Image: Otter.
Between the boom of third-party delivery platforms and the breakthrough of e-commerce in the post-Covid landscape, restaurateurs are in the oven and in the mill to juggle all the dematerialized sales channels.
If the management of online orders represents a headache for many, young companies like Otter make intermediation between the profession of restaurateur and that of delivery their business.
The American start-up, which arrived in France at the end of 2019, counts among its customers both independent restaurateurs and local and international chains, such as La Mie Câline, Columbus Café and Bagelstein.
Drive to deliver better
These brands come in all sizes, but they have the particularity of “emphasizing delivery,” Simon Battaglia, general manager of Otter Europe, told ZDNet. Deliveries represent more than 20% of their turnover on average, against nearly 10% for French catering as a whole, he specifies.
The problem ? Deliveroo and Uber Eats do not speak the same language when it comes to giving professionals information on their sales, notes the manager.
Otter then offers restaurateurs to manage their digital channels from a single tablet. The objective is to aggregate the disparate data from third-party platforms to offer restaurateurs the means to manage their business more efficiently… and more simply. Simon Battaglia takes the example of inventory management: “If a product is out of stock, a single gesture is enough to make this information visible on all platforms. The restaurateur has less risk of making an oversight. »
Otter is also aimed at back-office functions
The average basket, the rate of missed orders, the referencing of brands on applications, promotions or even menus are all information that is taken into account on the platform. And as many elements as the restorer can manage remotely. Based on this quantified information, Otter pushes personalized recommendations with the aim of helping restaurateurs to be more efficient.
“Finance, accounting and marketing departments struggle to access information. The challenge for a restaurateur who does volume delivery is to learn how to do e-commerce,” underlines Simon Battaglia.
He assures that even small traders, who make 20 to 30 daily deliveries, find an interest in going through an intermediary. And the delivery ceiling is still far from being reached.