How to protect my restaurant margins from tech companies

Not many people think about technology in the restaurant business past food delivery apps, but it is so much more than that. Ever since the pandemic, restaurants, which are predominantly low-tech, became increasingly more reliant on technology. Forced to adapt to a customer-base that is more comfortable eating at home, restaurants needed to be more accessible there through the little screens.

The proliferation of tech in the restaurant business is a good thing, but the business models based on sales makes it hard to not call it predatory. It is great to be able to generate sales through listing in the various marketplaces, but they all come at a price. They are also competing against your own restaurant's direct ordering.

Control your order links

For example, a restaurant listing on Google includes links being added by third parties on your behalf without your consent. Instead of providing the business owner with tools to add/remove links at will, Google advises businesses to contact the third party providers and ask them to remove it.

It's not only Google though. You also have to look at your Yelp listing, where they will automatically create an order link that may or may not be what you want.

Chase provides to make changes

Of course this will lead you to a situation where customer service reps will initially respond with telling you that they have nothing to do with your listing. And you have to go back and forth with them to explain why they are the ones who have control.

As a restaurant owner, you are constantly fighting off delivery apps who are doing everything they can to bring customers to their marketplace at your own expense. You will find yourself locked into a mindless battle with reps who don't know enough about the requests you will be making to protect your restaurant from sending customers away from you to a marketplace.

We offer a comprehensive restaurant tech stack management solution, covering everything from communications to menus. We also perform audits of your operation and give you recommendations you can implement yourself. Our goal is to optimize your operations without sacrificing the bottom-line to tech companies.