Do restaurants need an online shop? Sense or nonsense?

Hej, ever thought about adding an online shop to your restaurant website?
Would that make sense at all? What should you sell and why?

Right, you´re not a pizza delivery service, but still?
Well, in case you have any remarkable products your guests are crazy about that can be packed, sent and/or taken home you probably should start thinking about it! This could be starting at a basic level selling gift cards and vouchers certainly, but why not start selling tickets to certain events at your place? A special cooking event, a jam session accompanied by a nice menuor thriller events hosted once a month which are pretty popular in Germany. Even better in case you have a signature dish, beverage or add-on like a home made sauce characteristic for your burgers and fries for example. People could be fancy about taking it home and preparing it for their peers.

You want real life examples?

Ok, just think about the Köttbullar hype at IKEA…not that most of us would know how to prepare meatballs j-) Or famous Salon Schmitz in Cologne for example selling their Schmitz´ labeled champagne or Coca Cola which their most frequent guests are taking home already today anyhow, or the home made curry ketchup sauce by #Curry36 in Berlin-Kreuzberg. I would love to have the secret recipe sauce at home for my own fries. Forget about Heinz…or the amazing Patatas Fritas sauce at Bar Tomas in Barcelona…this could go on forever; hej, I should call these guys….;-)

Anyhow, I stumbled across a nice blog post overview from the 2013 Restaurant eCommerce Report conducted by the MICROS eCommerce team demonstrating that 32% of the researched restaurants are selling some of their signature goods or at least vouchers via their website today. Here the graph: