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Food delivery aggregators: a guide for merchants
One customer always orders directly from your website. Another exclusively uses Uber Eats. And a third may want to take advantage of a limited-time deal on DoorDash for their next order. You want to appeal to all these customers, but managing orders from so many different sources can be overwhelming.
The solution: a food delivery aggregator.
What is a food delivery aggregator?
A food delivery aggregator, also sometimes called a restaurant aggregator or third-party delivery aggregator, is a restaurant technology tool that brings online orders from multiple sources into one centralized product to make them easier to manage.
Some people use the term “food delivery aggregator” to refer to third-party delivery platforms like Uber Eats, which let customers find and order from multiple restaurants in one app. Food delivery aggregators are a separate, but related, product category. In this post, we’ll be using the definition above for food delivery aggregators to avoid confusion.
Why use a food delivery aggregator
In TouchBistro’s 2024 State of Restaurants Report, 95% of restaurants said they use online ordering platforms and that, on average, they account for around a quarter of the restaurant’s revenue. Having a presence on multiple online ordering channels increasingly feels like a business necessity; the question is no longer whether to do so but how to make an omnichannel approach work well for your business.
Food delivery aggregators help in 4 main ways:
Improve operational efficiency
TouchBistro’s report found that restaurants use an average of 3 platforms apiece. If your employees are tracking all those orders through separate systems or devices, keeping up with everything can get confusing.
A restaurant aggregator streamlines the process of receiving and tracking the status of each online order that comes in, seamlessly bringing them into your existing tech products and workflow. Your team won’t have to do any extra work to monitor each channel, manually log orders, or switch between tablets. Every order will automatically show up in the same system, in the order in which it was placed.
Get orders out faster without losing accuracy
In a 2022 survey from Deliverect, 84% of respondents said the speed at which an order will arrive is an important factor when considering food delivery. Getting orders prepped and out quickly matters to the customer experience and can help your kitchen avoid a backup during busy times. But if your staff feels rushed and your processes aren’t efficient, trying to move fast could lead to errors.
By improving efficiency, a food delivery aggregator can help improve the speed of preparing orders, too. Plus, it helps ensure that all orders enter your queue in the right sequence, minimizing the likelihood of oversight by your staff. And because a delivery aggregator can automatically bring exact order details into the main technology products your staff uses, there’s less room for human error. An overwhelmed staff member may miss a substitution or side when logging an order, but tech generally won’t.
Expand visibility and reach
The more online platforms you have a presence on, the more avenues potential customers have to find you. When new customers discover your restaurant on a delivery app, it can earn you more sales. Restaurants in TouchBistro’s survey reported an average 17% increase in sales volume after adding online ordering options.
By making it easier for you to efficiently process orders that come from multiple sources, an online ordering aggregator can enable you to join more third-party apps to further expand your reach without overextending yourself.
Access additional features and services
Beyond their main function of aggregating online orders from multiple sources, many products in the delivery aggregator category offer additional features and integrations. Investing in a food delivery aggregator can potentially help you tap into functionality for:
- Online ordering: Many restaurant aggregators provide e-commerce features so you can add online ordering functionality to your own website. That lets you capture online sales through your first-party channels, along with any third-party companies you partner with. Some also include features to simplify the checkout process and offer popular payment options, which can help boost conversion rates.
- Delivery: You don’t have to hire your own drivers to provide customers with speedy food delivery anymore. Delivery aggregators help you use third-party delivery companies that take care of that part for you.
- Menu management: Restaurant aggregators make it easy to change your menu all at once across channels. Some can also connect to your POS (point-of-sale) and inventory management products to help track when you run out of something. When that happens, they also make it easy to delete a menu item across all platforms at the same time so customers can’t place orders for items they can’t have.
- Marketing: Third-party delivery aggregators often include marketing tools and features to help you increase sales. That can include promoting sales, marketing limited-time offers, and automating upsells to increase order size.
- Enhanced restaurant analytics: Connecting multiple tech products helps you gain a more centralized view of your analytics. Online ordering aggregators automatically track data for your online orders across all channels, making it easier for you to identify meaningful trends. You can gain insights into things like your most popular menu items, which items net the most profits, and how often orders go out without errors.
Where this fits in your restaurant tech stack
The restaurant technology landscape is vast. Identifying which products are actually worth the investment for your restaurant can be overwhelming. And figuring out how to make the products you choose work well together is its own challenge.
Food delivery aggregators are a good addition to many restaurant technology stacks because they specifically address those problems. By connecting multiple tech products, delivery aggregators help ensure that they work seamlessly and you can get the most out of all of them.
Every third-party delivery aggregator has a list of products it integrates with, with some variety in the product categories. Most include integrations for at least 3 main product types:
- Third-party delivery platforms: The main purpose of third-party delivery aggregators is to bring orders from all the third-party delivery platforms you use into one place. Most restaurant aggregators partner with all the most popular third-party delivery platforms, including (but not limited to) Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub.
- POS systems: Integration with your POS is crucial for bringing online orders into the same system where you manage on-site orders. That helps your staff manage them all efficiently and gives you access to a comprehensive, centralized source of data. Online ordering aggregators work with many of the top POS systems in the restaurant market, such as Clover, Square, and Toast.
- Kitchen display systems (KDS): KDS products help connect the front of house (FOH) to the back of house (BOH) and quickly communicate accurate details for every order to the kitchen staff. Delivery aggregators can help make sure information for every online order goes into the KDS right away to help kitchen operations run smoothly. Some delivery aggregator companies also offer a KDS as a feature or add-on, as do some POS vendors, so this might not be a standalone product in your tech stack.
Uber Eats integrates with top food delivery aggregators to help you expand ordering and delivery capabilities
Uber Eats partners with many popular delivery aggregators to ensure that restaurants can easily offer fast, reliable delivery that fits seamlessly into your existing operations. You can learn more about our third-party delivery aggregator partners here.
Uber Eats also integrates with many major POS systems—you don’t have to be a tech expert to add Uber’s delivery options to your offerings. And we provide restaurants with 2 easy ways to partner with us:
- The Uber Eats marketplace: Expand your reach to the millions of customers who regularly use the Uber Eats app.
- Uber Direct: Offer white-label delivery options through your first-party channels, like your website and app, that are fulfilled by the Uber delivery network.
Both choices offer easy integration with delivery aggregators and POS systems, so getting started is a breeze. Provide fast delivery options customers love without any extra tech hassles. Get started today.
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