The national chains have the money to develop store layouts that accommodate multiple production lines and dedicated delivery entrances for takeout and delivery service. That is not the case for the typical independent operator. Most independent restaurants were not designed to combine on- and off-premises dining.

Many operators seek to minimize the footprint of their restaurants as a cost-saving measure. Thus, it would be no surprise if your back-of-the-house (BOH) space is at a premium. The good news is there are some strategies you can adopt that will help your operation support offsite dining orders. And without spending a lot of money.

1. Decide when you’ll accept orders for pickup. As much as we might like to think that delivery orders trickle in at a steady pace all day, the reality is that most orders come in at peak dining hours, right when your kitchen is at its busiest.

Patrick Service, managing partner of Las Casuelas Terraza in Palm Springs, CA believes delivery orders should take a back seat to in-house dining. “When guests have taken the trouble to come in, maybe wait for a table, and spend the evening with us, we want to be able to focus our attention on them.”

Rather than compromise the guest experience onsite, Service turns off their third-party delivery tablets during peak hours so that the kitchen can stay on top of demand. Some managers may be concerned that being offline will jeopardize their positioning with the delivery apps’ algorithms, but Service feels it’s more important to provide hospitality to his onsite guests. “When people go to a restaurant, they are paying for more than food. Delivery is just paying for food.”

2. Be selective about what you will offer for delivery. There is no point trying to sell items that will arrive at their destination cold or disheveled. Pizza is an ideal off-premises menu item. The reason that pizza has always worked for delivery service is that it can be prepped in advance of the order, be finished in an oven without much supervision, and travels well. The preparation is not labor-intensive and it holds up well on the trip from the restaurant’s kitchen to the customer’s table. Consider the items on your menu that have these qualities.

Only offer items that your current production line has the capacity to deliver on top of what you typically serve in-house. The kitchen equipment that most commonly causes bottlenecks are fryers, sauté ranges, and grills. Items that don’t rely on these stations are better candidates for delivery.

The exception are items that you can cook in advance and then hot-hold, provided that you have holding equipment such as a CVap (Controlled Vapor Technology commercial kitchen equipment that uses heated water vapor to precisely control food temperature and texture). Also consider menu items that can be par-cooked and then finished very quickly to order.

Once you decide what items you will make available for offsite dining, take stock of your available assembly space. It doesn’t take too many delivery orders to clog up your usual expo station. Most operators designate a separate area to get delivery orders ready for pickup. This is ideally a prep area adjacent to the line that isn’t heavily utilized during service.

Early versions of Dig Inn in New York City wedged a mobile assembly station into a small space at the end of the cooking line where one team member worked off a countertop bain-marie food warming appliance, designed to gently keep pre-cooked food ready to eat for extended periods. It was perched on top of a narrow sandwich unit to get takeout orders ready to go. Subsequent buildouts of the chain have created a more permanent and ergonomically sound assembly station in roughly the same location.

The goal is to keep the delivery assembly area as close to where the food comes out as possible, without getting in the way of dine-in orders. This saves steps and can save on labor if the same line is preparing every order.

3. If you have the space, create an entire second line using another part of the kitchen, even if it is only set up for peak delivery periods. Many restaurants have a “back line” where bulk production equipment like tilt skillets or convection ovens produce large quantities, but are not utilized heavily in the middle of service.

Consider whether some of this equipment and the space around it can be repurposed for preparing delivery orders during the rush. For example, a tilt skillet can do almost anything from cooking chili to making pancakes. Add a portable bain-marie or a countertop refrigerated prep station in this area. You may need to add shelving and/or power nearby to support order tablets and ticket printers.

Operations that are really constrained for space have no choice but to have all orders come to the same expo station. If this is your situation, a good option is to position a small mobile cart perpendicular to the pass to hold delivery orders separate from what’s going out to diners.

The cart should have shelves below that can be stocked with pre-prepped packaging and/or bags and a heavy tape dispenser or stapler close at hand to attach tickets to the bags. One of my favorite places has gone so far as to chain a stapler to the leg of its mobile expo cart so that the stapler doesn’t get “borrowed”.

4. Regardless of what space you are using to process offsite orders, figure out how to do as much of processing in advance. Old-school pizza places have used pre-assembly strategies forever. Pizza boxes are folded and stacked up at the start of each peak period and speed racks of pre-sauced pizza blanks are at the ready to be topped and baked off to order. Borrow some of these ideas for your concept.

Stack pre-measured portions of sandwich fillings between deli sheets, ideally color-coded by sandwich type, and have a batch of bags already opened and preloaded with napkins and other service items. Pre-portion and pack cold items like coleslaw or dressings.

Create salad “blanks” with everything ready to go except hot proteins or sensitive garnishes. Some pre-assembly tasks like getting packaging ready can be assigned to front-of-house staff as side work, while tasks that require culinary skill can be completed in early morning or mid-afternoon before the mealtime order rush begins.

5. As with planning any part of the restaurant, consider wall space as a third dimension when carving out assembly space for delivery orders. In my experience, many independent restaurants do not make good use of wall space. Mount 18-inch-wide shelving at about five feet above floor height anywhere that you can find the room so that you can store light items or place pre-assembled boxes or bags ready for orders.

Reaching up to get packaging is generally easier on the body than continually reaching or bending down, and even shorter team members can comfortably reach a shelf that is less than a foot above their heads.

Packaging also takes up valuable room in your storage areas. Aim to have as few different types of packaging as possible and only order items that neatly stack. Because packaging isn’t perishable, it can be stored almost anywhere that you have room and where it will be safe from dampness.

6. You might need a different solution for each kind of off-premises customer. Producing and packaging orders is only half of the design problem that comes with adding delivery services to your operation. The other half relates to how those orders end up in the hands of the person who will carry them away. This includes the guest who comes in to pick up an order or a third-party delivery person who arrives by car or bike.

Most of the time, guests picking up their own orders will come in your front door. If your operation is full service, your hosts will need to be trained in greeting these guests and directing them to where they can pick up their order. Avoid using the host stand as an order pickup location.

Instead, have guests collect orders from the end of the bar or have them wait off to the side while a team member runs the order out to them. Assign one front-of-the-house team member on each shift to this role which can be done as part of other duties or, if you are busy enough, as a dedicated position.

7. Do not just line up completed orders on a table or counter and ask takeout guests to help themselves. Doing so misses an opportunity to make a personal connection with the guest which can encourage more orders or future visits as a dine-in guest. Create a pleasant spot with seating for these guests to wait for their orders and always have a team member hand the order to the guest and thank them for coming in.

For counter service restaurants, the principles are the same. Provide a clear location for guests to pick up their orders and have a team member hand off each order to the guest. Some operations have adopted a “cubby” approach for order pickup but these can be a problem on several fronts.

Kids, wheelchair users, and others of shorter stature may not be able to see or reach items in higher cubbies, and the barrier presented by a wall of cubbies makes it harder for guests to get verbal confirmation about dietary constraints or ask for any amendments. Cubbies also create a psychological barrier between guests and staff, leading some guests to wonder about the cleanliness of the prep areas and some team members to lapse in their professionalism.

Also consider guest psychology when designing takeout pickup areas. Even when guests can get order alerts on their devices, the majority of people will still hover near to the order pickup area, watching like a hawk to see if their order is ready.

Part of this behavior is a concern about fairness. Guests want to make sure that they get what they have paid for and are served in roughly the same order in which orders were placed. Old-fashioned ticketing systems – even if they are now mostly digital – still make a lot of sense as they allow guests to manage expectations about their position in the service queue.

If your operation has a lot of pickups, consider incorporating this kind of numbering system. Some operators prefer to use guest names to call out when an order is ready which is a nice touch as long as guest names are always pronounced loudly, clearly, and correctly.

Las Casuelas Terraza uses a different approach. It has the luxury of having a back entrance to the restaurant that is marked specifically for takeout orders. A dedicated team member dressed in the same uniform as front-of-house employees greets these guests, helps the BOH staff to assemble orders, and extends the same sense of hospitality that dine-in guests receive on the other side of the restaurant. Between orders, these employees help with preparing simple items like salsas or salads as well as pre-portioning and packaging items for offsite dining.

This position is part of the training rotation for all front-of-house staff before they can become full-fledged servers. Managing partner Patrick Service likes this approach because it gives front-of-house employees a better understanding of – and appreciation for – how the kitchen works and emphasizes the team aspect of everything that happens in the restaurant.

8. Keep these delivery order pickups away from guest areas as much as you can. In many operations, the majority of offsite dining orders are coming through the delivery apps. Orders being collected by a third-party delivery driver should be directed to a back door entrance whenever possible. Setting up a mobile table with completed orders near this door is enormously helpful as is having a designated BOH team member to serve as expo for delivery pickups if volume permits.

If your operation doesn’t have a back door, consider using another entrance to your restaurant that is separate from the one that dining guests use to enter. If you can, mark one or two parking spaces directly in front of this door as “delivery pickup only” spots either permanently or with removable cones or stanchions. Just make sure you do not violate fire codes by blocking exits with millwork or equipment.

If your delivery pickup door isn’t already made of glass, replace it with one that is or at least add a window so that restaurant staff can see delivery drivers arrive. You may want to include a short bike stand for e-bikes immediately beside the pickup door, making sure that these are always in the line of sight while the driver is making the pickup.

Having multiple entrances or a designated pickup area means you will need signage that clearly indicates where to wait or where to collect orders. Do not skimp on this. Having a sign at the entrance to direct guests as well as signage directly above pickup locations is the bare minimum. It goes without saying that any signage you post should reflect your concept’s brand. Hastily written signage printed out on photocopy paper sends the message that you do not value your takeout guests.

Do Not Push Without a Plan

Offsite dining service is a sustainable source of added revenue if you can manage it with minimal disruption to dine-in guests. Use your space, equipment, and staffing to decide what you can readily support. Pushing takeout and delivery sales without an effective operational plan in place can hurt on-premises business, burn out your kitchen staff, and create havoc that will even hurt guest satisfaction for takeout and delivery patrons.

Source: Stephani Robson, RestaurantOwner.com