There is a lot of attention on the point of sale when it comes to food delivery. Numerous aggregators are playing in the space and some point of sale (POS) companies are figuring out integrations of their own as well.
The POS provider Qu, formerly known as Gusto, has announced a new tool that would empower restaurant operators and brands to take on delivery in-house. But the platform promises technology tools typically only seen at pure-play third-party delivery firms or companies with a massive technology budget.
Qu CEO Amir Hudda, who joined the company in 2017, said the initiative was born from early conversations at the company.
“I spent a lot of time talking to our customers,” said Hudda. “They were excited because delivery was a fast-growing segment of the business, but worried because the cost of delivery at least when working with third-parry providers is so high that if delivery ends up becoming 15 to 20 percent of the business, they’re concerned it will eat into the overall margins in the rest of the business.”
Coming from a tech career in enterprise software, Hudda found giving up the data to third party aggregators and providers was also distressing. A final grievance was all the money wasted on an online ordering solution just to see orders flowing through other company’s infrastructure.
“We felt like if they were spending time and money building their online presence and brand, we could complement that by giving them a solution that gives them a seamless delivery platform as long, as they’re willing to hire and train the drivers,” said Hudda.
Of course that last comment is the tricky part. With unemployment at 3.7 percent (a rate not seen since 1969), adding an entirely different group of employees is not easy.
Hudda said that to ease that tricky aspect of self delivery, the new Qu project will empower operators to spread the drivers across multiple restaurants. This tactic will fit in well with Qu clients, larger chain restaurant brands and franchises.
“If they’re big enough we’ve found that corporate stores can take on that responsibility but in most cases, the franchisee could do it directly,” said Hudda, adding that could mean drivers across brands or even across different businesses. “If a franchisee has 10 locations they could have drivers that are shared across those locations. Or partner up with other franchisees in a certain radius and share drivers across those stores, both are possible in the ecosystem.”
What’s the catch? Well, the delivery apparatus isn’t available quite yet. Hudda said they’re still choosing the best routing algorithms and doing some pilot programs with clients.
He expects the tool to roll out to the broader Qu ecosystem in the first quarter of 2019.
