9 unexpected ways Otter can help your restaurant succeed in delivery

If you work in the restaurant industry, there’s a good chance you now know what a delivery optimization company does: order aggregation, analytics, integrations, and more. With a best-in-class delivery optimization partner like Otter, you’re able to increase sales & efficiency while decreasing stress & errors.

The Otter solution lets you say goodbye to tablet hell and hello to clean, clutter-free counters. But what else can Otter do? From giving you time back to focus on what truly matters to increasing your employees’ quality of life, the question we might actually want to ask here is, what can Otter not do?

There’s a reason why our restaurant partners say Otter gives their store(s) superpowers. We’re willing to bet that you’ve never seen Otter as a tool that helps you hang out with celebrities or reduce money spent on printer ink. Spoiler alert, Otter helps with all that and more. Read on to uncover the top 9 unexpected ways Otter can help your restaurant succeed in delivery.

1. Reduce costs of printer ink

There’s nothing as thrilling as receiving your first order. But as the number of orders you receive continues to grow, so does the amount of paper and ink you go through. Believe it or not, the amount a restaurant, particularly a chain of restaurants, spends on printer ink and paper for tickets can be outrageously expensive.

“Ever since we partnered with Otter, we realized a major reduction in ink, toner, and copy paper usage using Otters’ compact thermal printers, which require no ink. These compact thermal printers resulted in $90k cost savings for Just Salad in the first year.” - Jason Rotter, Franchising & Operational Services Partner at Just Salad

Learn How Otter helps Just Salad deliver‍

2. Hang out with guests …celebrities?

Yes, you heard that one right. Running a restaurant requires you to be a jack of all trades, which often results in you having little to no time to sit and enjoy the fruit of your labor with guests. With Otter, you can use the time you used to spend managing chaos hanging out with customers. And who knows, perhaps you’ll even be able to enjoy a meal with a celebrity guest.  

“Otter has helped me go full-throttle in my delivery business; both of my restaurants are thriving. Being less stressed about the small things gives me time to focus on the bigger picture: our food, our team, and our guests. When Jason Segel came in, I got to sit down with him and eat. I honestly would’ve missed out on that opportunity pre-Otter because of all the chaos.” - Moe Abozaid, Owner, B-uno’s

Learn How B-Unos went "full throttle" in delivery alongside Otter‍

3. Say goodbye to outrageous electricity bills

Restaurant owners must pay close attention to gas, electric, and water bills in an industry with notoriously low margins. Electric bills are particularly important as a large percentage of a typical restaurant’s operating cost is spent on energy. While some efficiency measures can be implemented with little investment, Otter can literally diminish your electric bills by doing, well, nothing. It’s that simple.

“Before Otter, we had 4-5 tablets plugged in and running at all times. Do you know how much electricity that uses?! Yes, Otter makes things easier and less cluttered, but  consolidating our tablets and printers into one place also saves us loads of money on electricity.” - Eagle Patanan, Director, Thai La-Ong

4. Take an açaí concept and turn it into a full-fledged health food restaurant

Analytics solutions (ahem, like Otter) can help your restaurant expand its customer base, encourage repeat orders, and even help you develop compelling new dishes. Thanks to Otter's world-class solutions restaurant chain, Sweetberry has grown what was once an acai place into new cuisine types & new markets.

“Once we had our operations working smoothly alongside Otter, we started experimenting with delivery-only menus, pricing, and products across our Sweetberry stores. One of those delivery-only menus was Sweetberry Poké. This ‘experiment’ worked so well that we decided to expand what was originally an açai only concept into a full-fledged health food restaurant. Today we offer açai, poke, paninis, salad, wraps, smoothies and more.” - Desi Saran, Founder & CEO, Sweetberry

Learn How Sweetberry increases operational efficiency alongside Otter

5. Increase quality of life for restaurant employees

While restaurateurs know to expect the unexpected, maintaining a successful delivery business on top of dine-in orders can result in overworked and burned-out employees. The grind is real, and with the current labor shortage, it’s more important than ever to prioritize your employee's well-being and satisfaction in the workplace. Otter's order management solutions - with order auto-acceptance, menu management, storefront pausing, and more - have been known to make for happier employees and less kitchen stress. Who knew?

"Otter’s had a positive impact on our entire staff. From a morale level, it’s way more relaxed out on the floor than it was before. We don’t have to have someone stationed in one spot keeping tabs on all of the tablets. Everything auto-tenders closes, goes straight to the printer and straight to the POS. It’s reduced stress for our team. We love that we can pause all of our delivery platforms with the click of a button during the Friday night rush or when we have a huge catering order come in.” - Jason Stephens, General Manager, Floridino’s Pizza & Pasta

Learn how Floridino’s Pizza & Pasta superpowers their delivery business with Otter

6. Eliminate the need for a secretary

A fast-paced environment filled with good food, good people, and… tons of spreadsheets? Managing restaurant finances is challenging and overwhelming. And managing finances while manually writing down orders, answering the phone, editing modifiers, overseeing your team, and keeping guests happy? Nearly impossible. With Otter’s Advanced Reports and Analytics solutions, understanding where you’re making, losing, and missing money is simple. Alongside Otter, you’re able to take action based on data and analytics, improve your menu, oversee inventory, staffing, strategy, and more without a secretary or assistant.

“People call me all day, but someone called me from Otter. They said they had a platform that could consolidate all our delivery orders. And they said it was simple. I’m an academic, but I’m not a technologist, so simplicity was a key factor. Hundreds of companies call us, but after talking to someone from the Otter team for 20 minutes, I knew this call was different. Otter for us was a brilliant thing. Then they told me the orders could go into one tablet and print directly to the kitchen. I’m like, did I just find a secretary! Otter is the secretary of all the apps. Our front-of-house staff was in complete bliss. They were like, “We can’t believe this exists!” - Chrysi Arnaki, Owner, Argo Greek Cuisine

Learn How Chrysi Arnaki of Argo Greek Cuisine shares her heritage with Vancouver

7. Optimize your delivery menu

If you’re offering delivery, you can see your order history. But drawing conclusions from platform-based data alone can be messy and inconclusive.  allow you to monitor the performance of your items and identify actionable insights for you to make the most out of your menu. Keep tabs on your items and remove dishes that are underperforming or unavailable—it’s better to have fewer, more popular options than a huge quantity of menu items that aren’t optimal for at-home dining.

“I can see the report for the last seven days, ten days, six months, whatever it is. The most important insight for me is revenue and then best selling items. If there are any mistakes, any menu item with more refunds or complaints, we change the menu or even remove the item.”

Learn IRO Sushi: bringing the flavors of Japan through the power of delivery optimization

8. Rank higher on food delivery platforms

80% of customers place a delivery order from a platform’s homepage. That means that if your restaurant isn’t listed on the homepage, you’re missing out on sales. Put simply, ranking higher on delivery platforms requires a mix of speed, ratings, service, promotion, operational efficiency, and conversion. That means getting orders out the door quickly and accurately, every time, and making your customers so happy that they can’t help but tell the world. Otter’s restaurant management tools can help you boost your speed, accuracy and order fulfillment for a higher ranking on delivery platforms.

“Since partnering with Otter at the beginning of 2021, our orders and revenue have multiplied by 7. We started focusing on delivery in March, and it has been a continuous growth. Every month, we have been getting more orders than the previous month.” - Faizan Ansar, Delivery operations lead, Burger Fuel

Learn How Burger Fuel, Nar and Il Caffe di Roma optimize operations with Otter

9. Turn a beloved gas station chain into a C-store delivery empire

ExtraMile LLC, a Chevron and Jackson Food Stores partnership comprising 1,000 franchised convenience stores throughout the US, sought out Otter’s cutting-edge technology to help scale third-party delivery across their store-fronts. After finding out about Otter from ExtraMile’s franchise partners, the team decided to adopt Otter for all locations to manage their delivery business. Otter’s multi-location solutions and easy-to-use tablet helped ExtraMile scale rapidly from 0 to 407 stores and counting.

“There was no delivery program before Otter. With all the intricacies that go into operating a store—accounting, payroll, ordering customer service, cleaning, stocking, and everything else—it’s nice not to have to worry. Otter has created efficiencies and consolidated our process.” - Robert Wade, Digital Platforms Manager,  ExtraMile

Learn How Otter Helped ExtraMile Launch Its Online Ordering Business

See what Otter’s delivery management & optimization solutions can do for your restaurant

We hope this article helped establish why Otter should be your restaurant’s partner in all things delivery (if we’re not already). Whether you’re hoping to reduce the costs associated with printer ink & electricity, explore a new cuisine type, or just make your team’s life easier, our solutions will help your delivery business be less stressful and more profitable. Get started with Otter today!