Online food ordering: Background

Online food ordering services are websites that feature interactive menus allowing customers to place orders with local restaurants and food cooperatives. Much like ordering consumer goods online, many of these allow customers to keep accounts with them in order to make frequent ordering convenient. A customer will search for a favourite restaurant, choose from available items, and choose delivery or pick-up. Payment can be by credit card or cash, with the restaurant returning a percentage to the online food company.

Online ordering website featuring an online ordering platform became a business enterprise which taken the economy with a storm. Companies like Just Eat proven the idea of a commission based platform to offer online ordering facility to takeaways and restaurants works and highly profitable. Soon the idea has been adopted in the market and more and more companies tend to start up. Today there has been quite a large number of companies offers similar sorts of service. With the advancement of IT Services, web application became more available to the hands on smaller and medium size entrepreneur.

 

Service types:

 

While e-commerce has been around for over a decade, closing the gap between food and the Internet has taken longer. The first restaurants to adopt online food ordering services were corporate franchises such as Domino's and Papa John's. Other pizza franchises such as Pizza Hut have been quick to adopt online food ordering.

 

Restaurant-controlled:

 

The pre-existing delivery infrastructure of these franchises was well suited for an online ordering system, so much so that in 2008 Papa John's International announced that its online sales were growing on average more than 50 percent each year and neared $400 million in 2007 alone. Local companies have teamed up with e-commerce companies to make ordering quicker and more precise. Annie Maver, director of operations for The Original Pizza Pan, Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio comments that "the system is good for customers who don't speak English.

Some restaurants have adopted online ordering despite their lack of delivery systems, using it to manage pick-up orders or to take reservations.

 

Independent:

 

Independent online food ordering companies offer two solutions. One is a software service whereby restaurants purchase database and account management software from the company and manage the online ordering themselves. The other solution is a Net-based service whereby restaurants sign contracts with an online food ordering website that may handle orders from many restaurants in a regional or national area.

One difference between the systems is how the online menu is created and later updated. Managed services do this via phone or email, while unmanaged services require the customer to do it. Some websites use wizards to find the best-suited menu for the customer.

 

Our Product – iNetFoods(TM):

 

iBacs has been developing websites since 2003. We develop various solutions, but since the begging we been always focused on the restaurant and takeaway trade. We have developed 100s of restaurant websites worldwide. Since our establishment, we have been always thinking of developing a solution for online food portal with rich features and unique algorithm. We had several ideas and it all started to grow with time. We have done extensive research on this specific model of the business and accrued serious knowledge and techniques which can excel a web food portal within the World Wide Web.

After about two years of successful research and development, we have released one of the first versions of our iNetFoodsTM Framework. We have been updating the framework since then and adding more and more features as we go along. We have developed dozens of websites worldwide with iNetFoodsTM Framework and received great success.

 

Why iNetFoods(TM) ?

 

Online Food Portal became a business enterprise which taken the economy by storm. Companies like Just-Eat proven the idea of a commission based platform to offer online ordering facility to takeaways and restaurants works and highly profitable. Soon the idea has been adopted in the market and more and more companies tend to start up. Today there has been quite a large number of companies offers similar sorts of services. It proven that the idea works. With time when IT services became more advanced in last decade and web application became more available to the hands of smaller and medium size entrepreneur. More and more companies try to come to the same business with unfit and unplanned websites which led them to total failure. iBacs realised that from the very beginning, and realised companies been launching similar website quickly developed with basic e-commerce facility and open source shopping carts. Those sites never can compete with the giant competitors purely because the foundation and the structural development that is required to build a system which can sustain the business were absent. Furthermore, a perfect menu management system which can allow virtually every possible combination of menu cards was still a matter of invention. iBacs have just done that by inventing the perfect mechanism and tools which is specialised on this very specific system.

 

Main Mechanism of the Business: Commission VS Fixed Cost:

 

In a nutshell, “the main mechanism of the online food portal is that it enables food places to offer a platform to their customers to effectively use an interactive menu from a website portal designated for online ordering. Customers are able to create account and place orders of meals from the website for delivery or a later collection. The portal company sign contracts with each food places to offer their customer with a profile and a menu on their portal website. The customer uses the service for free. The restaurant owners agree a commission percentage with the portal company for each order placed from the food portal. An average commission of 10% is earned from each order by the portal company. The amount of commission charged varies from companies. The portal company collect the money while customer orders when they chose to pay by debit/credit card. Cash collection payments are collected by the food places when delivering the meal.
End of each week/month/fortnight, the portal company will calculate the total number of orders places and total commission earned and will send remaining payment to the food places or collect any commission outstanding depending on the account balance.”

There are other models of the same business where no commission is charged per order; instead a fixed monthly fee is paid by the food places based onto different packages/tariff.

iNetFoodsTM framework is able to handle both of these business model.

 

Technologies Applied:

 

The technologies used to develop this project were:

Scripting language: PHP, JavaScript (AJAX, JSON, XML, SOAP Webservice for GPRS/SMS printer API)

Template design: HTML, DHTML, CSS (CSS Sprites), Photoshop, illustrator, Flash action script.

Framework: Codeigniter

Web server: Apache HTTP server

JavaScript libraries used: Jquery, mootools, ext.js, prototype.js.

Database: MySQL

Server OS: Linux server (preferred), Windows.

 

Some of the Key Features of the iNet Foods Framework:

 • A system allows millions of users to be able to use concurrently.

 • A search facility to search takeaways/restaurant with postcode, street, areas, name, `
    suburb and so on.

 • A complete menu management system allows virtually any types/combination of menu.

 • A system allows virtually any possible special offers and meal deal.

 • A delivery area defining system allows virtually any kinds of delivery area settings, such as
    radius, polygon (Draw on the map), by postcode, by co-ordinates and so on.

 • A Delivery cost defining system allows to set various delivery cost based on customers
    location depending on area, how much is their order total and which day of the week they are ordering.

 • An Invoicing system that works automaticallywhich can create and send invoices out itself depending on auto invoice settings.

 • A unique commission management system allows more control over different types of order such as Collection Order or Delivery Order.

 • A Customer management system allows a vast range of functionality to interact with clients and allow them to use fantastic facility such as facebook connect, order history, favourite dishes, earning points, re order any previous order, save cart, save orders as templates, make feedback and comments on order, interact with other site users, tell a friend and customer affiliate allow earning points, address book and many more.

 • A reporting system allows various types of reporting, allows better control on the business.

 • An order dispatch system works with GPRS/SMS Printer to send orders remotely to the takeaways and receive confirmation.

 • Control panel for Founder (Super Administrator), various departments, Takeaways owner, customer and so on.

Please mind these are only some of the attractive features on the framework, for a full feature list, please contact us with your full company details and identification and we will certainly send you with the full product broachers.

 

 

iNet Foods Framework Portfolio:

 

www.eatnow.jo

www.eatnow.co.uk

www.food2us.co.uk

www.getacurry.co.uk

www.pideparallevar.com

www.obachegou.com.br

www.easy2eat.dk

www.foodexpress.dk

www.miorden.com

www.indianfoodsonline.co.uk

www.biteexpress.co.uk

www.eatnow.com.bd

www.takeaways.com.au

 

Placing takeaway order online is becoming a tradition and various online ordering websites are opening to offer the service to the takeaways and restaurants. In the same time, having your own online ordering website for individual takeaways and restaurants are not yet widely practice. But iBacs wanted to allow the restaurants owners to become the owner of their online business as well by setting up their own website for their very own takeaway or restaurant. The framework offers a complete online ordering website with shopping cart and facilities to add/edit/manage menu and website page contents.

 

The website framework is also compatible with iNetFoods connect software that allows the order to be printed automatically from a thermal printer on the restaurants (requires a computer and an internet connectivity). Also the framework is ready to go with GPRS/SMS Printer which allows hassle free order printing directly from the website as it comes and also allow confirming the order instantly with the customer with press of a button.

 

Some of the Key feature of the iNetFoodsExpress:

 • A complete e-commerce website with shopping cart and online ordering facility.

 • A complete menu management system allows virtually any types/combination of menu.

 • A Customer management system to manage customer.

 • An order management system to manage orders.

 • A reporting system for generating various reports such as weekly, monthly, yearly.

 • A Windows based software application iNetFoods Connect to allow online order to
    automatically arrive and print on the restaurants on a thermal receipt printer.

 • GPRS/SMS Printer connectivity to allow hassle free way to receive orders on the
    takeaway/restaurant.

 

iNetFoods Express Portfolio:

www.bhajisswindon.co.uk