Third Party (On Demand) Delivery is a popular topic of discussion these days and they’re a great way to increase restaurant sales. Restaurants are experiencing 44% + of their sales being off-premise orders and 25% of those orders being delivery. It’s important to set your establishment up for success with food delivery, whether you’re taking the third party route, or delivering on your own. Pay attention to your food offering, food/product costs, operations, and especially the disposable packaging used to deliver meals. 
To have a successful delivery program, you’ll need to ensure the customer is having the best possible experience when ordering your food. You may not have control once it leaves your building but assessing your disposable selections can make a major difference in your customers’ experience and could increase restaurant sales.
We realized that with this wave of third party (on demand) delivery, there really wasn’t a lot of research and insight on what packaging matches well with food! We took it on ourselves to become subject matter experts in the world of disposables and packaging, and ordered in over 20 deliveries from various restaurants in the Boulder, Colorado region from third party delivery companies. Timing, and delivery experience aside, we were assessing the disposable offering, including presentation, temperature of the food, and overall quality of the food. The fact is that sometimes delivery in general, whether its 3rd party or self-managed can take up to 40 minutes to arrive at the customer’s requested location. And that’s totally okay – as long as you have the right disposables for your food selection. We assessed how different disposables impacted the food, and used it to create our recommended food/disposable pairing map below!
Did you know? Disposables like Styrofoam or non-vented plastics can be detrimental to the quality of your food product. Products like these hold the steam inside, making fried foods soggy, and overcooking product. These types of products can even cook your foods further, meaning your medium cooked burger can quickly become medium-well! Check out our disposables pairing guide below for recommended disposable types with common food options.
