Online Ordering 2024 Trends: Real-Life Success Stories

How is online ordering shaping up for your operation in 2024? If you’ve been following this series of blog posts about the trends we’re seeing across the industry, you’ll be well on your way to developing a reliable revenue stream from guests who love your brand.

Throughout the series, we’ve talked about converting guests from third party to first party, consolidating your tech stack, embracing AI, personalizing engagement, and setting performance priorities. After exploring different trends and offering ways to act on them, this blog will show you how leading restaurants and convenience stores across the country are achieving success in online ordering.

Online Sales Growth and loyalty programs go hand-in-hand

Operators magnify their success when they integrate loyalty into the online ordering experience. As reported in Restaurant Dive earlier this year, loyalty is critical for building guest relationships in an environment sanitized by technology and plagued by inflationary pressures.  

Mr. Pickles, for example, doubled its online sales with a branded mobile app that’s creating an army of loyal guests who are hungry for sandwiches—and Pickle Points Rewards. The program attracts more than 2,500 new members every month and, for the first time in the California-based shop’s history, first-party online orders have grown to more than 42% of sales. 

Toastique is another concept that used a loyalty/online-ordering combo to turbocharge its growth, becoming one of the hottest QSR brands in the country. Within four months of connecting online ordering to the brand experience and integrating loyalty, the Washington, D.C.–based toast and juice bar grew its loyalty membership by 87.5%.

The operator also began using data to create personalized offers for each loyalty program member. The effort is building value among Toastique’s biggest fans, winning back lapsed customers and attracting new guests when new locations are launched.

Restaurants aren’t the only operations that benefit from a strong connection between first-party online ordering and loyalty; convenience stores are also seeing tremendous results from personalizing engagement with their best guests.

Twice Daily, for example, which features customizable hot and fresh breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and bakery offerings, launched a branded mobile app with online ordering to compete with QSR brands. And when the brand added loyalty to the mix, more first-time customers became repeat guests, overall sales grew by 225%, and the size of monthly orders increased by 55%.

Similar results were achieved by Pump N Pantry, a Pennsylvania-based convenience store that uses rewards to drive more customers inside when they stop to fill up. Helped by a points-based loyalty program with digital order-ahead capabilities, they deployed a mobile app for a faster, hassle-free customer experience. After about a year, the program had more than 6,000 members and is still growing today. Online orders quickly jumped to 20% of overall sales, and the brand was able to add flexibility by offering drive-thru and curbside pick-up options.

Rutter’s, another c-store, built a true digital guest engagement program by combining online ordering with Rutter’s Rewards, a VIP club. Providing online ordering as an exclusive benefit to VIP members, Rutter’s added a new level of convenience to its best guests.

The additional sales channel is also helping the brand reach new guests, driving penetration rates to historic highs: Today, 37% of all online ordering checks are attributable to loyalty, and Rewards members’ average checks have grown 10%.

Guest-experience tweaks improve performance

With an advanced first-party online ordering system in place, operators have greater flexibility when it comes to making performance improvements across every guest touchpoint. Here are just some of the features operators are using to get the most value out of their online ordering platforms:

Menu Customization

A sandwich concept specializing in roast beef, found that letting guests customize their sandwich orders with configurable menu modifiers was the performance enhancement they needed. “We pride ourselves on our customizable items, and Paytronix has enabled us to deliver that same level of personalization through online ordering and the mobile app at unprecedented configuration speeds,” the chain’s Brand Manager says. The brand has seen a 110% increase with online ordering. 

Menu Simplification

While giving more choices to guests can help a brand stand out and appeal to a wider audience, giving fewer choices to mobile guests was the right move for National Coney Island. The operator increased mobile orders by highlighting the most popular items and adding a $5 coupon. The new menu was the clear winner in randomized testing, and the chain saw an ROI of 27x the cost of the reward. 

Order Ahead

Another performance enhancer is the ability to let guests order ahead and set their preferred pick-up times. For Rutter’s, this feature alone has generated a 25% increase in visits among loyalty members. 

AI-Enabled Personalization

For Uno Pizzeria & Grill, a full-service restaurant specializing in Chicago-style deep dish and craft beers, embracing AI tools was the ticket for taking online ordering to the next level. With intelligent upsell, for example, the operator uses guest behavior data to create personalized campaigns that resonate: Guests are two times more likely to accept the AI’s recommendations, and Uno’s lifted average monthly orders by $125. 

AI-Empowered Automated Guest Surveys Response

With automated guest surveys, Uno’s uses a large language model to analyze customer feedback after an online order and issue a personalized response with an appropriate coupon to rectify any poor experiences. These automatic responses are driving orders by 29%, proving that guests can be forgiving when operators make things right. 

Automated guest surveys have also been helping The Filling Company follow up with dissatisfied customers in a matter of seconds. The auto-write tool equips store managers with the right responses and offers to win customers back. According to CEO John Rubino, “customers are responding to [these] emails, thanking us for addressing any mishaps.”

Advanced, Focused Technology has internal benefits, too

Scalable, simplified technology is great for guests, but its ability to streamline workflows is also beneficial for operators and staff.

Time and cost savings

A growing sandwich brand replaced a fragmented tech stack to create a unified digital experience for guests and allow for future growth. They were surprised to find they could save significant time and money, as well. Now the brand can launch personalized campaigns, update its mobile app, configure online ordering, and optimize performance on a single platform. 

Menu management

Toastique is saving three hours on every adjustment to its mobile app’s menu, aesthetics, and functions. By centralizing menu management across locations through a single online ordering platform, each change syncs everywhere. 

Marketplace Management

The Filling Company, which sells freshly prepared food and handcrafted espresso drinks at three locations in Virginia, is also benefitting from streamlined menu management across first- and third-party channels. 

An exhaustive menu was complicating operations. Staff had to manually copy every third-party order into the POS. Changing prices or item availability required going to each vendor’s backend. And different third-party receipts were confusing some staff members. 

The Filling Company is operating more efficiently, with receipts the same across all third parties and orders flowing seamlessly into the POS. Menu syncing enables the brand to mark up prices to offset third-party fees and instantly change inventory to reflect out-of-stocks. 

make first-party online ordering a top priority for 2024

Many operators, especially regional chains, have small marketing teams with ambitious goals. The Paytronix Digital Guest Engagement platform helps these teams achieve their goals by offering features guests love, and by delivering instant insights from thousands of data points that can be used to strengthen guest relationships.

“Paytronix has provided a strong guest engagement strategy that’s enabled us to stay ahead of a constantly evolving industry,” says Chris Hartman, VP of Fuels, Advertising and Development at Rutter’s. “We’re determined to be the best in every category, meeting every customer’s needs with convenience and unparalleled value.”

To learn how Paytronix can make first-party online ordering work harder for your restaurant or convenience store, schedule a demo today.