White Label Delivery – the 10 benefits all UK restaurants need to know

In the world of QSRs and fast casual dining, consumers want not just delicious, tasty food, but convenience. That’s why the demand for home delivery continues to grow – with the online food delivery market in the UK expected to reach £38 billion in 2024. That growth is projected to continue at 8.49% per annum, meaning that by 2028 Brits could be spending a massive £55.5 billion on getting their favourite meal delivered to their door.

It’s no wonder that QSRs and fast casual restaurants want to be part of the trend, and offer a delivery service. But many of them are finding it increasingly hard to do so without either making a big dent in their profits, having the headache of managing drivers, or relinquishing access to their customers. That’s because, until now, there have been only two ways of managing a delivery service – delivery partners such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat, or Do-it-Yourself in-house delivery. Both options have their benefits and their downsides:

Delivery partners

• Provide a simple to use service, with a large pool of drivers.
• Easily scales up in busy times.
• Charge a commission, which can be as much as 35% of order value.
• Take payment for the orders and only remit the money to the restaurant after a certain amount of time.
• Take orders via their own platform, with hundreds of other restaurants on it.
• Own the customer data and only provide it to the restaurants in aggregated format, meaning restaurants cannot market directly to delivery customers.

Do it yourself delivery

• Has no external costs.
• Difficult to scale up in busy times.
• Sometimes the restaurant is responsible for the vehicles.
• Gives the restaurant ownership of their customer data.
• Takes orders through the restaurant’s own website or app.
• Means that the restaurant has the extra work of recruiting and managing drivers.
• Offers no backup if the restaurant has more orders than people available to deliver them.

A third way – White Label Delivery

The answer is white label delivery. Redcat provides an innovative hospitality IT platform which includes the option for delivery from third party drivers, but which puts the restaurant firmly back in control of costs and data.

What’s so great about White Label Delivery?

White label delivery offers a ‘best of both worlds’ solution: restaurants get access to a large, scalable, outsourced pool of drivers, but they pay a flat fee for every delivery rather than a commission, and crucially, all the customer data belongs to them, not the delivery partner. White label delivery offers nine great benefits to UK QSRs and casual dining restaurants.

1. The Redcat IT hospitality platform has a direct integration with Uber Direct, DoorDash Drive, and soon Just Eat Go. The platform manages the drivers, allowing the restaurant to offer its ‘own’ delivery service.
2. The restaurant pays a flat fee for each delivery, rather than a commission, helping them to contain and plan for costs.
3. The restaurant takes orders through its own website or app, meaning that its customers aren't tempted to switch to a competitors’ offerings.
4. Orders are received directly into the Redcat POS, eliminating re-keying and the risk of errors.
5. The Redcat platform automatically allocates drivers from Uber Direct or DoorDash Drive based on availability, rankings and the restaurant’s own ‘delivery provider rules’, ensuring that the most appropriate driver for the job is always selected.
6. It automatically scales up during busy times and across all providers, with no need to schedule drivers.
7. Restaurants can use more than one supplier to ensure that there are always drivers available, and/or to offer failover if one provider has insufficient drivers at busy times.
8. The restaurant can provide customers with SMS status messages and tracking data about their order, enhancing customer service.
9. The restaurant retains full access to all its customer data – it has full visibility, for example, of which customers buy what, how frequently and how much they spend, so that it can tailor its marketing and offers to personalise service and increase sales.
10. Redcat's White Label delivery fully interacts with the loyalty engine, so restaurants can invite delivery customers to be part of its loyalty community, earning and burning points with every home delivery ord They can also can create delivery-only coupons/promotions.

White label delivery is revolutionising delivery services – restaurants are no longer constrained by delivery partners and have a realistic, workable, complementary and alternative to the DIY option.

Using white label delivery, fast casual and QSR restaurants can manage their costs, and not feel that they are being ‘held hostage’ by the high commissions of delivery partners. It allows them to have complete control of the ordering process, through their own existing website or app. It gives them ownership of their customer data – putting it into the much more valuable category of ‘first party data’ rather than the ‘third party data’, aggregated beyond the point of being useful, which they receive from delivery partners. Restaurants can use that data to build their marketing database and apply their marketing and loyalty programs to all their customers, rather than leaving out the large proportion who order online.

Redcat has enabled customers with over 2,500 sites globally with White Label Delivery, which can deliver real benefits to UK restaurants, helping them to improve their bottom line, build brand loyalty and create a fantastic experience for their customers.