The importance of offering delivery services: SumUp & Goodeats

The food delivery and takeaway industry was one of the few sectors to see an uplift during the first COVID-imposed restrictions in the UK. While there was an initial slump for food delivery services at the start of the lockdown–in part due to concerns over food safety fears and the unavailability of collection services–the industry saw a boost as people began to tire of home cooking and the stress of supermarket food shopping took effect.

And many food businesses have responded to this demand. According to a survey by City Pantry, nearly a fifth (19%) of the UK restaurants they questioned have started to offer takeaway services. With physical restaurants being forced to close their doors, the importance of ensuring businesses were online and delivery-friendly became glaringly obvious.

As many food businesses are again being asked to close up shop in many regions, adopting delivery services may be a lifeline for these merchants.

Why should you offer delivery now?

To emphasise this necessity even further, food delivery services are currently exempt from the new restrictions forcing restaurants and bars to close at 10pm across most of the UK. This means that by offering a delivery service, food businesses can continue to earn an income even after closing their physical doors in the evenings.

With this in mind, we started looking into a delivery solution for all the great gastronomy businesses using SumUp. We reached out to one of our partners, GoodTill, who had just launched their very own delivery software, Goodeats, and began working on a campaign to inform the SumUp community. 

What is Goodeats?

Goodeats is an online ordering and delivery fulfilment solution offered by our partner GoodTill. The software is available as a web app which you can integrate with your SumUp profile to start offering your customers collections, deliveries, table ordering and pre-ordering.

The platform allows you to manage order flows, menu availability and capacity limits to keep your business COVID-restriction compliant and to make sure that your kitchen or waiting staff don’t get overloaded during peak periods.

Importantly, you can link your SumUp profile to the Goodeats app to enable your customers to pay in a multitude of ways.

Take a look at the video below to see how the solution works.

What you should consider

There are loads of great features that make Goodeats an ideal choice. Firstly, you can fully customise the app store layout to fit your business and brand. The interface can be adapted to really reflect your range of services and the image you want to create for your customers.

Additionally, you can get set up on the platform quickly and easily, meaning you can start offering delivery services to your customers straight away - an ideal solution for the uncertainty around local curfews and potential near-future lockdowns.

During this challenging time, keeping your customers informed about any updates to your daily business is vital. We’ve written previously about the importance of social media marketing and, crucially, businesses who choose to use Goodeats will find that it’s really simple to share and promote new services on social channels directly from their app.

Goodeats also offers a great support network for its customers as well. A dedicated support team is on hand just in case you have any queries or concerns, and there is also a newly formed Track & Trace support system directly in the app.

It’s also really simple for your customers, which is ultimately the most important criterion. The ordering experience is intuitive, easy to navigate and, of course, the range of payment options allows real flexibility.

Mark Bamping (Candid Beer - Stafford)

“Goodeats has honestly kept our business afloat and operational during a really challenging time. In many ways it has been a lifeline for us as a business, but also for our customers who want to keep purchasing our products. Once the current crisis is over and we return to more normal business operations, I know that we will be better placed as a business now that we have diversified our route to market, and using Goodeats to generate further revenue online.”

Want to partner with SumUp?

If you’re interested in working with SumUp to offer your business customers intuitive solutions like Goodeats, get in touch with our Partner Management team via the form below.