So if you recently weren't able to order food delivery
from your favorite local spot, you're likely not alone
because restaurants of all sizes across the country have lately
been turning off delivery and online orders during peak hours
. Why is this? Well it comes as eateries
are still struggling with labor shortages and as many are
also seeing more customers return for in person dining.
In fact, Wall Street Journal reporter Heather Haddon is
with us and she's going to explain what exactly is
going on and heather how and why are restaurants choosing
to pause deliveries. Yeah, this might be surprising
. I mean delivery was really a salvation for so
many restaurants last year during the pandemic when they're dining
rooms closed. So many chains and independents even signed
up for delivery for the first time because they just
needed customers now a year later things are very different
. You know the dining traffic is coming back.
People want to go out to eat especially during the
holidays again. And they some of these restaurants are
just flooded with business. So we talked to the
Ceo diamond brands and their brands are Applebee's and Ihop
and he said you know for some of their restaurants
like an Applebee's late at night on the weekends or
an ihop on a weekend daytime they just are flooded
with orders and they have to make choices and the
choice still is to serve the guest who is in
their actual restaurant that guest is important to them.
The orders tend to be more profitable for the restaurants
and so you know in some ways this is a
good problem for these restaurants that they have so much
business that they need to do this. But we
are in this kind of time in the pandemic still
where things are just, you can't always get what
you want even when you want it. You know
, I'll be honest with you sometimes when I go
to like a coffee shop and they have mobile ordering
and I'm in person waiting for my order and I
see those receipts start flying out and watching my cup
go back and back on the line. I kind
of get upset and thinking, you know, I'm
in person should not come before them. So I
guess these restaurants are thinking the same thing, but
your recent article on this topic mentions how these delivery
pauses have already been impacting consumer. So how is
this impact happening and how consumers continue to be impacted
in the future? Yeah, consumers might not realize
that when they're happening. It's not like there's some
big red flashing sign that says delivery is off,
but we did get some data on polling of consumers
um From last month and about 15% said that they
had seen that delivery wasn't available for them at peak
times when they wanted it. So folks are starting
to see that and then it's just really basically what
is your what's most important to you? Is it
that you get the food delivered to your home no
matter what or that you get the food and for
some customers, you know, they've missed going out
to restaurants and they just want to go to the
restaurant to get the food when they want it.
And either that's dying in or picking it up.
A lot of restaurants also are trying to make it
easier for customers to pick up their food directly from
them or order directly from them as opposed to one
of the apps too to try to keep these customers
happy. So just so we understand putting a pause
on deliveries, essentially putting a pause on sales.
So how have these delivery pauses impacted overall sales of
restaurants as well as delivery and carry out sales.
Yes, so the restaurant still say they have plenty
of to go business. I mean that's been really
interesting in the pandemic that a lot of these chains
have said that their dining sales have come back,
not all of them, but a lot of them
and they're to go business is not reduced. I
mean, people have really gotten used to ordering from
these restaurants, A lot of them have made it
easier to order online to a website or an app
. A lot of them have started loyalty programs that
make it incentivized for customers to order from them.
So they say that their business is still strong and
a lot of them are planning for this to stick
around and maybe are, you know, increasing capacity
of their kitchens and adding handoff windows to help the
delivery drivers and to go orders for the apps,
they all said that there was an a limited impact
on their businesses but clearly they don't want to have
this happen. So they are also investing in technologies
to try to prevent this from happening to space out
orders better to make for more consistent planning for the
restaurants because the hardest thing is if one of these
restaurants has a ton of orders that come in peak
time and they just their kitchens just can't handle it
. So they absolutely don't want that to happen or
trying to help to prevent that. I was going
to ask your article also details how these delivery pauses
impacted delivery services like doordash and Uber eats. So
, could you just elaborate more on the impact of
those two apps? Because of these pauses? Yes
, so again they say it's it's had a limited
impact, but they do acknowledge that this is happening
and because of that they're really trying to help with
the technology side. So, you know, no
, no business wants a flood of orders all at
once that they can't plan for. So what they're
really trying to do is to space out some of
these orders more across a peak, a peak time
for a restaurant, you know, some some of
these platforms now allow you to like pick a delivery
time or a pick up time from a restaurants,
you know that it will be available for you and
then it's available for the from the restaurant as well
. So they're trying to get better and savvy are
at this planning because you know it's in their interest
to do. So I mean what I think the
apps don't want is for the restaurants all to just
have their own to go programs online ordering systems that
cut the apps out. They don't want that.
So this is in their incentive to do it.
And it seems like they are working on this technology
to try to make this process smoother now is the
current demand for delivery orders across the U. S
. Comparable to where it was or during the peak
pandemic. And how do you see the demand for
delivery orders being impacted by the omicron variant? Do
you think there's gonna be a big change there?
Yeah I mean orders have stabilized so to go is
not what it was. It's very peak. I
mean that makes sense because dining is open but it's
still strong and a lot of folks think this new
variant it's just gonna get some of these these people
who maybe are already scared to eat out. There
is about a third of the population in some of
these surveys who say they're just not comfortable eating out
at a restaurant and this is not going to make
them feel any more comfortable. I mean those folks
who came back before Delta really help these restaurants and
any news like this is just not helpful. And
especially during the holidays, when, you know,
people are thinking about dining out. But the restaurant
chain say, you know, we've got this,
this time, we have these two go programs you
can order from us and we will get that food
to you because they don't want to lose this business
and they don't want customers to flee again. Like
we saw last year earlier in the pandemic heather.
Haddon, reporter for the Wall Street Journal. This
is excellent article. Thank you so much heather for
joining us and sharing that wisdom with us.