customers who had never used our restaurant service, will receive opportunity to taste the food. If their first experience went well, this could turn them to be our regular customers in the future.

5. How to choose the right app

  1. Differences of detail and prominence of Food Delivery platforms



Many restaurants that start delivery service often question of which app is good to use. We must say that each platform has its own different details whose requirement for GP charge or without including different gimmicks. First primary is to observe customers in restaurant area are keen to make order through which app. And each area throughout Thailand has different servicers which some platforms could be available for every province, but some may not.

This must be said for the scope with multiple choices of app that sometimes we have no idea what period that customer would use any app the most because many of them have every app checking for delivery promotion. As state of entrepreneur therefore must accept conditions of each app, whether condition of payment, GP charge requirement or proposition of VAT etc. If we could handle them, we should put ourselves on every app and later consider which app could further boost up sales growth the most and satisfy for the total after deduction. To choose the perfect one, entrepreneur must consider pros and cons of each app that is the best option to our restaurant.

“Another important to be concerned is that if you were new enterprise to start delivery and committed to service with no charge of GP only, it may not serve you a number of customer as you expected. Way of smart thinking is to try on every service to see the differences, supposed that you have limited budget of promotion, you should give a try on every app to know the possibility of how working your promotion could be. Later you would know which channel is effective to work focusedly for your promotion and to benefit the restaurant the most which you also have mange every platform to earn the most benefit that you could get from them.”

Many think that success depends on app. Multiple tasks of becoming Superstar needs precise knowledge of each application to help our business survive. 


Natthinee Phrodthong Specialist and Restaurant Adviser
Makro Horeca Academy

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