When your success doesn't depend
on seating capacity and the comforts
of dine-in, you have a lot more
flexibility to consider nontraditional
stores that wouldn't otherwise be
viable. People can place orders from a
location on a college campus, in a
mall, at a hospital, or even within a
larger retail store. As long as delivery
drivers can easily access your front
counter without significantly
disrupting other operations (such as
grocery shopping), these locations
can fulfill orders within a reasonable
driving distance.
Some restaurants are even choosing
locations solely for their potential to
serve as "ghost kitchens," which need
far less space and can rely entirely on
3PD. They can find small facilities in
unusual locations that are just big
enough to support a kitchen and a
pickup window, but near enough to
demand that they can fulfill a stream
of 3PD orders.
Finding profitable locations and
increasing market share isn't
dependent on accommodating
dine-in orders—you simply need
enough space to cook and hand off
orders. (And ideally, the ability to
keep up with demand.) When
customers place their orders online
and don't even need to find your
store to receive their order, even
visibility becomes less important.
But in order to know definitively
whether 3PD can support these
nontrad locations for you, or how
they stack up against the more
substantial investment you'd make
in traditional locations, you need to
know the breakdown of dine-in,
3PD, first-party delivery, and regular
carryout orders.
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E X P L O R I N G N E W N O N T R A D L O C A T I O N S
2024 Calculating Carry Out: How Restaurants Are Responding to 3PD
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