Restaurant Tech Talk: Effective Websites And The Power Of Delivery (Ep 160)
I had fun chatting with Adam Garfield, VP of Restaurants at Wix. Wix is best known for easy to build websites so for sure we talked about that. But I also probed Adam on what's new with effective restaurant websites and it's amazing where things have come. I date myself in the episode when I talk about building websites with code by hand back 20+ years ago, but so much is different these days. We shared website tips and dug into Wix's new partner program called DoorDash Drive which lets restaurants plug their delivery right into the DoorDash network of drivers for a FLAT FEE, something I found very interesting, and I think operators will as well. Lots of good stuff. Check it out!
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Restaurant Tech Talk: Effective Websites And The Power Of Delivery
We've got a great restaurant tech episode for you with Adam Garfield, the VP of Wix Restaurants. Adam, welcome. Thanks for joining me.
Jaime, thanks so much for having me.
Overview Of Restaurant Websites Today And Wix's Role
This will date me because I'm older than you. I built websites for restaurants back in 1997. Straight HTML, boring, bold headers, and stuff like that. Just crazy. It's come a long way since then. Let's just talk. We're going to do a lot of stuff, but overview, where are restaurant websites? What have you got?
I think a lot of people know Wix for being the easy-to-use website builder. We have over 220 million users on Wix. For the restaurant industry, Wix is one of the largest providers and homes for restaurants online. That starts with creating a site, but we're much more transaction-focused as well. It's not just about creating a beautiful website for restaurants. That's obviously piece one.
As important as that piece is, can we empower that business to be successful, drive revenue, and transact? I think that historically, it has been a not-as-well-known piece of Wix Restaurants' business, but we offer a lot of tools to restaurants, from online ordering to delivery integration, to AI menu support, great menus, and all kinds of tools for restaurants to succeed in a modern 2022 environment.
I want to talk about the delivery stuff later. I want to talk about online ordering because it's exploded in the past few years. Everybody has to do it. Going back to where I started, when we did websites, it was literally you taking the menu and you just slapped it up, and it was a brochure. It was so basic. I still see restaurants that do that, and I'm like, you're missing so many opportunities when you do that. A restaurant website really should convey the brand. It should get reservations. It should sell for you. That's how I think about it.
I think there are so many opportunities to do that. Maybe before, it used to cost $100,000 to make a website and then $50,000, but it's so reasonable. Even with platforms like yours, it's very reasonable to do all the stuff you need to do, especially for independents and so forth. Glad to have you on and talk about this stuff. People, a lot of times, look at the menu; that's where they go first to see where they want to go or if they're looking for reservations. Do you find those two areas to be very popular?
Yeah. I think number one is that people these days are very, even the end users, very transaction-focused. I know myself as someone who's ordering delivery a fair amount, but my cooking skills are still getting up to par. The first thing I'm looking for is the "Order Now" button. Also, a very image-rich experience because I want to know what the food's going to look like. People eat with their eyes. That's been said for decades and decades.
You want to have a beautiful experience, but you also want to make it really easy and simple for folks to navigate to where they're going to spend with you and transact with you. I think one of the cool things about Wix, just to go back to your building of websites back in the day, is that, for the SMB restaurant owner that's out there, oftentimes the owner is the coffee maker or the pizza maker. It's an SMB restaurant.
For folks in this industry, we know how difficult and challenging it can be for owners, how little time they have, and how many folks are approaching them. For Wix, we actually even have a tool called the ADI, which uses artificial intelligence to build a website for you in a matter of seconds. Jaime, you can go on there and say, "I run an Italian restaurant," and Wix will automatically build you an Italian restaurant website complete with imagery and copy content that an Italian restaurant would use, which you can then update and customize for your specific restaurant.
That's a really cool function that we have for folks who just want to get online. They want to make an easy website, and they want to do it without paying an agency or spending a lot of time or money or anything like that. On the other end of the spectrum, we have complex tools for larger businesses and enterprises where they can build a complete customizable solution.
For example, the Wix.com website is built on Wix. This is one of the world's largest websites, most visited websites, supports millions and millions of users, but it is built on top of the Wix infrastructure. The key is how we support restaurants of all sizes. Can we support the mom-and-pop business? Can we also support an enterprise customer? Can we do that with a really nice-looking website that also transacts?
Yeah, I like to have options. Some people are more tech-savvy than others and can jump in. That idea that you talked about, if you were Italian and you hit that button, and maybe it's 80% done, you’re plugging in your address, your phone, and so forth. If you want to, you can publish it and be ready to go. There's another guy who just has a vision, wants to customize a lot of stuff, and it sounds like they can get into it.
Exactly. The other thing that's really changed a lot since you were building websites is that it's a very digital-first mindset, I think, for a lot of folks out there. The older model was finding a space to lease or own, to put my restaurant in, come up with a menu, and then find my point of sale. The last step maybe was like, it'd be nice to spin up a website. I think there's a big digital-first mentality. It's more important than ever to understand how am I found online? It’s also more than just my website, but it's integrations with things like Google My Business that Wix offers so that when people are Googling your Italian restaurant, as the example, the right things come up for you, that people, again, can find your menu very easily, order from you easily, and things like that.
Today, there's a strong digital-first mentality, making it more important than ever to understand how you'll be found online.
Where we live, we have default places you go, your neighborhood, and so forth. I was traveling on the weekend. My daughter plays softball, we're in a new city, and the team wants to go out to eat. What do you do? You're hot and sweaty, and you pull out your phone, go to Google, and see restaurants. That is how a lot of people find where to go.
Importance Of SEO And Mobile-Friendly Websites
We happened to have worked out great this week and found two neat places and so forth. It can go wrong, or I could land on your site, and you're doing a real bad job right away. What are some of those best practices on the mobile-friendly website to make sure it's easy to find or the address comes up? You already hit it earlier when you say, "order now," like take an action. What are some other things you see?
I think one is you want to pay attention to SEO. I think, in general, you're searching for this restaurant in this case, and you don't know it. I think, as the restaurant owner yourself, it's very important that your listing comes up as the first listing before other marketplace listings of your business that might not benefit you as much.
I think paying attention to SEO is super important so that you can get your business listed at the top of any search results. Having a very straightforward and clean approach to your website. I think in 2022, there might be times when I want to read a complete history of this founding, but I think people want to have a very clean, pure site that's image-rich and image-focused and that they can then navigate easily and transact with easily.
If you look at the big players that are out there within enterprise and the folks that do tech really well in the market, you'll see that it's not just one "order now" button that exists on these sites. There are calls to action in multiple spots throughout their site. I guarantee if you went onto Domino's website, for instance, you could find more than five different places where they're going to direct you and steer you into transacting with their business.
This just goes back to how humans are very path-of-least-resistance focused. The more that you can steer customers into doing what they already want to do, which is transacting with you, the better. That should be more than just one simple header that says order, it should pop up in several places across your site, steering them into the actions that you want them to take.
I could see as you were talking there, I'm picturing there's a first call to action, but then there's the memory, there's a special, maybe then there's an event, maybe there, if you're a music place, there's a music thing. Things that really might gravitate to one person or another are very important. Let's go to online ordering.
Online Ordering, First-Party Ordering, And Delivery Integration
Maybe that'll transition into delivery. COVID is still an issue. We both happen to be in Florida, which thankfully, there has never been any COVID in Florida. That's been the good news. I'm just kidding, of course, but our restrictions have been different than in some other states. Restaurants have had to shut down. They've had to learn how to do delivery. They've had to learn how to do online ordering. They do it well. Do you believe that? I don't think that's going to go away. That's just my opinion. I think everybody learned from that. Customers get used to it. We do it quite a bit. It sounds like you do as well. What do you see with online ordering being successful? What tips can you share?
Yeah, I think to the COVID point, this has just been an acceleration of maybe a three-year traction all within one year. Folks are seeing and understanding the importance of online ordering and native mobile ordering. I think at a high level, we've preached and preached about the importance of first-party ordering. I think it's essential for every restaurant to have its own direct channel between itself and its customers. That's so they can transact directly. That's so they can better understand who their customers are.
First-party ordering is very important. It's essential for every restaurant to have its own direct channel that connects them with their customers.
That's so they can better market to their customers to drive frequency. Get those customers to come back more often and also spend more when they do. Those are the focuses within the first-party ordering channel. You can increase and enhance that with other tools, whether loyalty and rewards tied to that, notifications, promotions, and specials. We've seen people have a strong love and affection for SMB restaurants, especially during COVID. I think, more than ever, they understand the importance of ordering directly from restaurants.
Wix really wants to be the home that supports restaurants in doing that. The same place where I'm spinning up my website is also my home for transacting. It's also where I can have my online ordering. It's also where I can have my branded app run through. It's also where I can have a number of these tools that can support me as a small business owner and help run a more profitable restaurant.
Everybody knows this. I'll just clarify. The first party is like they're going right to your website, hitting a button, and staying in your infrastructure. You're capturing the data and you have that information. That's so much more powerful than having an order come in through a platform where you may or may not get more of any information. Obviously, you're sharing revenue and commissions and things of that nature. We preach it all the time. Own the list, control the database. It's so much more powerful. Layer on a little bit more.
I don't think that it's a mutually exclusive experience. I don't think there's a world where you only have first-party ordering or only have third-party ordering. I don't think either of those is the pure answer because it's important. Both serve a function. I think it's important that you layer them together to complement each other. Third-party delivery is very important, and marketplaces are very important for your business to be discovered by new customers.
Folks who don't know about Jaime's Italian restaurant, maybe, aren't visiting your website directly or finding it via search. They're going onto a marketplace where they can then discover it and order from you. It really behooves you as a restaurant to see if you can move your customer from ordering through this marketplace to ordering directly.
Marketplaces are very important homes for discovery and for acquiring new customers for your restaurant. It's important that after that discovery aspect, you move them to be a direct customer of yours. That's where first-party ordering comes in.
They can build a stronger relationship with your brand. They can get loyalty and rewards. They can get promotions. You, as a restaurant, can better understand. Adam, you know, doesn’t like cheese pizza. He always orders pepperoni or maybe I don't even like pizzas. I order calzones. You have no way to know who I am as a customer if I'm only ordering through third-party delivery.
You don't know if it's my first time ordering with you, my hundredth time ordering from you, what I like to eat, or when I like to eat. The way you learn those things is through having your own online ordering and your own first-party channel where you can better serve your customers and better understand who they are.
We're in agreement there. Both work together. Part of the impetus for talking here is you guys are coming up with a new announcement very soon. This week, I believe it talks about a partnership with the DoorDash folks, DoorDash Drive, and it sounds like that's more of an integration that gets away from the fear of sharing giant commissions and so forth. You're going to explain it better. I'll let you take it.
We're super excited at Wix to partner with DoorDash to offer a commission-free delivery experience for our Wix users using DoorDash Drive. The way that works is any Wix user that uses the Wix online ordering can offer delivery to their entire user base and support that logistically through DoorDash. The first pain point for our users is often a high commission on third-party delivery. Probably the second pain point is labor.
Those are the two. If you're running a restaurant, right away, I think most restaurants out there will say high commissions and a labor shortage are the two biggest pain points. At Wix, we want to offer commission-free delivery to users. They are actually going to be paying a flat rate for delivery, no matter how large the basket is. Two, it uses the delivery network that DoorDash offers. They don't have to hire their own delivery drivers.
If you're running a restaurant today, high commissions and a labor shortage are the two biggest pain points.
They don't have to manage their own fleet or anything of that nature. They leave that work up to the fleet of drivers from DoorDash and can outsource the logistics part to DoorDash. As an end user, I'm ordering as I normally would right from Jaime's Italian restaurant. All that I’m seeing is that my order from Jaime's is being delivered by DoorDash. I can even track where that is on a map and see where that driver is.
All the great things that people love about ordering through marketplaces in terms of transparency around their order status, they're still going to get that as an end user. The added benefit for restaurants here is it's commission-free, and they can choose to subsidize a portion of that delivery fee for themselves. Really, it's a new model for them, a delivery-as-a-service model to help them be more profitable when it comes down to it.
The thing that I find appealing for a lot of reasons, and restaurant owners, you already hit on it. Managing a fleet, delivery drivers, and everything that goes along with that, a lot of restaurants don't want to touch it. They want pickup. They want people to be able to get delivery, but actually doing it is very challenging for a lot of folks. You have these things that didn't exist. Maybe I'm wrong, but certainly, there was a point in history where there wasn't a network of drivers ready to go.
This gig economy has changed. There's this infrastructure ready to go, more sophisticated than the normal operators could obviously build themselves. Plug it into your website, drivers are ready, food's ready, and do your job producing the food. I see the benefit right away. How are you going to market it? How does it share? Is it going to click right in? What's coming down the pike?
Yeah. As a user on Wix, it'll be right in your dashboard when you set up your pickup and delivery settings. Wix actually also offers curbside pickup. We offer order and pay at the table. There are a number of fulfillment codes that we actually support that folks might not know.
When it comes to delivery, restaurant owners can choose. Maybe there's a portion that they still want to offer delivery for, and they want to complement that with the delivery integration that we offer through DoorDash. They can set that up right from our dashboard where they want to cover if they want to cover anything. If not, they let DoorDash do the rest of the work.
They can set up what portion of the delivery fee, if any, they want to subsidize for their user. Really, it's part of their setup, very straightforward in our online ordering wizard, and they're ready to go. We don't have to send them to any other laborious site or anything like that. The beauty is it's all within Wix. The website that they're already using, the online ordering that they're already using, is just one more tool in that toolkit.
My guess is that it's going to have a pretty good uptake and a lot of interest. One last section on restaurant websites in general, and then we'll start to wrap up. We talked about getting people's information, list building, and marketing. You want to control that data. Maybe you want to do a Tuesday promo, Thursday promo, whatever. What do you guys do on the marketing side? How do you help folks there?
We have a whole suite of tools called Ascend within Wix. That helps restaurants do everything from having a CRM. Step one is I want to know all my customer information and have a database ready for me that I can easily manage. From all that CRM information, we then want to take action from a marketing standpoint with those customers. I can set up automated campaigns for that.
Maybe if Jaime hasn't come to my restaurant in 30 days, I want him to get this message or this promotion. We have an entire automated marketing component to our Ascend tool. Any restaurant can not only have their CRM but also automated email campaigns for that. They can also run promotions and specials that target their users. Maybe they want to drive business during slow times. They can identify and do that as well.
They can also send out notifications whenever they want to these users. It's really about creating strong messaging and promotions. Wix also acquired a loyalty and rewards partner. We offer first-party loyalty and rewards as part of this. Again, the more tools and incentives that restaurants can give their customers for ordering direct, the more likely they are to do so.
You can set up not just a site on Wix; you can also have a branded app on Wix for that. It can have online ordering, loyalty and rewards, display your menu, and be connected to automated marketing campaigns, a full CRM, promotions, specials, and loyalty and rewards. That's the starting point for what we're looking to do here within Wix Restaurants. I think it's a very strong offering for restaurants of all sizes. I think in the future, it's only going to continue to get stronger.
I'm going to plug my 1997 website business here. I think we strongly compete with what you offer. If folks go back in time, choose us. Far it's come. It's exciting to be in that space where restaurants can do everything from one portal. There's still some other stuff to do, but you used to have to piece together this and email that, like ten different pieces. I appreciate restaurants being busy and being able to do a lot of stuff, maybe not every single thing they want to do, but a lot of stuff in one place. Really cool what you guys have going on. Go ahead and tell folks where to go, how to go, anything special, etc., social channels, website, what you got.
Wix.com, very simple and easy. Right on there, you'll see the hub for restaurants that you can dive into and sign up, creating an account in a matter of seconds. You can then, like we've talked about, launch your site in a matter of seconds. On socials, you can follow us on Wix. We've released tutorials and videos on YouTube as well. Feel free to follow us across all those social channels, but most importantly, Wix.com is where you can sign up and get started.
Super easy.
Wix.com, easy to find. I appreciate you. A lot of good stuff there. That was Adam Garfield of Wix. Make sure you check them out at Wix.com for all the restaurant stuff they have going on. For more great restaurant marketing, operations, service, and tech tips, stay tuned to us here at RunningRestaurants.com. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Adam.
Awesome. Thanks, Jaime.
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