5 marketing ideas for your pizza takeaway restaurant

Charlie Clayton
November 22, 2022

Who doesn’t love to make a social occasion out of helping themselves to a slice – or seven – of their favourite pizza? There’s no question that pizza takeaway restaurants up and down the UK continue to be a big ‘hit’ among customers, whether those customers dine in or order with their relatives, friends or colleagues, or even go solo.

It is also true, though, that operating such an establishment has become trickier than ever. Energy bills have escalated to such a degree lately that more than a fifth of the UK’s pubs, restaurants and cafes have cut their working hours to try to adapt. And that’s before one considers spiralling food prices, or the recruitment difficulties that far predate the cost-of-living crisis.

But as the owner of a pizza takeaway restaurant, you will probably be familiar with all the above maladies. What you’re interested in is solutions. So, let’s explore some of the marketing ideas that could really power your eatery’s growth.

Even in difficult times, the possibilities for captivating and impactful marketing could be greater than you think!

 

1. Ditch the telephone 

 

Depending on your business’s preferences and needs, you might not entirely abandon taking orders by phone. However, will your customer even want to phone you to place an order, when they have the option of a slick interface that allows them to order quickly and easily from you online, for collection or delivery.n?

Telephone ordering isn’t really desirable or efficient for anyone – and taking orders that way will hog the time and energy of your team members. So, if you don’t yet have a direct-to-customer (D2C) system in place at your pizza restaurant, now could be the moment to do it with the help of Slerp.

 

2. Optimise your delivery approach 

 

Your business might be present right now on online marketplaces such as Deliveroo, the idea being that these companies handle the delivery for you, so that you can focus on the food.

And that might be fair enough… for a while. But could now be the time to take greater control over your deliveries, while also avoiding the hefty commission, which can be as high as 30%?

If so, it could be the perfect time to talk to Slerp about our online ordering systems and associated delivery solutions. Those include nationwide delivery, local managed delivery, and a self-delivery option for operators who already have drivers of their own and wish to exercise control over every aspect of the online ordering experience, from beginning to end.

Our direct-to-customer solution is extremely flexible, bringing together various order types and forms of delivery. We are the only online provider to offer a live ops team, monitoring every last-mile delivery job from 7am to 11pm, seven days a week.

 

3. Launch your own branded app

 

Connected to what we have already said about lessening your reliance on marketplaces, why not have a fully branded app of your own for accepting your D2C customer orders.

Even if you still use marketplaces for attracting new customers, a branded app could be great for cultivating a deeper relationship with those more established customers who already know they want to order from you, specifically.

It can also allow you to provide the customer with a slick, personalised experience, and accept all order types, including table ordering, click + collect, or delivery to their home or business.

 

4. Introduce your own loyalty programme

 

We’re mentioning this one straight after referencing the idea of launching your own branded app, because the two go hand in hand for ambitious takeaway restaurants.

Getting your most committed and loyal customers into your own ecosystem will enable you to better see who those customers are and when they’re ordering, and to drive their loyalty in the longer term.

And a loyalty scheme, integrated with your online ordering system, could help you reward your customers in various ways, such as through multiple and tiered rewards, thereby promoting repeat purchases.

 

5. Embrace ‘click and collect’

 

You’re likely to have become more familiar with the concept of ‘click and collect’ in recent years; the term refers to, in the words of Cambridge Dictionary, “a way of buying something in which you order and pay for it on the Internet, then collect it yourself from a shop”.

But it’s one thing to know what ‘click and collect’ is, and another thing to set it all up. Slerp can enable you to do that, while exercising full control over your ‘click and collect’ settings. That could include only making available to your customers the pick-up slots that work for your business, and taking orders in advance for later that same day, or perhaps only for future days. The power will be in your hands.

After all, while ‘click and collect’ is an attractive option for customers and businesses alike, you won’t want to find yourself receiving orders that you lack the capacity to handle. This is why, with Slerp, you can set order limits per time slot, to help ensure you better manage order volumes over the course of the day or week.

At Slerp, we’re accustomed to helping to power the success of pizza restaurants. We work with brands like Basilico, Detroit Pizza, D4100, and Pizza Federicci. When speaking to Basilico’s managing director Paul Adams, he said “migrating our direct channel to Slerp has been easy, and we’ve seen a meaningful increase in direct orders as a result.”

Do you fancy joining those major brands in working alongside Slerp to not just survive, but grow as a pizza takeaway restaurant into 2023 and beyond? If so, it couldn’t be simpler to get started with us.

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