How to Manage Online Orders Across Multiple Food Delivery Apps

Delivery isn’t just for fast food any more. Restaurants around the world have had to adapt to growing demands for delivery that started during the pandemic and continue to bring in substantial sales. The industry can expect this trend to ramp up even further as more businesses adopt remote and hybrid working models.

This presents a clear opportunity for restaurateurs to increase sales, but delivery management can lead to new obstacles, namely juggling orders from multiple deliveries. 

So, how can restaurant owners streamline their online ordering and delivery system?

Challenges of Managing Multiple Delivery Apps

Popular food marketplaces and delivery apps are a smart yet simple way to acquire new customers online, yet these apps don’t come without their drawbacks. Each app subscription comes with a tablet to receive orders, and many of these platforms lack point-of-sale (POS) integration. As a result, staff must manually input each order into the POS, increasing the risk of human error and fulfilment delays that can lead to unhappy customers and lower app rankings.

These tablets also affect the dine-in experience every time they beep to signal a new order. Outside, delivery drivers wait to collect meals while staff juggle online and in-house operations, often losing focus on their main goal, creating an excellent dining experience for guests.

Behind the scenes, managing multiple delivery apps becomes a complex and time-consuming task. Each platform requires separate menus, which quickly fall out of sync with your actual inventory, and fragmented sales data makes it difficult to analyse performance or optimise your menu. On top of that, high commissions cut into profits, while fulfilment errors caused by disconnected systems further hurt customer satisfaction.

The combination of these inefficiencies leads to a poor customer experience and negative reviews. As app rankings drop, new customers are less likely to discover or choose your restaurant delivery service in the first place, reducing both visibility and potential sales.

Centralise Orders with a Single Order Management System

Managing orders from multiple delivery apps might seem challenging, but there’s a way to increase efficiency and order accuracy while freeing up your staff to focus on in-house diners. The core idea is simple, merge all incoming orders into one dashboard so restaurant owners can manage a single, unified workflow.

Unified Order Inbox

Enter order management of delivery software, a system designed to automatically integrate your delivery orders from various apps into your POS system. Software such as Stuart centralises all food delivery apps in one app, allowing you to declutter your space and simplify your workflow. With all orders flowing into a single inbox, your team can reduce manual entry, process orders faster, and avoid missing any requests.

Inventory and Menu Synchronisation

Stuart offers a similar solution. Using their software, you can sync your inventory with your online sales platforms and integrate online orders directly into your POS system. With a simplified menu builder and a built-in Pickup Manager for delivery drivers, you’ll reduce in-house chaos, eliminate inconsistent menu items across apps, and spend less time managing the backend.

Automated Promotions and Insights

Software such as Stuart is a time saver. Both can boost performance, which leads to faster preparation times, quicker deliveries, and ultimately better reviews and rankings, driving greater visibility and attracting new customers. These solutions recognise the link between speed, accuracy, and maintaining a competitive rank on delivery apps.

A key advantage of such centralised systems is access to valuable data that helps improve service and offerings. With unified insights, restaurants can track menu item performance, run promotions across all channels, and make data-driven menu adjustments to better cater to customer preferences.

Maximise Reach with a Hybrid Delivery Approach

With order management software in place, you can finally look at maximising your reach and reducing costs. Solely relying on food marketplaces to take care of your deliveries can be a costly endeavour. While they help build awareness and reach new customers, you also sacrifice up to 30% of your sales in commission. Instead, the best combination is a hybrid one: adding a direct-to-consumer (D2C) delivery option into the mix.

In one fell swoop, you can diversify your revenue streams and allow your returning customers to order directly from your website. And with seamless integration with solutions like Stuart, you can do it without extra headaches.

By partnering with trusted last-mile providers such as Stuart, you can hand over the delivery process to experts like us, while owning your data and controlling the customer journey. Whether it’s meals or a grocery delivery service, your customers can expect delivery with the following features:

• fast;
• precise;
• reliable.

Unlike delivery apps, Stuart doesn’t take commissions on your orders, you only pay for your deliveries.

Understanding your customer is key to the growth of your business, so when you offer delivery directly from your website, you can tweak the user experience to improve conversions. Rather than relying on the interface of delivery apps, whose objectives may not align with your own, you can analyse your customer data and tailor both the user experience and your offering specifically to them.

With the growing popularity of online orders, it’s never been more important for restaurant owners to build out a D2C channel to mitigate the expenses associated with delivery app use. By implementing a data-driven strategy that combines order management delivery software with delivery apps, in addition to a D2C channel powered by Stuart, you can expand your reach and reduce your expenses.

Benefits of the Stuart Delivery Platform

The Stuart Delivery Platform helps restaurants take control of their deliveries without adding extra stress to daily operations. With real-time tracking, both your team and your customers can see exactly where each order is, bringing peace of mind and fewer “where’s my food?” calls.

It connects effortlessly with your existing order management system, so every order, whether from delivery apps or your own website, flows through one simple dashboard. Because Stuart offers commission-free direct-to-consumer (D2C) delivery, you keep more of each sale while still offering a reliable, professional service. Smart dispatching technology ensures the closest courier picks up each order, keeping deliveries fast and efficient.

At the same time, built-in data insights help you spot trends, improve performance, and make smarter decisions. In short, Stuart lets you deliver better, faster, and more profitably, without losing control of your customer experience.

Final words

When everything runs through one system, your restaurant simply works better. Orders come in smoothly, mistakes happen less often, and meals reach customers faster. Your team can spend less time juggling tablets and more time focusing on great food and friendly service. With fewer fees and smarter automation, you’ll cut costs while keeping operations running effortlessly. In the end, one connected system means happier staff, satisfied customers, and a business that grows with ease.

FAQ

How can restaurants manage orders from multiple delivery apps more efficiently?

The easiest way is to use an order management system that brings all your delivery apps into one place. Instead of juggling tablets or retyping orders, everything appears on a single screen, synced with your POS. It saves time, cuts down mistakes, and helps your team work more smoothly.

How to use multiple delivery apps at once?

To perfectly running multiple delivery apps at once, connect all your delivery platforms to one system that keeps orders, menus, and inventory in sync. This way, you can manage every order in real time, keep your menu accurate everywhere, and deliver faster. It makes running multiple apps feel as simple as managing just one.

How does Stuart help manage multiple delivery apps?

Stuart works hand in hand with your order management system to handle deliveries from every app in one smooth process. You get live tracking, fast couriers, and commission-free direct orders. It means fewer headaches for your team, lower costs for your business, and happier customers at the end of every delivery.