How to Prepare Your Restaurant for New Delivery Food Trends

Takeout and delivery programs have exploded in popularity. Third-party apps like Grubhub and DoorDash have made it easy to order food from your favorite local restaurant by pressing a single button on your phone. The increased delivery and takeout demand has presented new challenges for restaurants who want to keep food quality high and wait times low.

In this guide, we’ve presented a few proactive solutions for restaurants so they can handle the delivery food trends and keep customers happy. We’ve also shared how to keep food hot for takeout and delivery, so that it can be enjoyed the way it was intended. With a heated holding cabinet and a smart takeout and delivery system in place, you can maximize profits from these incoming orders, without affecting food quality.  

Get Ready for Serious Delivery Demand

It might seem like a good thing to attract new customers by accepting takeout or delivery orders through a mobile app, but “too much of a good thing” can certainly apply here. When certain chains started accepting takeout orders via DoorDash, they were completely overwhelmed by the demand and had to pause the app functionality. Instead of being blindsided, we recommend planning for the increased orders by hiring more delivery drivers and adding a to-go, takeout area to your restaurant.

Consider Starting a Ghost Kitchen

In some cases, the takeout and delivery demand is so large that restaurants must take drastic measures. Rather than maintaining a single kitchen in the restaurant space, business owners are investing in off-site ghost kitchens, which only prep food for delivery. Since all the orders are handled with mobile apps and remote technology, it’s easier to coordinate with an off-site kitchen so that the main restaurant can focus on its in-house customers.

Keep Meals Hot with Holding Cabinets

Of course, you’ll need a smart solution for keeping takeout orders hot until they are picked up by customers. Sometimes, this pickup can take an extensive amount of time, and there is nothing worse than cold, soggy food waiting on a shelf to be picked up. We recommend investing in heated holding cabinets that use Halo Heat® technology to distribute heat evenly and hold food to a consistent temperature without degrading food quality. These cabinets will have food hot and ready for pick up no matter when the customer arrives.

Once you’ve mastered how to keep food hot for takeout and delivery, you’ll be ready for today’s takeout and delivery boom. To learn more about our heated holding cabinets and other foodservice equipment solutions, attend A Taste of Alto-Shaam demonstration near you.