Today Ordrslip, a company which powers mobile apps for restaurants, announced a new partnership with Square meant to help smaller businesses develop their mobile strategies. As of November 1, restaurants can access Ordrslip via the Square App Marketplace.
Ordrslip itself isn’t an app. Rather, it’s a SaaS-based subscription service that builds and powers customized apps for restaurants. The service, according to the company, makes it easier for restaurants to manage their mobile orders. In particular, Ordrslip is aimed at restaurants who may not have the resources to build their own app and who don’t want to fork over the fees third-party services like Uber Eats and Grubhub charge restaurants for participating on their sites.
As Miguel Alarcon, product manager at Ordrslip said over the phone, using a service like his “allows a smaller restaurant to have the same mobile presence than a larger chain would have.” With mobile ordering set to become a $38 billion business by 2020, a mobile strategy is more necessity than bonus for any kind of restaurant, whether you’re The Cheesecake Factory or a taco truck. Adding a new technology to daily operations is, as Alarcon noted, “intimidating.” For smaller businesses, integrating a new tool into the rest of the order process also affects daily operations, and if not done well, can become confusing and costly.
The Square partnership gives Ordrslip access to a wider audience, and in the process gives a greater number of restaurants the chance to boost their mobile game. The partnership will also give Ordrslip customers access to Square’s POS system, which launched in restaurants in May of this year and in particular addresses the issue of managing orders from multiple channels (e.g., in-house diners, delivery, etc.)
Why not just throw a menu on Grubhub and call it a day? When I asked Alarcon about this, he pointed to the importance of branding. Using a custom mobile app powered by Ordrslip and integrated with a major POS provider like Square gives smaller businesses “the ability to market very specific to their brand which provides a lot of ownership and empowerment.” Whereas third-party delivery services are more a marketplace for businesses, via Ordrslip-Square, a restaurant could actually create a memorable in-app experience that actually leaves an impression on customers and, in theory at least, promotes more customer loyalty.
The other thing Ordrslip prides themselves on is how involved they are in the process of getting a restaurant up and running with a mobile app. “We have individuals that actually walk through the order process with you and assist with managing your accounts,” says Alarcon. While the company is trying to standardize some of the onboarding process, he notes that they’re still very focused on each restaurant’s individual needs, particularly when it comes to daily operations and how mobile will fit into those. “We want restaurants regardless of size and location to be able to compete,” he says. And because it’s a subscription service, fees for merchants are flat rate each month: $150/month with a $1,000 setup fee. Depending on the volume a business does, that could be substantially lower than using a third-party delivery service, who would typically charge around 15 percent for commission.
We’ll see more companies like Ordrslip in future, I suspect, for the very branding and customer loyalty reasons Alarcon pointed out. SpeedETab also partners with Square (and LevelUp and Toast, among others), and helps design and operate custom mobile apps for coffee shops. And Ordrslip says they’re looking to launch similar small-business-focused alliances with other POS providers like Clover and Aloha. (Both are currently Ordrslip partners.)
So for the mom-and-pop shop that isn’t serving 90 million customers per week but still needs to stay relevant in the age of mobile eating, it looks as though the options are about to open up.
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