Restaurants are leveraging the digital shift to broaden audiences and add revenue streams.
Take, for instance, Chicago-based fast-casual Italian beef chain Buona, which launched its direct-to-consumer (D2C) nationwide shipping business in 2020. In an interview with PYMNTS, Micah Peterson, director of finance and sales for the restaurant chain’s Shop & Ship business, spoke about the opportunity that this channel has created for the restaurant.
“We had previously been doing [nationwide shipping food marketplace] Goldbelly,” Peterson said. “We had been doing business with them for a couple of years and had seen the volume and the sales continue to grow there, and we figured why not add this to our own website and manage the processing on our own to increase the income from those sales overall?”
He noted that the addition of this D2C business had grown the restaurant’s nationwide shipping business even as sales continue to come in through Goldbelly. The company also added nationwide shipping options via Amazon to reach the eCommerce giant’s sizable audience.
Notably, not all nationwide shipping channels have proven successful for the restaurant brand. In 2021, restaurant aggregator DoorDash launched its own Goldbelly competitor, Nationwide Shipping, promising to do the same, sending foods from restaurants all over the country to homes across the United States. Buona made its offerings available on the platform for a time but found that DoorDash had yet to nail the logistics of the model.
“They were just getting started and still trying to work out the kinks,” Peterson said. “Essentially, it was such a manual process, and we didn’t feel like they were ready for us to be splitting our sales with them.”
Certainly, there has been a rush on the part of eCommerce marketplaces to enter the space. In June, Uber Eats followed in DoorDash’s footsteps and announced the launch of a nationwide shipping option.
In contrast to DoorDash’s hasty entry into the space, Peterson noted that Goldbelly has the process “down to a tee,” setting restaurants on the marketplace up for success. Buona’s own site and its Amazon shop require more marketing efforts on the merchant’s part than Goldbelly does. However, the restaurant’s D2C site offers advantages over the nationwide shipping marketplace.
Peterson noted that Buona could better follow up with customers who have placed D2C orders, driving repeated orders and creating a “longer-term relationship” that can pay off more down the line.
Overall, he argued that three qualities set a restaurant up for success on nationwide shipping channels: standardizing logistical processes, nailing the packaging to ensure the food ships right, and communicating with customers.
Peterson estimated that, at peak nationwide shipping times (which include the upcoming Super Bowl for a meat-centric brand like Buona), 30-35% of orders come from returning customers, so driving retention with ongoing communication is key.
As the brand adds new restaurant locations down the line, Peterson expects to see more synergies between the eatery and its nationwide shipping business.
“As we expand our footprint here across the country with our stores, we should be seeing greater awareness and greater brand expansion,” Peterson said. “That’s really where we see the greatest engagement—when they’ve been able to have the retail product or they’ve been able to [taste] the restaurant beef [already].”
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