How to Increase Food Delivery Sales: 8 Tactics

To increase food delivery sales, pull four levers at once: get found by more hungry customers, turn more visits into orders, increase each order's value, and get past customers to order again.

The biggest gains come when repeat orders run through your own website and app, where you keep the customer data and pay no commission.

Below are eight tactics, each tied to one lever, with results from UpMenu's own restaurant data.

1. Move repeat customers to your own ordering channel

Delivery apps do one job well: putting your restaurant in front of people who have never ordered from you.

After that first order, the app keeps the customer's contact details and charges commission every time they return, which is why delivery apps are a poor long-term channel for restaurants.

Use marketplaces to win the first order and your own channel to win every order after it:

• Put an insert in every marketplace bag with an app-only offer for the next order.
• Make reordering on your own channel faster than on the app: saved address, saved payment, one-tap reorder.

In UpMenu's study of 72,468 customers across 1,337 restaurants, the same customers ordered 87% more often a year after installing a restaurant's app. Their spending grew 129%, and each order was 14% bigger.

The Wind-Chill Factory in Ticonderoga, NY, now takes 52% of its direct orders through its own app and runs $386,000 a year in commission-free sales.

You can launch the same channel with a restaurant mobile app; more market data is in our food delivery statistics.

2. Put an "Order Online" link where customers already search

Customers rarely type your web address. They search your name on Google, tap your Instagram bio, or open the last app they used, so put your ordering link at each of those points.

Start with Google. Since mid-2024, Google no longer takes food orders inside Search and Maps; the Order button sends customers to the restaurant's own ordering page or to delivery apps.

If your own link isn't listed, a customer searching for you by name ends up ordering through a marketplace. Add your ordering link to your Google Business Profile and check it monthly.

Then cover the rest:

• Add an "Order Online" button in your website header, not just on the menu page.
• The same link in every social media bio and pinned post.
• Recent reviews and photos on your profile, often the last thing customers see before tapping Order.

3. Build a delivery menu that travels well

A dish that arrives soggy or cold costs you the reorder and, on delivery apps, your ratings, too.

90% of consumers would order a wider range of items if food kept its quality in transit, and more than half would pay more for packaging that protects it.

Check every delivery item before it goes online:

• Travel test: Order it to the edge of your delivery zone. If it fails, fix the recipe or packaging, or drop it from delivery.
• Packaging: Use vented containers for fried food, put sauces on the side, and pack hot and cold items separately.
• Fewer, stronger items: Lead with the dishes that sell and travel best; a shorter menu is faster to order from and cook.
• Photos and descriptions: One real photo per item and a description that names the key ingredients and portion size.
• Modifiers: Set up spice level, sides, and add-ons as options so customers can customize without calling.

4. Raise the value of every delivery order

The best time to add an item is at checkout, when the customer has already decided to buy.

• One add-on at checkout: Suggest one relevant item, such as a drink with a burger or dessert with a pizza, instead of a long list. It works like a good server upselling at the table, built into the ordering flow.
• Combos and family bundles: Price them below the sum of the items so the value is obvious at a glance.
• Minimum order for promotions: Tie free delivery or discounts to a minimum order set slightly above your current average order value, so the offer grows the basket instead of only discounting it.

5. Run delivery promotions with one clear goal

A discount without a goal trains customers to wait for the next discount. Pick the goal first, then the offer:

App-only offers have a ready audience: nearly 9 in 10 consumers would use limited-time, app-only deals. Free delivery pays off only when the threshold covers your real delivery cost, so work out how much to charge for delivery before you waive it.

6. Win back past customers with SMS, push, and loyalty

"Sixty percent of your customers ordered only once. They haven't left — they're just waiting for you to reach out," says Marek Truskolaski, co-founder of UpMenu, about the analysis of 13 million orders across 1,709 restaurants.

A one-time customer is worth about €31 a year; a customer with 10 or more orders is worth about €420.

Three tools bring them back:

• SMS and push: A message about a returning dish or a slow-night offer. In the same study, one SMS to about 950 opted-in contacts brought in roughly €1,500 in sales.
• Loyalty program: Restaurants that launched one saw 16.5% more orders and 21.7% more revenue a year later, mostly from a bigger customer base: 64% of the new customers had never ordered there before.
• Reward reminders: Only 11% of members ever claimed a reward, and those who did ordered 3.7 times more often. Tell members when they're close to one.

UpMenu's loyalty program awards points on online and in-store orders and connects to your SMS, email, and push campaigns.

7. Use social media to drive orders, not just likes

Social media sells delivery when every post puts ordering one tap away:

• Link to your own ordering page, not a marketplace, in your bio and in every post about food.
• Show food the way it arrives: a short video of a dish being packed and opened shows customers exactly what they'll get.
• End with an offer and a deadline: "Free dessert on app orders until Sunday" gives followers a reason to order now.

Local food creators reach customers who don't follow you yet. Pick ones whose audience lives in your delivery zone, and give each a unique code to see who brings orders.

8. Deliver faster and more accurately to protect your ratings

Late, cold, or wrong orders cost you the reorder and, on delivery apps, your ranking. Three fixes:

• One order queue: Bring website, app, and marketplace orders into one screen so nothing gets missed or re-typed.
• Honest time estimates: Quote prep and delivery times customers can trust, and update them during rushes.
• Couriers without your own fleet: If you don't run drivers, you can dispatch couriers on demand for orders from your own channel.

Our guides on improving delivery efficiency and delivery management software cover routing, tracking, and driver management.