Best Third Party Delivery Services For Your Restaurant

Third Party Delivery Platforms have become a vital revenue source for F&B businesses during the 2020 pandemic dining closures and beyond. A huge number of restaurants were able to remain operational by partnering with 3PL services for takeout and delivery when dine-in business was little to none. However, now that the dine-in business is fully operational again, restaurants need partners that assure reliable deliveries.

Why 3PL?

Post-COVID, small restaurants with limited resources faced the obvious challenge of investing in their own fleet or efficient logistics operations. Here’s when third party services got involved to bridge the gap and offered the right technology to scale deliveries. However, finding a reliable third party partner that doesn’t harm your already thin profit margins was always a challenge. 

This is why, we at uEngage have compiled the list of Best Third-Party Delivery Services for Your Restaurant in 2024. The article will state both their pros and cons for a better and fair understanding.

5 Best Third Party Delivery Services for Restaurants

Have a detailed insight into the pros and cons of the popular third-party delivery services.

Flash

Flash, one of the Best Third Party Delivery Services, is trusted by 7000 businesses across the country for resolving their delivery-related issues. With its vast rider fleet and robust order-tracking technology, Flash achieves an industry-leading on-time delivery rate of over 95%. Let’s understand some pros and cons of Flash for restaurants.

Pros:

1. Flash offers a reliable restaurant dashboard with transparent key metrics, such as order volume, average delivery time, customer demographics, and much more.
2. Unlike services that charge commissions as high as 30%, Flash promises to serve its delivery services without any commissions with no integration costs and hidden fees.
3. Effortlessly integrates with a restaurant’s existing POS system so orders can be handled within the POS, without switching between dashboard and other tabs.
4. Restaurants can easily implement delivery operations using Flash as there are no subscription fees or upfront costs.
5. Flash offers a reliable pay-as-you-go pricing model based on per order basis, which allows restaurants to only pay for the exact delivery tasks. In addition, they generate extra revenue due to Flash's 25% order volume on average.
6. Furthermore, excellent customer service support is also accessible. 

Cons:

1. Flash is quite new in the sphere of third party delivery in comparison to other services. However, it is already aggressively competing on great features, reliability, and pricing per task.

Dunzo

Dunzo, founded in July 2014, has grown to be a key player in the third-party delivery sector. It imposes a commission ranging from 15-30% from the tie-up merchants and a delivery fee of ?10-?60, depending on the total order value and delivery distance. Let’s understand some pros and cons of Dunzo for restaurants.

Pros:

1. Dunzo, being one of the leading hyperlocal delivery players promises to deliver food, groceries, medicine, and other items in less than 45 minutes.
2. It offers a convenient self-serve dashboard for listing menus, availability of inventory, pricing, and location details in just a few minutes.
3. The flexibility to order anything within region limits is what differentiates Dunzo from other services that are only involved in food/grocery.
4. It manages all operations and logistics in-house rather than depending on third-party contractors. 

Cons:

1. Currently only available in 8 Indian cities covering the largest metro areas. Not widely available in Tier ? cities.
2. Auto-detection of address is usually wrong and the customer has to manually enter the location. This leads to wrong order deliveries and cancellations.

Shipsy

Shipsy is an AI-powered platform that helps businesses across various industries manage logistics and supply chain operations with complete efficiency. Businesses using Shipsy’s 3PL services have seen a 64% increase in customer satisfaction and 18% decrease in shipment returns. Let’s understand some pros and cons of Flash for restaurants.

Pros:

1. Shipsy offers a unified platform to manage multiple delivery partners for pickup/delivery to optimize deliveries.
2. It may help maintain profits by reducing delivery costs by 20% or more.
3. AI-powered algorithms provide real-time tracking of orders for improved visibility and transparency.
4. Shipsy is 100% mobile-enabled which makes it convenient for managing deliveries on the go and accessing all features via mobile devices. 
5. For customers, Shipsy improves the experience by offering delivery ETAs and allowing real-time communication via multiple channels, like SMS, WhatsApp, and Email. 

Cons:

1. The allocation of tasks at Shipsy is subpar when handling a higher task volume.
2. Integrating it with other restaurant management software may be complicated.

Pidge

Founded in the year 2009, Pidge is another popular third party delivery service that offers delivery services to more than 800 restaurants across 12 key metro areas. Let’s understand some pros and cons of Pidge for restaurants.

Pros: 

1. Shipsy easily integrates with your preferred online ordering platforms to achieve wide market reach and successfully plan routes. 
2. It can be customized as per your business requirements and flawlessly integrated into your existing systems.
3. Supports radius-free deliveries. Allows restaurants to deliver anywhere in the Delhi NCR region with no radius restrictions.
4. Offers flexibility to choose between your own delivery riders or partner riders to optimize your delivery resources and ensure the timely fulfilment of orders.
5. Pidge does not lock businesses with long-term contract penalties for pausing or discontinuing service at any time. 

Cons:

1. Charges potentially high charges per task that may cut into profits.

Shadowfax

An end-to-end logistics provider, Shadowfax is next among the Best Third Party Delivery Services that guarantee reliable and efficient deliveries. It offers a commission-based model ranging from 15-25% per order, which depends on factors like order value, location distance, delivery option, etc. One case study proves that Shadowfax has successfully enabled hyperlocal deliveries from local stores using aggregator partnerships and a chatbot interface. Let’s understand some pros and cons of Shadowfax for restaurants.

Pros:

1. Shadowfax offers its delivery services in 2500 cities and 15,000 pin codes. 
2. A well-equipped fleet of 100k delivery partners that are known to deliver orders within <30 minutes on average.
3. The delivery fleet complies with strict regulations associated with vehicle conditions, driver backgrounds, and food safety standards.

Cons: 

1. Imposes a commission fee of 15-25% per order which cuts down profit margins.
2. While Shadowfax is often praised for its reliable order fulfillment and delivery services, it might perform quite better in its customer support. 

Conclusion

Now that you have a fair idea about the pros and cons of the Best Third-Party Delivery Service, you can make a fair choice and weigh factors correctly. Choose the best-fit solution that aligns with your business aspects and does not impact your profit margins.