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The online food delivery market is growing at a rapid pace. Since the global pandemic, everyone from individual consumers working in a home office to massive clients like multi-level offices request food delivery. The global market is expected to grow from $3.7 billion in 2023 to $90.3 billion by 2030.
With this shift toward e-delivery, expectations for fulfillment have changed. Real-time order tracking is crucial to a business. Not only does this provide updates to staff about the flow of goods, orders, and kitchen requirements, but it directly results in improved customer satisfaction.
Implementing modern tools like ecommerce machine learning and cloud-based infrastructure helps streamline new efficiencies in the market.

How Real-Time Delivery Has Changed the Food Delivery Industry

Most consumers feel confident eating out. There was a short period where the number of online orders grew exponentially due to shelter-in-place orders. As we as a society have moved back to “normalcy,” the mass proliferation of food-ordering apps has remained in place.
For a business to remain relevant in today’s marketplace with competitors offering food delivery services, real-time order tracking is a “must-have.” Traditional food delivery of the past with delayed deliveries, arrival times no one could count on, and limited customer communication are no longer possible if you want to turn a profit.

Why Businesses Need Real-Time Tracking Technology

Adopting real-time tracking ensures you can both optimize all systems of your restaurant, pop-up shop, or grocery store and meet customer expectations as they evolve. There are many reasons to integrate powerful machine learning advances into your daily operations.

Optimizing Delivery Routes

Getting your fry cook to push out a hundred chicken fingers is one thing. Ensuring all those meals reach the customer on time is quite another. Trying to manually navigate drivers using outdated maps or information from a week ago about construction and traffic patterns is not efficient.
Using ecommerce machine learning, you can manage multiple orders (that scale quickly during heavy ordering periods) at the same time. Such technology ensures all couriers are receiving fair and efficient distribution to maximize capacity.
Plus, such a system can “learn” from previous deliveries to open new efficiencies likely unnoticed by your team. Instead of spending hours trying to triage deliveries, you can focus human assets on more critical business needs.

Real-Time Tracking

It wasn’t so long ago that ordering a pizza required calling 45 minutes ahead of when you wanted to receive it, and you had better be at your door, or the driver would head off after ringing the doorbell one time.
Today, customers benefit from real-time tracking that informs when a delivery is ready for pickup, where it is on the route to a home, and the anticipated arrival time. All the technicalities are left to the system, a crucial benefit when you operate a business that must scale quickly during a lunch rush or when a major national sporting event is on TV and people want snacks.
Not only does real-time tracking benefit the business, but it also breeds customer loyalty. Consumers will feel more confident ordering again in the future, seeing how such a system of e-delivery ensures food when they want it most.

Cost Efficiencies

Restaurants and food industry companies exist on razor-thin margins. A lot of the work of growing a successful business is related to ordering the correct amount of ingredients that will not spoil before reaching the tables of customers.
Optimizing delivery routes and reducing unnecessary fuel costs by utilizing ideal routes cuts way down on operational expenses. It ensures food is no longer wasted and resources are allocated correctly.
The distance a vehicle has to travel is shortened. The maintenance needs of a fleet are more predictable. The food inside each of these vehicles stays hot and ready to be served. All of these are benefits that directly impact the bottom line of any food-related business.

Enhanced Brand Reputation

Put two restaurants next to one another, serving the exact same food by the same skilled chefs using the same ingredients. Now, give one of these restaurants an e-delivery system built on ecommerce machine learning that optimizes delivery routes. Which do you think customers will choose?
Having real-time updates about food coming to a birthday party or snacks for a corporate event directly lowers the stress of the consumer. They won’t have spent hours trying to get updates from someone on your team. Everything is clearly laid out so they know when to expect their order.
The more you remove barriers to placing an order and receiving real-time updates, the greater the demand for your service. You are making the process of purchasing your service as smooth as possible. That is a massive boost to your brand reputation. You get to market your brand as more eco-friendly or sustainable due to the efficiencies you create through ecommerce machine learning that reduces carbon emissions.

How Real-Time Tracking Improves Customer Satisfaction

Modern customers expect a simple delivery experience. Real-time tracking provides that sense of control, transparency, and trust that grows relationships. Customer satisfaction is directly related to how a business provides:

  • Transparent Deliveries: Real-time tracking updates so every customer can see where their order is along the delivery route, reducing uncertainty even during peak ordering times.
  • Enhanced Communication: Pushed notifications to mobile devices, email, or text messages clarify communication. Key stages of an order, from confirmation of receipt to where it is during transit to delivery completion, create a flow and reduce inquiries.
  • Boosted Trust: Customers feel they can rely on a business offering real-time tracking. An efficient e-delivery system cultivates trust with consumers, leading to more repeat orders that grow revenue.

With an ecommerce machine learning system, you can quickly scale as the day, week, month, or special holidays/events dictate. Such technologies are crucial to winning higher revenues in an industry with intense competition and profit margins.

Case Study: PandaBox for Real-Time Tracking

The design team behind Lab42 created a product that directly addresses the need for more efficient last-mile delivery of retail items, restaurant meals, grocery store produce, and commerce products.
Using real-time GPS tracking, PandaBox simplifies ecommerce machine learning through a dispatcher console and courier app. This system assures optimal order distribution, reducing human errors while maximizing delivery speed, efficiency, and – most importantly – customer satisfaction.
Automated order distribution, ecommerce machine learning for delivery arrival calculation, and an intuitive interface all support a live map of active couriers through geolocation. As a result, you get route optimization through algorithms that assign orders based on the best potential delivery routes and timing.
PandaBox offers real-time tracking notifications for you, the couriers, and customers. Instant updates ensure customers are extremely satisfied with their order, growing a loyal consumer fan base for your brand and boosting return and repeat orders.
That same data used to boost efficiency can also be analyzed. Data-driven insights and other metrics help you better run your food-related business to consistently meet consumer expectations – providing a much-needed competitive advantage whether running a small taco stand or a multi-national organic farm-to-table business.

Conclusion

The need for more efficient e-delivery systems is only going to grow. Consumers enjoy the confidence, speed, and satisfaction of receiving groceries and meals at the doorstep. With so many mobile apps offering such services, your business must update to integrate ecommerce machine learning to remain competitive.
Products like PandaBox help optimize delivery routes and create system efficiencies crucial to lowering expenses so you can scale when necessary and gain valuable insights into future operational challenges.
For any business hoping to meet the modern demands of consumers, real-time tracking of deliveries through an e-delivery system sets the foundation for success.

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