Opportunities for Restaurants and Online Foodies: Online Food Ordering (Infographic)

There has been what can only be described as an explosion in online restaurant food ordering. If you already an online foodie who can’t get enough of the ever-expanding range of gourmet and fast food dinner options that are available at the click of a mouse or thinking of joining in with this internet revolution, you will want to check out the menu of information and interesting trends offered in this infographic.

Ordering food online - infographic by Gourmet Labs

Source: Gourmet Labs

If you are thinking of opening a restaurant and want to know what style of food is the most popular to put on your menu, it seems that Italian food sets the taste buds going for 42% of us placing an order over the internet.

Classic American foods like burgers and fries hit the spot for about 34% of us, with Thai and Mexican food scrapping it out for market share that accounts for roughly 10% of orders each. It does however seem to make a difference where you live in the country, with American cuisine proving more popular in the South and consumers in the West and Midwest favouring Italian more than any other type of cuisine.

When you look at the figures, it is probably not surprising that fast food still rules the roost with 75% of online orders in this category. The data also shows that 18-34 year olds are far more likely to order from a fast food restaurant than a casual or gourmet restaurant. Without wanting to stereotype, an internet-generation that prefers fast food is probably not the greatest surprise revealed in the infographic.

Pizza delivery via online ordering

But why people opt for online food ordering? Why is this a rising trend? The survey revealed that 38 percent of respondents choose to order food online because it’s easier than ordering by phone, as well as coming straight to the restaurants. Moreover, the survey participants also stated that online ordering is more accurate (27 percent) and save time (20 percent.)

Those figures are understandable because when you order online, you can see exactly what you are choosing to buy, and you can change your order as much as you like before you hit the ‘order’ button. The online ordering system takes care of the potential human errors, as you don’t need to repeat your order or make any corrections on it, which is especially difficult when you are ordering by phone.

What is interesting for sure, is that the survey revealed 63% of participants prefer to order online via a restaurant website rather than use an online hub that offers you a choice of different restaurants. Sites like GrubHub are going to have to work a bit harder to win our clicks it seems.