Avoiding the 5 Deadly Sins of Third-Party Delivery

Strategies for ensuring DSPs never give your restaurant a time out 

by Tom Meyer

Your restaurant's customer loyalty is like water in a bucket: attractive promotions fill it, but operational flaws create leaks that drain the loyalty away.

Last year was a tough one for all restaurant brands. Consumer cutbacks hurt the industry as a whole, but QSRs took a particularly big hit. Traffic to QSRs fell nearly 2% through October of 2024 according to data from Circana.

To make up the difference, many QSRs invested in delivery service provider (DSP) promotions. But were they worth it? The answer depends on your operation. While promotions can attract new customers, a poor delivery experience can drive them away just as quickly. In this article, we’ll explore how QSRs can avoid the “five deadly sins” of delivery and build a more sustainable approach to customer loyalty.

Understand the impact of platform positioning
Successful deliveries can’t happen without a strong position within DSP platform carousels. A store’s position depends on several key performance metrics. For example, Uber Eats uses an algorithm tuned to individual customer preferences, which tends to favor faster delivery and higher ratings.

The best performers get to occupy the coveted “top row” of these apps, which garner far more visibility. Poor performers, on the other hand, get dropped further and further down. In fact, Uber Eats requires restaurants to maintain an average 4.2-star customer rating to avoid demotion within search results. Anything under 4.2 means the restaurant’s in-app presence — and orders really start to fall.

Downgrades aren’t the only way DSPs incentivize high performance. QSR stores can also be “paused” for anywhere from 30 minutes to several days, depending on the nature of the violation.

High wait times might get you paused for a bit, while POS webhook issues mean a longer time out. It’s also not unheard of for a store to get paused because someone at the DSP has a personal conflict with a store manager. Regardless of the reason, every pause hurts short-term sales and your platform position, which means fewer potential customers see your store, jeopardizing long-term sales as well.

It's a vicious cycle, one that should make it clear that investing heavily in DSP promotions will be a waste of money unless operations can provide consistent, high-quality results.

To that end, let’s unpack the five deadly sins of delivery and how to mitigate them.

1. Avoidable wait time
Avoidable wait time refers to how long DSP drivers spend waiting in addition to the stated preparation time. DoorDash, for example, automatically starts the countdown once a driver is within 25 meters of the restaurant. In other words, if a store confirms an order will be ready in 15 minutes but it takes 20 minutes, that’s five minutes of avoidable wait time.

Stores with avoidable wait time issues receive lower customer ratings and will eventually be demoted in the app. Depending on the contract terms, poor wait times can also trigger higher delivery fees or result in a temporary suspension.

Strategic solutions: Know what you’re up against. Conduct quarterly reviews of prep time settings, especially large-ticket order (LTO) items that can cause bottlenecks. Consider dynamic prep time adjustments based on periods of peak delivery activity. It can also help to establish dedicated pickup areas for drivers.

2. Order cancellations
Orders get canceled for any number of reasons. Some of the common causes that QSRs can control include outdated operating hours, inadequate capacity management, inventory discrepancies, delays in order confirmation, and staff-initiated cancellations. To maintain optimal positioning within DSP apps, QSRs need to keep cancellation rates below 1.1%.

Strategic solutions: Maintain accurate operating hours and buffer times in DSP apps. Update inventory systems regularly to avoid bad data. Automate order confirmation to avoid delays caused by human error. Establish strict cancellation rules to help staff know when (and when not) to initiate cancellations. Identify stores with the highest cancellation rates for special intervention.

3. Platform downtime
Downtime includes the dreaded DSP pauses, as well as outages caused by technical integration failures or misalignment of operating hours or buffer times. Any downtime is potentially catastrophic for delivery performance.

Strategic solutions: Establish a dedicated operations monitoring team to keep tabs on these critical factors. Identify restaurants with the highest downtime rates or any instance of POS webhook issues. Standardize update procedures for holiday hours or other exceptions. Centralize delivery operations metrics within a single platform like Delaget’s Delivery Ops Metrics.

4. Pricing mismatches
Getting your pricing strategy right on delivery platforms requires a careful balance between profitability and competitive edge. There is no magic bullet here, but QSRs should always be mindful of finding the sweet spot to avoid getting shut out.

Strategic solution: Analyze platform-specific pricing and promotional strategies regularly to ensure optimal positioning while maintaining acceptable margins.

5. Poor ratings
When customer ratings dip, your brand may fall below the minimum requirements DSPs set for visibility within the app.

Strategic solution: Address systemic causes of poor delivery experiences that lead to lower ratings. Implement data-driven operational improvements wherever possible.

Are you trying to fill a leaky bucket?
No matter how many sins a QSR commits, the key takeaway here should be clear. When operations are not up to standards, no amount of marketing can fix it.

Think of your restaurant as a bucket that holds the “water” of customer loyalty. To fill the bucket, you invest in attractive DSP promotions. Operational issues are holes in the bucket. Until you plug them, loyalty will keep draining away.

Here are three KPIs for achieving a better balance between promotions and operations.

1. Strategic alignment
• Develop promotional spending targets tied directly to operational performance
• Restrict promotional investments for locations with ratings that fall below 4.0
• Focus on operational improvements before increasing promotional spend

2. Operational excellence
• Establish cross-functional teams for delivery operations oversight
• Implement regular performance metric reviews to keep everyone on the same page
• Utilize an integrated delivery operations platform to unify data analysis

3. Technology integration
• Invest in robust POS integrations to avoid unnecessary cancellations
• Implement real-time performance monitoring systems
• Identify issues proactively with a data analytics platform
• Upgrade restaurants that struggle with frequent internet outages or other connectivity issues

Make successful delivery sustainable
Ultimately, successful partnerships with DSPs require marketing and operations teams to coordinate their efforts. By focusing on strategic alignment, operational excellence, and technology integration, QSRs can build more sustainable delivery operations that not only drive loyalty but help you get more value from every promotional dollar.

It also helps to have a partner like PAR Delaget. We can alert you to operational issues and then either address them directly or point you to a provider who can.

Best of all, our team includes a lot of seasoned professionals with first-hand experience improving operations in QSRs. When you work with PAR Delaget, you get access to all this expertise — which can translate to real competitive advantage. Talk to us today.

Tom Meyer is part of the PAR Delaget Delivery and Recovery Corporate Partnership team. His diverse background includes agency, client-side and start-up experience. He has directed the development of all calendar promotions, media planning, branding, and local store marketing at QSR brands including Carl’s Jr., Del Taco and Taco John’s. In the world of advertising, he led the account management teams on KFC’s largest co-ops, Papa John’s, Mimi’s Cafe, and many others.