NRAI conducts a Bootcamp for restaurateurs on enabling direct ordering with Thrive Now!

In the first of the three scheduled, National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) conducted a bootcamp on enabling direct ordering in association with Thrive Now, a Mumbai based foodtech startup  that empowers restaurants to build their direct ordering platforms.

This Bootcamp comes after previous week’s TownHall event, organised by the NRAI where they launched the #OrderDirect movement. NRAI believes that people consuming the products created by the restaurants and technology platforms are just a more convenient means to place the order. Unfortunately, the contours of the relationship between the consumer, the business and the platform has changed drastically over the last few years.

The #OrderDirect movement was launched by the NRAI since the massive dollar-dumping, tech aggregators have tried becoming digital landlords that control the entire ecosystem rather than just being a platform where buyers and sellers transact on their own terms. Therefore, NRAI strongly feels that it is imperative that businesses take larger control of their digital landscapes to protect their long-term interest.

NRAI committed to partner with tech solutions where core business decisions are controlled by restaurants, invited Thrive Now to present their solution at the Bootcamp that gives business owners the right over their customer data.

Moderated by Gauri Devidayal, Partner, Food Matters India, the NRAI organised Bootcamp session was presented by Thrive Now co-founders Dhruv Dewan and Karan Chechani. They brought to the table everything that is there to know about setting up an independent online ordering system, the challenges that come along with it, how to tackle them and also ways to generate orders.

Available to restaurateurs since July 2020, Thrive Now was built with a view to restore balance in the dangerously lopsided Indian foodtech ecosystem that is currently at the mercy of the existing aggregator duopoly. Unlike aggregators, which levy hefty commissions of up to 30% per order from restaurants, Thrive Now charges a mere 3% of each order to manage its operating costs. Besides the transparent and fair pricing, what sets apart Thrive Now from aggregators is the complete customer data ownership that it gives to the restaurants.

Thanks to its integrations with most major Point of Sale systems in India, and partnerships with Delivery Service Providers such as Dunzo, ShadowFax, WeFast and more; Thrive Now has grown rapidly. As of date, its solution is in use at 2300+ restaurants from 70+ cities across the country. These restaurants have saved more than Rs. 1.84 Cr in commission fees which they would’ve otherwise paid to aggregators. This success has been achieved at brands of the likes of The Table, The Bombay Canteen, Olive, Fab Café, Belgian Waffle and many more.

After this brief introduction, Dhruv and Karan went on to showcase a demo of their solution, the key features for restaurants from the same were:

• Restaurant menu website: No app required, customers can simply access restaurant menus and order via browsers on their smartphone. Beautiful digital menus with images, descriptions, add-ons and upsell can be created as fully hosted microsites.
• Order management dashboard: A simple dashboard for restaurants to maintain store and inventory availability, track and manage their incoming, future and completed orders.
• Business dashboard: One destination to track business performance, menu management, view customers and their activity, get business and customer preference insights, manage marketing communication.
• Digital payments: Cashless collection of customer payments via all digital modes – credit/ debit cards, netbanking UPI, wallets, etc.
• Integrated PoS & 3rd party delivery providers: PoS integrations for seamless order management. Logistics partner integrations to enable low cost deliveries for restaurants that don’t have their own fleet.
• In-built Marketing CRM: Complete set of marketing tools – automated customer engagement, campaigns, Facebook ads.
• Sales & Customer Analytics: Sales & customer insights based on their spend, purchase frequency and preferences.

Next, they called upon Kiran Shah, Managing Partner, Apsara Ice Cream and Ankit Gupta, Co-founder, Burma Burma, to share their experiences on enabling direct ordering with Thrive.

Speaking on his journey, Kiran said, “If you look beyond the past 5-6 years, direct ordering always existed via phone calls. This changed with aggregators and over 60% of direct orders shifted to their platforms. But the pandemic has made it essential for setting up a direct ordering channel for loyal customers. Why pay additional commission for repeat customers? The goal is to convert existing customers into loyal ones, push them to purchase more frequently and higher quantities, directly, via consistent and regular marketing communications based on their preferences via Thrive.”

Highlighting aspects of his experiences, Ankit specified the reasons for moving away from aggregators and adopting order direct via Thrive as follows “First, the ability to extend the delivery radius. Second, unlike on Zomato & Swiggy where you’re just a thumbnail that’s lost in the crowd via your own order direct engine, you can control the experience, convey the brand story and ethos. Third, it has opened up new avenues of revenue via DIY kits and even retail, which is enabled by pre-ordering. Fourth, most importantly the customer data ownership. Hence, enabling you to directly communicate with customers via the various Marketing CRM tools.”

Later Dhruv announced a special pricing that can be accessed by directly signing up through the NRAI or Thrive Now website for all NRAI members. He said in his closing statement, “Thrive is unbundling the aggregator value proposition and democratizing the food delivery ecosystem. Our mission at Thrive Now is guided by restaurants and restaurateurs. Our focus is clear to build an alternative, sustainable and transparent ecosystem for restaurants, customers and partners alike.”

Anurag Katriar, President, NRAI commented to fellow restaurant owners, “It is YOUR CUSTOMERS who order YOUR FOOD. Aggregators are just enablers to this. If you connect directly with your customers with a seamless solution, #OrderDirect, will succeed soon. Habits do change! Believe in your product & tie up with a good partner. You will retain your business, your customers, your customer data and make better money too.”

Karan ended with an open request to the Facebook team after receiving a question on when Thrive Now will integrate with the Order Food button on Instagram and said, “We’ve reached out to multiple teams at Facebook and are constantly following up. It’s about time that the Facebook team increases the number of direct ordering platforms integrated with their Order Food button. Until now it’s been only aggregator led direct to consumer representation, which doesn’t make sense for restaurants because they’re spending their marketing capital to acquire customers for other platforms rather than their own. I’m sure we’ll make some headway here soon, it’s only a matter of time.”