6 Tips when Transitioning your Business to Deliveries

Recently, businesses have needed to shift up their business model to adapt to the changing landscape. For many, this has meant moving to delivery-based service. Whether food, cosmetics, flowers, or something else, delivery allows businesses to reach their customers even if those clients can’t or don’t want to leave their house.

Although presenting many opportunities and having the potential to greatly increase your profits, transitioning your business to a delivery-based model does present some challenges. Here’s what you should know when transitioning your business to deliveries.

1. Make a Plan

When starting up deliveries in your business, it can be tempting to jump straight in and send out packages straight away. However, coming up with a strategy first ensures that you take the right approach and give yourself the greatest chance of success in your endeavors.

In developing a plan, start with your goals and work backwards to establish a strategy that will allow you to achieve these objectives. What are you looking to achieve through deliveries? This could be increasing your profits, expanding your customer base, or simply surviving at a time when people cannot come to you.

Next, plan how you will roll out deliveries. What systems and equipment will you need to make this work well? Can you use your existing staff to make the deliveries or will you need to contract new staff or additional service providers. As with any new plan, you should also plan an exit strategy in case things don’t work out.

2. Upgrade Your Systems

Luckily, you do not have to try to implement a whole new delivery process with your existing systems. There are a variety of tools available to businesses that make delivery more efficient and make your business more productive.

Firstly, consider upgrading your POS system. There are a number of powerful POS tools available to businesses, and some have specific functions to support delivery. If your existing system does not, it is time to upgrade to one that can flawlessly handle delivery options, online ordering, operational control, and order tracking.

3. Consider a Delivery Service Provider

If you’re delivering products, you can send these with the postal service or a courier. However, for businesses delivering food, the situation is a bit more complicated. Food needs to be rapidly delivered as soon as it is prepared in order to arrive fresh and the correct temperature.

In order to do this, you have two main options. You can either make deliveries yourself by using your own staff, or by using a dedicated food delivery service designed for food, such as Deliveroo, UberEats, Grubhub, and Menulog. It is important to weigh up the costs and benefits of each: arranging deliveries in-house involves staffing and vehicle costs, whereas third party delivery costs take a percentage of your sales. Depending on the volume of sales you have, one or the other may be more cost effective.

4. Promote your Business by Branding your Deliveries

Every business needs to promote their products and build brand awareness in order to get more customers, more sales, and therefore more profits. When you are sending your products out by delivery, this presents another opportunity to promote your business.

Branded packaging is a great way to do this – your packaging is a perfect platform to display your logo and business name to potential customers and reinforce your branding to existing customers. Put clear logo stickers on your packaging to have an impact without having to commission custom packaging. If you will be handling your own deliveries, your vehicle is also a perfect space to promote your brand and you should make sure your delivery vehicle is branded with decals or signage.

5. Maintain Food Quality

Another important consideration when arranging delivery of food is food quality. As soon as you need to package and transport your food elsewhere, many things that you need to think about to make sure that you customer receives the same quality product as you produced originally. As well as keeping hot foods warm and cold foods cool, you also have to prevent foods cross-mingling, drinks from spilling, and food losing its texture or integrity.

Make sure you have appropriate packaging to maintain temperatures as well as possible, and avoid spillage and cross-mingling. You should also ensure that timing between food production and delivery is as short as possible. In order to maintain food quality, you may even need to reassess your menu. Certain menu items may not be suitable for delivery, and will need to be swapped out for other delivery-friendly ones.

6. Remember your Customers

One of the most important things in implementing any new process for your business is to remember your customers. A shift to deliveries is no exception: your customers are core to everything you do, so you must ensure that your delivery systems work for them. Make sure you communicate clearly with your clients regarding delivery times, and effectively manage their expectations.