Why restaurants offer takeaway option

Over the past few decades, many restaurants have added takeaway food to their dine-in offerings. There are a number of good reasons for this, mainly driven by customer convenience, market expansion and operational efficiency. Let’s look at the main motivations:

1. Adapting to market trends

The growing popularity of food delivery platforms and mobile ordering has made food-to-go a competitive necessity. Restaurants that offered delivery to customers at the height of the COVID epidemic, or started to introduce the feature at that time, were able to survive the difficult period. Even now, restaurants are introducing takeaway features to remain relevant in a market increasingly dominated by convenience-oriented restaurants.

2. Flexibility of offering to customers

The service options – in the restaurant or to go – are a response to the rapidly changing lifestyles of today’s consumers. This flexibility is particularly attractive to those who are in a hurry or who prefer the convenience of a home-cooked meal.

3. Expanding the customer base

Offering food to go expands a restaurant’s customer base beyond the restaurant itself. It attracts customers who cannot dine in the restaurant due to time constraints, inconvenient location, high traffic or limited seating. It increases the restaurant’s market reach and brand recognition.

4. Increased revenue

Takeaway services create an additional revenue stream without the need to expand dining space or make significant investments in on-site customer service infrastructure. This allows restaurants to increase sales at peak times or cater for large orders for events and meetings.

Typically, when launching a food-to-go service, you need to invest in developing logistics as well as packaging. Eco-friendly paper packaging for food and beverages offered by Univest allows food to be delivered in convenient, branded containers, which also increases brand recognition and loyalty.

5. Reducing table load

During busy periods, takeaway restaurants reduce the pressure on available space by serving customers without occupying tables. This improves overall operations and reduces the time it takes to serve restaurant customers.