Independent Restaurants Turn to Google to Drive Digital Sales

With online ordering transforming the restaurant industry, independents are struggling to catch up with the digital transformations many major brands have undergone. Consequently, tech providers are looking to offer tools to help them compete — and offer consumers the frictionless convenience they have come to expect.

For instance, order integration tech company ItsaCheckmate announced last month the launch of an integration for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to power direct ordering through Google Search and Maps.

“Obviously, a lot of restaurants are being searched for on Google, and [we enable] the customers who are searching for those restaurants to order directly on Google,” ItsaCheckmate Founder and CEO Vishal Agarwal told PYMNTS in an interview. “It’s an extremely effective way for restaurants to get direct orders from the customers who are searching for them.”

The company does not charge an extra fee for the integration, making the option accessible for smaller restaurants that do not have the financial resources to invest in costly ordering channels.

For context, most restaurant orders are still placed in person, but digital ordering is on the rise. Research from PYMNTS’ study “The 2022 Restaurant Digital Divide: Food Aggregators Find Their Footing in Q2” found that 10% of orders are placed online through the restaurant’s app or website. Plus, only 3% are placed on aggregators. On the other hand, 78% are placed in person.

Read more: Aggregators Account for Only 2.5% of Restaurant Orders

Although digital channels may account for only a small share of sales, they can be the highest-value purchases. The study found that millennials and bridge millennials, who tend to be the most likely to order online, spend significantly more on digital orders than in-person ones.

But digital channels tend to favor larger restaurants that can afford leading-edge tech stacks.

“There’s a lot of talk in the restaurant industry [from] tech startups and established tech companies [that] we are here to help the restaurants,” Agarwal said, adding many of these companies fail to live up to this promise for independents, which tend to need additional support in implementing new digital features.

Indeed, small restaurants lag behind larger brands when it comes to adopting the tech features necessary to be able compete across digital channels. For instance, research from the June edition of the Digital Divide study, “The Digital Divide: Technology, Customer Service and Innovation in the Restaurant Industry,” which drew from a PYMNTS survey of nearly 2,400 United States adults who regularly purchase food from restaurants, found that 56% of chains offer mobile order-ahead, compared with only 31% of independents.

See more: How the Metaverse Is Shaping the Consumer Restaurant Experience

Consumers are also growing increasingly accustomed to more frictionless purchasing channels such as ordering via SMS, smart voice assistant and more. As independents become more digitally accessible, they can draw in additional sales, but they must become increasingly deliberate about keeping all parts of the business coordinated, which creates an opportunity for tech providers.

“If [the consumer is] more comfortable texting an order or telling Amazon Alexa to get me my pizza, that’s great [for them], but I think the problem comes with the restaurant operators,” Agarwal said. “How do they manage so many different channels? … I think that’s going to be the next big evolution of these ordering platforms.”