[OneStepAhead]

Is ordering food online a big perk for restaurants such as take out or delivery? It seems as though ordering online would be just as easy as calling in an order.

The reason I ask is that I was considering a business idea where I could help restaurants get their businesses equipped with the neccessary tools to do online orders or text orders but I'm not sure how beneficial this really is to increasing volume.

[akula]

surveys, do surveys - to define the problem that you wanna be solving
i mean, any other answer would be speculative

[Online Super Sale]

Yep, surveys are good. I have a job at a research company, If your interested in phone surveys give me a shout. For a few hundred thousand you'll have all the answers you want.

[Aperio]

Seems to be getting more popular for pizza delivery franchises, would be curious to know if standard restaurants see the value as of yet. Agree about getting some survey stats - could definitely help to support your sales pitch (or alert you that the masses aren't quite ready for this yet).

[stand856]

If implemented and executed correctly, it could be a very good feature for restaurants, I have been involved with one, but due to major owner's unwillingness to continue on a right path (also being cheap), the project stands still.

[Gaulkin]

"for a few hundred thousand" lol.....

[hugh009]

Well several of the previous dotcom companies tried that in the beginning and it did not gather a lot of traction. However that was before we were doing so many things digitally. Might work better now. Again take others advice - ask questions and do surveys.

[pboychuk]

hmm, I was actually brainstorming an idea like this with my friend last summer. However, I was not convinced. You mean like a third party site that connects you to delivery restaraunts correct? Well, there are a few one is campusfood.com i believe and another, night owl based in boston. Campusfood.com is basically a connection to numerous restaurants with college kids as the focal market. I think the idea is stupid, but apparently they are doing well, and somehow offer "free food or money." Night owl is a little more practical, they are basically a courier, but focus on food delivery. so you can order food from mcdonalds and have it delivered, also they will do other shopping. However, this has a much larger overhead than campus food, and with gas prices as they are I didnt like the idea either. But, in a big city you can put people on bikes, also your customers are fairly concentrated.

Anyways, my 2cents

[exstatic]

This is an idea I have been toying with for a long time and maybe I have been procrastinating too long.

But this is certainly happening in Europe, there are a number of places doing it

Just-Eat.co.uk - Order pizza, indian, chinese, thai and fast food online from local menus for home delivery and takeaway. +1000 restaurants and shops to choose from in the UK
hungryhouse - all your takeaway delivery menus in 1 place (these guys actually were invested in by the guys off dragons den here in the UK)

There is also Foodler.com: Order takeout or delivery from restaurants in CA, CO, DC, FL, GA, IL, MA, MD, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, TX, and VA. in the US
and also Order home and office delivery from a wide selection of restaurants in Australia

I think the idea has a lot of potential, but also needs a lot of investment, the margins are extremely small, say $1-2 per standard order, to be appealing to both the consumer and the restaurant, do the maths and you will see the amount of deliveries/orders you need to do per hour to make decent money.

[xav1029]

there is a great market for that type of site around universities. Ynot advertising runs sites like that. I know for a fact lionmenus.com pulls in over $500k and chompmenus doesn't do bad either. Concentrate on college towns. Marketing is also pretty easy in strictly college towns like gainesville. Everyone there is always ordering out and never keeps many menus around. I'm working on something similar myself.

Just my opinion having been somewhere that it worked

[hugh009]

I agree with what people are saying about doing it on college campuses first to test your idea. Also high concentrations of rich kids that work in major metro areas like New York, LA, Atlanta, Chicago, etc. They are always looking for ways to have it delivered.

Hugh

[malahverdian]

Ordering food and fast food online has been done, how about a niche of extremely healthy meals or meals for body builders, its hard to plan my meals and get them ready for the next day when I'm so busy I cant be bothered with cooking