Do restaurants need delivery? Famous restaurateurs of Ukraine shared their experience
10 April 2024 14:29
ЕКСКЛЮЗИВ
The coronavirus has completely changed the restaurant business both in Ukraine and around the world: people are going out to eat less and ordering food to their homes more. However, what is delivery – a separate business process or just an additional function that a restaurant can perform? Famous Ukrainian restaurateurs Yevhen Klopotenko, Olena Borisova and Maksym Khramov told how they work with delivery during the War & Food Mastermind held by Komersant ukrainskyi 
told how delivery works in their business and whether it is needed at all.
Delivery is an interesting experiment
One of the most famous chefs in Ukraine, Yevhen Klopotenko, has not used delivery in his work for a long time. Now, for him, delivery is more about an interesting experiment that expands the possibilities of advertising his business.
“At 100 Years Ago Forward, delivery is a bit of a moot point, because we sell not only food but also emotions, which cannot be delivered. The concept of Poltava is a little different. But we still did not pay attention to delivery for a long time and only decided to start working in this direction 4 months ago.
The numbers literally started to grow in a month. Yes, these are not budget-forming indicators, but they are fairly normal figures, with different margins. It’s a very interesting story because you have expanded advertising opportunities – you can advertise in the same Glovo. But for us, it is still more of an interesting experiment,”
– said Yevhen Klopotenko.
He added that he currently has 12 dark kitsches and plans to launch new projects on the Ukrainian market, which will also be related to delivery.
“Dark kitsch is a line of business where we focus on feeding various establishments, factories, etc. We are also currently implementing projects for the delivery of food for the preparation of certain dishes. That is, I want to, I order food, I cook it. In July, we are going to launch another project, the concept of which is food that you heat up for 5 minutes and have delivered. It is of super-high quality, we have been working on it for a long time,”
– yevhen Klopotenko shared his plans.
You cannot expect delivery to solve all the problems of your business.
Delivery is a separate business story that needs to be built professionally, said Ukrainian restaurateur Olena Borisova.
“It’s a separate business, it’s e-commerce, it’s a completely different story. It’s about 2 ways – either you work with aggregators or you do your own delivery. We do both. Of course, Covid led us to this, plus we clearly understand that there are categories of products that are delivered. You have to take everything into account. Delivery is about a number of factors. It has to be fast, tasty and beautiful, but it’s very complicated. You need great packaging that doesn’t get wet and keeps its shape. You have to keep to the time – if you say 30 minutes of delivery, you have to keep to that time,”
– she said.
Olena Borisova said that the name of your restaurant and the assortment are very important in delivery.
“If you are a newcomer, no one in Glovo or other aggregators will put your restaurant first on the list. Because no one is interested in the name. For example, if you want to start a delivery business and choose burgers, forget it! McDonald’s will always be number one, no matter what you say about your food. They have 60% of the market. Or if a person already wants a particular burger from a particular restaurant, they will most likely go to the personal page of that restaurant and order there,”
– borisova added.
According to her, supermarkets are now the main competitors of restaurants in delivery:
“Le Silpo and Novus, Galya Baluwana are making a very good product now. That’s why I don’t believe in delivery, it won’t work in Ukraine the way it does in the rest of the world, even now there is a backlash. Therefore, if you have a restaurant, delivery should be counted separately, because it is a plus, it is a workload for the staff, it is advertising, etc. We have a delivery rate of up to 20%, but we designed our brands for this. “Philadelphia is definitely a delivery brand, where we set out that 50% would come from e-commerce and 50% from offline, and it does. This is the model. It’s hard, but you can’t expect delivery to solve all the problems of your business.”
Delivery is a marketing story that generates additional profit
According to Ukrainian restaurateur Maksym Khramov, delivery is an additional feature for guests who are unable to come to the restaurant in person.
“It’s an additional feature for those people who are already 90% of your guests, who know your cuisine and they just don’t have the opportunity to come. We have 10% of our turnover from delivery. This is a normal figure. We are constantly improving the quality of packaging, even though we have very loyal guests. It’s a marketing story that brings in additional revenue,”
– he said.
If people have a business that is related to delivery products, it makes sense to expand delivery. If not, you need to look for other ways.
“For example, pasta is a completely different product. We once withdrew half of our pasta range because any pasta in a cream or cheese sauce sticks together after 10-15 minutes. For some time, we sold only the ingredients for it: our raw pasta, sauces, etc. Using our instructions, people could make their own pasta in 10 minutes. But over time, we gave up on that too, because people are too lazy to cook,”
– shared his story Maxim Khramov.
He emphasised that delivery is a very tough business with no room for illusions:
“Yes, Covid has forced us to adopt the habit of ‘order, heat and eat’, but I think that this culture will not be instilled in us for a long time, and after the war is over, people will want to go to restaurants and get this emotion for at least 2-3 years. But as a component of business, if it’s not a negative, why not? Use it!”
Read also:
"Successful success no longer works": Klopotenko, Khramov, and Borisova reveal the secrets of profitable business
"War & Food": famous restaurateurs of Ukraine told about the peculiarities of doing business during the war
War, taxes and lack of employees: why businesses are moving across Ukraine
