Online Food Delivery & Grocery Delivery Business Survival Guide in COVID-19

As people shun going to restaurants amid the increasing spread of COVID-19, ordering food and groceries online has become a new luxury that anyone can afford.

To curb the spread of the virus, many countries have implemented social distancing, imposed lockdowns in high-alert zones, and restricted the non-essential movement of public and business services.

Consequently, it pushes consumers to turn to online grocery delivery apps and online food delivery app solutions.

However, as online delivery witnessed a huge spike and orders rose by 20%, the post-crisis world has become more digital and less global.

But this ongoing crisis will turn as a magic potion to online businesses only when the F&B and grocery industries reinvent their marketing strategies, redesign product offerings, and prioritize plans that ensure safety, quality, and hygiene over others.

In this post, we will shed light on the core marketing tactics and enhanced business measures that can fortify the ability of restaurateurs and grocers service providers to surpass customers’ expectations and make their businesses not only survive but thrive in the current crisis.

Steer Down To Thrive Not Only Survive

As dine-in and supermarket retail operations fail, wondering how food and new grocery alternatives could attract a particular demographic? Ask yourself these questions and you will be close to redesigning your marketing strategies:

1. How do you invite your new users onboard on the app?
2. How do you manage and address new users?
3. How do you ensure business continuity with changing policies?

While you give it a thought, here are a few key drivers and innovations brought out to meet your financial plans and attain business stability.

Meet the Glory of Demands and Changing Consumer Behavior

Test the Synergy of Food and Grocery Delivery Vertical

Add a financial muscle by reinventing your business model. If you own a food delivery app, combine the grocery delivery vertical. If you own a grocery delivery app, meet the rising demands of food delivery by adding this another use case on your strong network of delivery partners.

A good testimony of this could be Zomato in partnership with Grofers which has strengthened its foothold in the grocery market. The food delivery unicorn has not only added another use case for ordering grocery but also leveraged the hyperlocal network where there is a sleek decline in demand for food ordering.

In this case of implementation, if you have cracks in your supply chain and order volumes in bulk; you can think of mergers with grocery delivery companies.

Create an Urban Mix of Digitalization, Modernization, and Local Reality

The situation is such that the pace of COVID-19 recovery and the patterns of consumer demand is uneven across countries. Few retailers face a huge spike in demand while others see a sharp decline. In this rugged market demand, food retailers must create a blend of digitalization and modernization, while keeping a check on local reality.

How? By watching closely the most acute or say serious demands of consumers and then working on it to ensure business continuity. Companies should also work with local suppliers, employees, delivery partners and service providers to develop a set of regulations and procedures to operate safely yet efficiently.

Now consider Uber Eats, meeting regulations, safety precautions as well as expectations simultaneously. Despite keeping in concern the consumer demands, food delivery apps like UberEats, Grubhub, Swiggy have marked an uptick in food deliveries during COVID-19.

The companies have delivered beer, wine, and alcohol- keeping in check the consumer demand. Adhered to protocols like mandatory face masks for delivery partners, proper sanitization and disinfection of vehicles and carriage, online payments through UPI, and wallet-restraining consumer safety standards.

Swiggy has worked with restaurant partners to ensure a high level of hygiene within the premises, ensured that the staff remains healthy, educated delivery partners about social distancing. Restaurants are even using containers for easier disinfection or better customer experience.

Moreover, Swiggy integrated deep learning algorithms in its food delivery app development platform to ensure that delivery partners wear masks.

Restaurants that adhere to all of these guidelines are promoted as having ‘Best Safety Standards’ on the Swiggy app.

Inform Customers With New Delivery Policies and Timings

Keep your customers up to date with the revived restaurant measures, updated delivery policies, new delivery timings, business operation hours, and new terms. Educating your customers with these changed policies will positively impact the incoming orders and invite customers with a fresh perspective.

Introduce Contactless Delivery and Zero-touch Payments

Heard about white glove delivery service? Also called zero-touch or contactless delivery this type of service encourages minimum contact between delivery executives and customers.

How to implement it?

Request your delivery partner to drop the food or grocery package by the door. Encourage users to pay online using cards, UPI, or mWallets (if you do not have a digital wallet in your food delivery app; there is no better time to get it integrated from your online food ordering app development company).

As you take action to prevent the spread of the virus, do not forget to publicize the efforts you take to practice strict food delivery hygiene.

Grocery delivery apps like Instacart, and Grofers and food delivery apps like Doordash, and Foodora have championed contactless delivery.

5. Redefine and Remodel Your Monetization Strategy

Like what you earned till now as an app aggregator was by earning a commission on each order. But given the impact of the pandemic outbreak on fast food, takeaway and quick-serve restaurants- you can remodel the monetizing strategy by offering delivery partners a monthly subscription fee. This can help them stay afloat even during these challenging times, gain profits and operate efficiently.

A good example setter for the commission-free model is Foodetective – the company asked restaurant partners to pay a monthly subscription fee of £25 instead of collecting commissions on a single order.

This strategy will welcome more new restaurant partners and give relief to the existing ones battling to survive in the crisis.

Who Will Win In This Run Of Business Survival?

• Services That Meet Customer Needs: Building your products around customers’ needs, preferences, tastes, and expectations helps brands to achieve service excellence at par. As you will know, 96% of unhappy customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back. Addressing this, it is essential to create a greater customer experience to reduce churn rate or customer attrition.
• Services Designed to Deliver a Unified Experience: Services designed to deliver a unified experience will win in the long run as opposed to a component-based experience.
• Services That Create Value with Full Business Efficiency: Services that are designed, developed and delivered with value-added propositions in conjunction with a minimum viable service (MVS) will prove to be a forerunner in enhancing business operational efficiency. As the iterative nature of MVS gives new room to improve based on customer feedback.
• Services That Foster Customer Relationships: Services that feed immersive and addictive customer experiences and encourage them to make a repetitive purchase or just come back to the application equates the definition of the well-optimized customer relationship.
• Services Flexible to Make Amends: Businesses moving at the pace of the customers, and resilient with their changing needs are more likely to achieve a 100% satisfaction rate, increase overall revenue and reduce debts.

The Take Away

Now, more than ever, restaurants and online food delivery companies with deeply submerged customer-centricity programs will be well prepared to weather any type of storm.

The need of the hour is the UX design, the brand efforts and empathy-driven products and services should be in a good intersection.