When Taylor Gourmet first got started eight years ago in the greater Washington, D.C. area, the better-hoagie concept used in-house drivers for delivery.
But as the now 11-unit chain’s premium sandwiches and salads grew in popularity, delivery quickly became a pain point, said Casey Patten, Taylor Gourmet’s co-founder and CEO.
“We just couldn’t staff enough drivers, and we couldn’t keep pace,” he said.
The chain shifted to using the Dispatch service by Olo, the company that developed Taylor Gourmet’s mobile and online ordering system.
Olo is known as a digital ordering provider, but last year the New York-based firm launched Dispatch, a service that allows restaurant chains to integrate a delivery option into their mobile apps or websites. Guests place their order, pay and tap “delivery,” and the order goes into the restaurant point-of-sale system and to the kitchen, just like any in-restaurant order.
For Taylor Gourmet, it was a solution to the chain’s delivery bandwidth issue.
“Dispatch allows us to touch neighborhoods where we used to not be able to penetrate,” said Patten.
For Dispatch, Olo has partnered with various delivery service providers around the country, including Postmates, Uber, DeliverLogic and Favor, to move food from restaurant to guest.
Guests pay a delivery fee, which varies, depending on the third-party partner serving as courier. And restaurants pay a 50-cent transaction fee per order.
Restaurants can receive competing bids for each delivery, allowing them to pick the best, whether it’s the fastest or least expensive.
Taylor Gourmet in December became one of the first chains to test the Dispatch system. It’s now available at all of the chain’s units, and Taylor Gourmet no longer uses in-house drivers. In addition, each restaurant has been able to expand its parameters for delivery.
Guests can track their order live, from courier traveling to the restaurant and picking it up, to arrival at their door.
Depending on the neighborhood, Taylor Gourmet’s delivery sales have increased from 62 percent to 297 percent in some areas, Patten noted. The chain’s average ticket has also increased 19 percent using Dispatch.
Patten said he likes that Taylor Gourmet is able to control branding of the service, and gets the direct benefit of all data collected through digital orders. Delivery orders are also integrated into the chain’s loyalty program, which is hosted by LevelUp.
One challenge was re-educating guests so they order delivery through the app or website, rather than calling restaurants.
“People were used to calling the store to put in delivery orders, versus going online. But once they got comfortable with the process, complaints diminished 100 percent,” he said.
Taylor Gourmet did a little marketing to incentivize guests to go digital by offering a $3 coupon applied to their first order through the system. Patten said that offer had a 16-percent redemption rate, indicating it got guests’ attention.
Patten said it’s pretty revolutionary to remember the first restaurant in 2008 using a cash register that only kept track of orders on receipt paper.
“We’d write down delivery orders on sticky notes and bring them to the kitchen, then send them with the delivery driver. That was version one,” he said.
Contact Lisa Jennings at [email protected]
Follow her on Twitter: @livetodineout
