Twelve ways to get customers ordering direct

Having your own ordering page changes nothing on its own. Customers order the way they ordered last time, and if that was an app, it will be an app again on Friday. The work is telling them, in the places they already are, at the moment they are already thinking about food.

Here is the list, roughly in the order of how much difference each one makes.

1. Fix your Google listing first

When someone searches your name, your Google Business Profile is the first thing they see, and it can carry an ordering link. If that link points at a marketplace, you are paying a cut on customers who searched for you specifically. Point it at your own page. Ten minutes, free, and the highest-value item on this list.

2. Put a card in every bag

Every delivery, every collection order. Say where to order and why. Handwritten notes get read more than printed ones. This is the cheapest repeat exposure you have, because it only reaches people who have already bought from you.

3. Print it on the docket

If your receipt footer can carry a line of text, put your web address on it. It then goes out with every order without anyone remembering to do anything.

4. Say it on the phone

To the regular who calls every week: "You can order that on our site next time if you like, it comes straight to us." Once, politely, not as a script.

5. Make the first direct order worth making

A free side, a drink, or money off the first order placed on your own site. You are spending a slice of one order to stop paying a slice of every future one. Set it up as a named discount and let it run.

6. Put the link everywhere your name appears

Instagram bio, Facebook page button, WhatsApp business profile, the sign in the window, the menu on the wall. Not once, permanently.

7. Post the food, not the announcement

"Order direct on our website" is an announcement and people scroll past it. A photo of what came out of the kitchen tonight, with the link, is a reason. Post the second thing.

8. Use your own domain

Your restaurant's own web address is easier to say out loud, easier to remember, and looks like your business rather than someone else's platform. It also means the link you print stays yours if you ever change ordering system.

9. Ask at the counter

Collection customers are standing in front of you and already prefer collecting. They are the easiest group to move. A small sign at the till and one sentence from whoever is serving does most of the work.

10. Get your own app in front of the regulars

For a customer who orders weekly, an icon on their home screen beats remembering a web address. It is a bigger ask than a bookmark, so save it for the people who already order often, and ask when they are collecting.

11. Reply to reviews with it

Someone who took the time to leave a good review is a regular. A short thank you that mentions ordering direct next time gets seen by them and by everyone reading your reviews.

12. Keep going for longer than feels necessary

Habits take repetition to shift. Most restaurants do this properly for two weeks, see a handful of orders move, and stop. The ones who keep doing it quietly for six months are the ones who end up with a real direct channel.

What not to do

Do not delete your marketplace listing to force people over. Some of those customers are genuinely the app's, and you will lose them rather than convert them.

Do not make your own site more expensive than the app. People notice, and it teaches them that ordering direct is the worse deal.

Do not hide the phone number. Plenty of people still want to ring, and a phone order costs you no commission either.

Measuring it

Watch two things: how many orders come through your own channel each week, and what share of your total that is. Both should climb slowly and unevenly. If the first number is flat after a month of doing the things above, the problem is usually the ordering page itself rather than the promotion, so order from it on your own phone and see how far you get.

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Tekeats gives you the ordering website, the apps and your own domain, with card payments into your own account and no cut of any order. Book a demo if you want to see it with your menu on it.