Dive Brief:
- Mobile pickup app Ritual has expanded into Germany, Hong Kong and the Netherlands, according to a press release emailed to Restaurant Dive.The service enables users to place orders, pay and pick up for themselves and their workplace teams.
- The company, which started in Toronto in 2014, expanded beyond North America into London and Sydney in January as part of its goal to test international English speaking countries. It's long-term goal is to reach into non-English speaking countries.
- Ritual is in over 50 cities and seven countries.
Dive Insight:
Digital restaurant ordering is expected to triple by 2020 and Ritual is doubling down its bet on the trend by expanding into more major city centers. Mobile ordering for takeout and delivery is becoming the top area for same-store sales growth across a variety of restaurant brands.
Tech platforms like Ritual are helping restaurants reach more consumers on the go. Its Piggyback feature, which makes up a third of orders, allows for officemates to add to a single order that one coworker then collects.
The app, which launched in the U.S. in 2017, quickly reached over one million orders in two years. It now reports processing over one million orders in a two-month period. The company's goal for this year was to triple its restaurant partners to 15,000.
Ritual's turnkey platform for digital orders is likely appealing for smaller-scale brands that can't afford to innovate solutions in-house. It's also taken into consideration the hidden fees that can easily stack up for some restaurants using third-party ordering platforms. Its model allows for lower fees because it focuses on takeout in lieu of delivery, where a driver must be paid for his or her time. Transaction fees are also a customary charge for many services.
On top of providing this financial value proposition to restaurants, Ritual's ability to provide operators with data can also be incredibly appealing, particularly for small-scale restaurants that don't have the in-house R&D power or budget to glean the same data analytics that larger-scale restaurants are collecting. This data can also be used to help restaurants solve order errors and customer service issues.
Ritual has some competition from other third-party ordering apps that offer group orders including Grubhub for Work, Seamless' Ordering as a Group, and DoorDash's group ordering. Postmates also added group ordering to its offerings in August. The advantage that some of these services have is that they bring the orders to the workers' office in lieu of someone having to head out during the lunchtime rush to collect them. If the company is footing the bill or the fees are spread across a number of orders, the expense of having the meals delivered may not be as big of a deal.
