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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ritual

Ritual Teams Up With NYC to Provide Commission-Free Delivery to Restaurants

Online ordering system Ritual has teamed up with New York City to offer restaurants in the Big Apple access to its platform for delivery and pickup orders at no extra cost. The deal is part of the second phase of New York’s Empire State Digital Initiative, which is providing support for restaurants and foodservice industry businesses impacted by Covid. Restaurants can use the Ritual platform free of charge from now until April 2021, according to a statement from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. 

Ritual brought its online order platform to the U.S. earlier this year. The software plugs into a restaurant’s main system and enables the business to process delivery and takeout orders through its own website, rather than those of the major third-party delivery platforms. It’s another example in the recent wave of technologies dedicated to native and/or hybrid ordering, where restaurants get to manage orders through their own digital properties and need only rely on Grubhub, DoorDash, and others for things like the last mile of delivery.

Right now, with the pandemic numbers still rising and indoor dining once again banned in NYC, cutting away at least some of third-party delivery’s control over the restaurant industry is important for a couple of reasons. For one, it lets restaurants own their interactions, and therefore the data on those interactions, with customers. Most importantly, decreasing reliance on delivery apps also diminishes the commission fees restaurants must pay. As we discuss ad infinitum here at The Spoon, those fees are highly controversial because they can stretch as high as 30 percent per transaction, further decimating what little margins restaurants have left (if any). 

NYC imposed mandatory caps on these commission fees several months ago. However, the city also just shut indoor dining down once more in an effort to curb the spread of the pandemic. This time, the shutdown is indefinite, with some calling it a “death blow” to businesses, especially the independent ones. Once again, restaurants have to rely on delivery and takeout as their only channels for business. 

Ritual’s commission-free order platform may not be able to save every business, but it could quite possibly pull a few back from the brink by saving them a little money that would otherwise go towards lining the pockets of DoorDash et al.

For restaurants that join the platform through the Empire State Digital Initiative, Ritual will waive setup, subscription, and some credit-card processing fees. 

Ritual Brings Its Online Order Platform to the U.S., Makes It ‘Free for Life’ for Restaurants

Today, online ordering app Ritual announced the U.S. launch of Ritual ONE, its online order platform that lets restaurants host and process digital orders through their own websites rather than using a third-party delivery service. That includes takeout, curbside pickup, delivery, and other off-premises formats, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The Ritual ONE tool will first be available in the U.S. to restaurants in Chicago, IL.

Based in Toronto, Ontario, Ritual’s order-ahead app has up to now been mostly geared towards the office lunchtime crowd, allowing workers in the same office or location to piggy back off one another’s orders.

Ritual ONE actually integrates directly into a restaurant’s main system, effectively becoming a piece of the business’s tech stack, rather than an add-on that has to managed separately. For businesses that are not already online, Ritual can create a customizable menu.

Ritual created its Ritual ONE service in response to the COVID-19’s devastating impact on the restaurant industry. The tool is actually a joint effort by Ritual and the City of Toronto. Through it, restaurants can accept digital orders through their own digital properties, rather than having to go through a third-party delivery service like DoorDash or Uber Eats to process delivery and pickup orders (though they would in most cases have to use those services for the last mile of delivery).

Lower commission fees is the big selling point here. Typically Ritual charges restaurants a $49 monthly fee for each location for Ritual ONE. However, given the ongoing state of the restaurant industry, the company noted in today’s announcement that “any current or new Ritual customers in the Chicago area will receive the service for free for life if they sign up by July 10.”

That, too, could be a major selling point. One of the major beefs with third-party delivery is the staggering commission rate those services extract from restaurants — up to 30 percent of each transaction, in some cases. Small and/or independent restaurants, in particular, can have their bottom lines decimated by such fees. The shift towards more off-premises orders has only made the issue worse, since restaurants that could previously get by on dining room sales are now forced to offer takeout and delivery. Usually, that means working with third-party services and handing over those hefty commission fees. 

Helping restaurants bypass those fees, at least in part, is something many restaurant tech companies say they can do nowadays. Toast, ChowNow, and others have all made announcements for restaurant tech packs that gets rid of the high commission fees charged by third-party delivery services. Though no one yet has gone as far as to promise free software for life, as Ritual just did. That could be incentive enough for restaurants to try the service out as they struggle to find ways to meet the new expectations around off-premises orders.

Order-Ahead Food App Ritual Expands to Europe, Hong Kong

Toronto, Canada-based mobile app Ritual, which lets users order ahead for restaurant pickup food, announced this week it is expanding service to Germany, The Netherlands, and Hong Kong.

The new markets are just the latest in what’s been a steady expansion for the company ever since it started rolling out service to the U.S. in 2017. In January, the company expanded to the UK and Australia, and said it expected to triple its restaurant count by the end of 2019.

Like many restaurant-focused mobile apps, Ritual lets users browse participating restaurants, order ahead, leave special instructions (no pickles please!), and pay within the app. On top of those fairly standard offerings, it has a few features that help it stand out from the crowd.

For one, it’s geared towards the lunchtime office crowd in a big way, thanks to a social feature baked into the app called Piggyback. Workers in the same office or location can gather within the app and decide on a restaurant. They can then choose when to order food, place their orders, and designate a person to go and pick the meal up. The app stores past orders, making it easy for teams to reorder entire meals. So if Fried Chicken Friday is a thing for your team and you want to spend less time collecting everyone’s orders, Ritual’s the app for that.

Ritual is also a way for smaller and/or independent restaurants to test off-premises ordering. The app’s pickup-only focus makes it cheaper for restaurants to participate (no drivers to pay), so they can easily gauge how much their customers want off-premises orders and which meals work best in a to-go environment.

So far Ritual has raised a total of $112.9 million, its last round being a $70 million Series C in June 2018. According to the press release, the service is now available in over 50 cities, including its new markets. The addition of Germany, Hong Kong, and The Netherlands also marks the start of the company’s goal to expand to a greater number of non-English-speaking markets in future.

Its push to European countries comes at a time when the food delivery and pickup market on that continent is seeing some serious competition. In July of this year, third-party aggregators Just Eat and Takeaway.com merged to form one of the largest restaurant-delivery services in the world. Both already had a significant presence in Europe prior to the merger. In the same month, Just Eat also acquired UK-based corporate catering marketplace City Pantry, a service that also appeals to the office crowd. And amid much competition, Deliveroo pulled out of Germany in August.

As I mentioned above, though, the simplicity of Ritual’s app could make it appealing to restaurants that can’t or don’t want to fork over fees associated with some of those other apps. The big question around Ritual’s expansion, which is yet to be answered in these new markets, is if a pickup-only app is enough to compete in today’s delivery-crazed food world.