Third-party food ordering and table booking services excel at attracting new guests and increasing brand awareness through strong consumer networks. These services can be valuable marketing tools, but if used as the only channel, they own the guest relationship and all the data that accompanies it. Relying solely on third-party sites comes at a steep cost — not only to your bottom line! It hinders your ability to establish meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your guests and makes it harder to turn new faces into regulars.
When a guest makes a reservation or orders food through one of your owned channels — including your website, social media, or operations team — that’s direct business and comes at no cost to you. Free business, free data, and endless possibilities.
In autumn 2020, I created a series of one-hour, hands-on, virtual workshops for restaurateurs, which cut through all the noise and focused on the "good bits": A quick & dirty guide on how to drive direct bookings & orders with the tools you’ve already got - your website and/or your social media. I ran six sold-out sessions in October and November 2020 and more in 2021.
After the first two series of "Driving Direct Orders", I decided to create an eBook, which contains all "Driving Direct Orders" materials, questions & answers, and bonus resources. Cunningly enough, the DDO Toolbox also contains a 50% discount code for a "Driving Direct Orders" 60 minutes 1-2-1 session.
The DDO Toolbox contains sections on:
Why direct? The advantages of driving direct orders.
What do I need to get started? Get ready to claw back revenue from third-party platforms in 5 easy steps!
Data! How to gather impactful data from your social media followers, website visitors, and customers (whether direct, dine-in, or via third-party platforms) and then turn it into direct revenue.
Tools! What’s the deal with cookies, Facebook & Instagram pixels, Twitter tags, and other social & digital “tracking tools”? They only take minutes to set up and can make you real money!
Traffic! It’s nice to have ChatFood, LimeTray, or other direct-ordering systems, but how do you make sure your customers use them? Hint: It often starts with your customers knowing that they exist!
This is how it’s done: A hands-on, illustrated, best practice case study. See how spending just a little time and money on driving direct orders can pay off handsomely and how you can go from 0% to 20% - 30% direct orders within weeks. Clear, straightforward info - what you need to do, what you need to spend, and what you can expect. Budgets, timelines, activities.
Download The Toolbox and you'll also get a carefully curated, regularly updated, and comprehensive selection of links to useful, best-practise, resources, platforms, software, and widgets.
What readers say:
“Extremely useful insights!” | “Full of things we should all know & do, yet always seem to overlook.” | “Great value, easy to understand & implement.” | “Worth much more than the price of a cup of coffee!” | "Indefinitely better value than dinner with Donald Trump!"
Why me?
I’m a Dubai hospitality veteran. I’m also a hotelier. I fought the same battles you’re fighting now 10 years ago and I won. I know what it takes to drive direct business and, often, it’s not even very much. A few small changes can make a big difference!
I work with restaurants, hotels, and destinations in the United Arab Emirates and beyond. Most of my clients are family-owned & operated businesses, startups, or SMEs. I am interested in many things and understand an eclectic mix of business, science, and art. I know people and what makes them tick, but I also know how to make businesses work and extract the best profits for their stakeholders. Above all, I’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and lived to tell the tale. Oh, and I’m also a rather entertaining presenter and speaker. I’m fiercely independent and I’m not affiliated with any company, product, or service.
Connect with me!