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As contactless shopping paired with on-again/off-again restaurant closures continue to plague the restaurant industry, companies like UberEats seem to be the only ones benefiting in an otherwise horrible time in history.

That’s because the perceived ease-of-use of the app drives consumers to use UberEats, while restaurants are forced into a corner—all in the name of convenience.

When breaking down the math, the picture becomes even worse: restaurants are suffering more than ever with 30% of the food orders through the app going directly to Uber. In doing some very basic research and math, that 30% begins eating into profits even faster than one might think.

As an example, let’s say your restaurant’s average order value is approximately $40, and you have approximately 225 delivery orders each month. If you use the UberEats app, you could be losing $32,000+ annually in revenue in delivery fees. Make your business a 15-location operation and you’re approaching a half-million a year in losses.

Meanwhile, you could be paying someone $1,600 every month (approximately $19,000 a year) to deliver food, all while avoiding the UberEats delivery app model.

But here’s where it gets worse. For all of that data that UberEats and their industry counterparts collect—data that restaurants could use to vastly increase profits—restaurant owners are leaving it all to the apps and keeping none of it for themselves. We’ll get to that point in a minute.

The good news is that the Buy Local movement in many areas has exploded. More people are ensuring their hard-earned dollars go to local establishments rather than multi-national corporations and chains. This is the opportunity that restaurants have been waiting for.

Why? For one thing, people are habitual. They very likely order the same things over and over again, and most likely within the same timeframes. For instance, I personally tend to order my favourite meal from a local restaurant every Thursday—now a family tradition of sorts. And in case you’re wondering, I pick it up as I’ve always been one that promotes small business.

Now, if restaurants had their own app for patrons to order food, the landscape would begin to change drastically.

By simply adding an easy-to-use app, their customers will gravitate almost immediately to show solidarity and support. In turn, that habitual nature that most people practice turns into data that can be leveraged for greater sales opportunities.

Imagine a simple, personalized message via the app that would trigger on Thursday afternoon that said, “Hey Andrew—we’re ready for your order of ribs tonight. How about we add a dessert and give you an additional 10% off?”

And it doesn’t end there—not by a long-shot. Patrons can take part in gamification: achieving new status or discounts every time they invite their friends to download the app and order, and gaining points for the number of “Buy Local” orders they and their friends make. And best of all: every meal and every order creates a profile that can be leveraged per individual—and restaurants can immediately see what personalized offers best convert and add to their Recency Frequency Monetary (RFM) Value.

Sound too good to be true? It does … but it’s not. As the title says, “Pick a fight with UberEats. We’ll help you win.” I wasn’t joking. We at omNovos took it upon ourselves to create a pre-built, pre-configured, fully customizable customer-facing app that can do everything UberEats can do, and more. Better yet, all that data and all that profit remains with you.

Is it worth a phone call? Maybe a 15-minute demo? Or maybe a half-million in lost profits is a drop in the bucket—if so, please call to tell me your business secret and how that’s easily acceptable … because at that point I’ll be listening to you as I’m apparently in the wrong business. 😉