Many restaurants and catering businesses offer services to customers hosting events and a lot of times the ordering process involves potential customers having to phone the business and place their orders manually.
While the manual ordering process does get the job done, there is always the potential for miscommunication and errors in the orders. As well, if ever there is an extremely busy day with a lot of large orders coming in, it can be difficult and stressful to try and keep track of every single order and ensure they get fulfilled accurately and on time.
The catering management process can be simplified and streamlined by using automation to help caterers easily accept and manage order requests online automatically and store all data in an all-in-one-centralized solution. The catering online ordering solution combines automation and task management to ensure that catering orders are organized, and the process is as efficient as possible.
Interested in what an automated catering management solution looks like? There are four parts that make up this automated online catering ordering system, which are each outlined below!
1. Online Ordering
The first step in automating the catering online ordering process is collecting order requests from customers. These requests can be collected through the use of an online form placed on your website or social media pages.
Once someone submits a catering order, their contact information is stored in a central contact database, where it can be used when sending the order confirmation and fulfillment notifications. The catering service or restaurant just needs to make sure that the form is accessible and that potential customers know where to go to fill it out.
2. Confirmation Message
When a new catering order has been received by the automated catering management solution, the solution will automatically send a confirmation message to the customer asking them to confirm their submission.
The only thing restaurants or catering services need to do for this piece of the process is to create a message template when first setting up the catering online ordering solution. This template should include a button or link for customers to click to confirm their order, and another one if they need to make any changes. As well, once configured, the template will automatically pull the order information stored in the central database and include it in the confirmation message when it is sent.
3. Order Creation
Whenever the catering online ordering form is submitted and confirmed by a customer, the staff at the catering service or restaurant will receive a notification containing the details of the order and a task is created on the centralized management dashboard that managers can then assign to a staff member to fulfil.
Once the task has been assigned, the customer will receive a message shortly before the order is completed, reminding them of the order and its delivery date.
4. Order Notifications
On the delivery date, the catering manager simply needs to mark the order task as complete, which will trigger an automated notification to the customer indicating that the order is ready for delivery.
Again, it is always good to consider adding some personalization to your automated message templates in order to make them more engaging for your customers and help increase brand loyalty. This personalization can be built into your message templates using merge tags, which will automatically pull the relevant information for each customer and their order when the messages are sent. This is why it is a good idea to collect and store as much information on your customers and their orders in the catering management system as possible.
Looking for a catering online ordering solution?
SimplyCast has used its all-in-one engagement automation platform to build an all-in-one catering management system using our form builder, contact management and automation tools, that can be used by any restaurant or catering service who regularly accepts catering orders. The solution can be modified and customized to meet the requirements of each individual business in order to provide the most seamless catering online ordering process possible.
To see how you can use SimplyCast’s catering online ordering solution, click the button below to request a one-on-one demo from our knowledgeable team!
