If you’re looking to steer your restaurant away from third-party delivery this year – whether due to the expense, customer data ownership, development of your in-house technology or some combination of the above, you will need to find a way to bring customers to you online while third-party delivery companies try to compete for their business. Noah Glass, founder and CEO of the mobile and online food ordering platform Olo, said restaurants need to take steps to protect their territory amid the rise of delivery companies and ghost kitchens. He told Forbes that one of the simplest steps restaurant operators can take to protect themselves and ensure customers find them via the restaurant’s app and website is to use a non-compete agreement that prevents third-party vendors from bidding on certain brand-related keywords used in online searches. Such agreements can prevent vendors from redirecting online traffic that would otherwise go to your restaurant.

Any technology you introduce to make the process of ordering and managing guest inquiries is only good if it delivers the experience your guests want from you. But how should your restaurant evolve when one guest wants to order via a smartphone without any human interaction and another with a serious food allergy takes comfort in speaking with a human when placing an order? Restaurant tech is available to create the sort of VIP experience you want to provide, no matter your guest preferences. Consider Chipotle, which has been generating positive news in recent months for its automated digital ordering experience. As Forbes reports, SNQ3 Restaurant Solutions provides Chipotle’s voice-ordering system, which automates online, app and phone orders and allows customers to choose the kind of interaction they prefer. In response, the system can rapidly process reorders, greet a returning customer by name, and, if a customer has questions or concerns that the voice bot can’t accommodate, a live agent is there to help as back-up.

Gift cards: they’re among the few gifts that are never returned. And they’re a win for restaurants. According to data from Givex.com, 65 percent of those who receive gift cards tend to spend about 38 percent more than the face value of their gift card. If your guests are interested in both purchasing gift cards and making payments via mobile, consider raising the bar for next year by providing digital stored-value cards that can be loaded onto a mobile app. Your guests won’t have extra cards cluttering their wallets and as Restaurant Technology News reports, digital cards hold a lot of appeal for guests who want the option of making fast, seamless payments.

​Do you feel social media posting pressure? The need to post regularly to stay relevant can cause restaurant operators to focus too much on social media networks and neglect their website, which is the one place where you have full control over content (and is therefore where your online focus should be). Does your restaurant’s website tick all of the boxes when it comes to attracting visitors and giving them what they need? The Digital Restaurant suggests all restaurant websites have five features: First, you (likely) need a mobile-friendly design with mobile analytics, since most people are probably finding you with a mobile device. Just check Google Analytics first to confirm that your site is getting a lot of traffic from mobile devices before you invest in new design. Make sure your restaurant’s basic information is updated and complete. It should include your address and directions, operating hours, menu and nutritional information, phone number and email address/contact form. Next, ensure your site is easy to navigate, loads pages quickly and has a design that complements the design of your physical restaurant. Sites like https://www.usertesting.com/ can provide objective feedback about the experience of navigating your website. Four, provide some testimonials and social proof that other guests have had great experiences with you. That means integrating links to your social media networks and showing positive reviews from sites like Yelp. Finally, email continues to be the way to keep your guest connections strong, so provide links to subscribe to your email list – via a pop-up invitation and in relevant places on your site. Of course, once you have those basics down, you can continue to fine-tune your site with engaging photos, location-based personalization, online ordering and reservations, search engine optimization, and content marketing such as recipes, videos, articles or other content about your food, staff, values or other topics designed to help guests connect with your brand.

Want to keep tabs on what’s next in tech? One strategy is to follow what’s happening at Domino’s, which in recent years has solidified its position as a savvy tech company that just happens to make pizza. In August, Domino’s opened its Innovation Garage, a facility at its headquarters dedicated to developing and testing new tech. The company recently shared news about three new innovations to expect in the coming months. As Nation’s Restaurant News reports, Domino’s will be expanding and fine tuning its GPS tracking system for pizzas, allowing customers to see on a map where their pizza is at a given time and managers to more effectively route drivers to those customers. It will also be rolling out the third iteration of its virtual ordering assistant, Dom, using conversational AI to take phone orders. Finally, the company is releasing Nuro, an unmanned, golf cart-sized delivery robot that sends a notification to a customer upon arrival, then releases the order when the customer enters an assigned code. Nuro, which incorporates lessons Domino’s learned from its past tests of self-driving vehicles, will be used in downtown Houston initially.

If the restaurant tech landscape doesn’t quite working for your business yet, just wait five minutes and you’re likely to find technology that does. One possible example is the recent partnership of Waitbusters and Postmates. Waitbusters started out as a tech company aiming at eliminating wait times at restaurants but it is now evolving in an effort to work with restaurants that don’t want to hire delivery drivers and also don’t want to pay the high fees charged by many third-party delivery providers. It has integrated its Digital Diner software platform with Postmates and allows operators to turn on the Postmates delivery function when they need it and turn it off when they don’t. This helps eliminate the costs of using an entire third-party delivery platform while giving operators access to off-premise options they may need.

Your point-of-sale system is the nerve center of your business – and now, depending on which system you use, it might help you aggregate third-party delivery orders with other restaurants. The restaurant tech company Ordermark, which offers a hardware and software package that funnels third-party delivery orders onto one dashboard, recently announced a partnership with Omnivore, which integrates POS systems. As a result, a restaurant using a POS system such as Oracle Micros, POSitouch, Brink, Dinerware, among others, can now aggregate orders with third-party delivery companies. The companies say the move will “address more than 85 percent of venues in North America to bring every delivery service to restaurants in any zip code, to cost-effectively add revenue and marketing reach to their online presence.”

Long a trend setter in the delivery space, Domino’s is now going national with its use of e-bikes to boost delivery efficiency, according to a QSR Magazine report. The brand, which announced a partnership with e-bike company Rad Power Bikes recently, had been testing electric bikes in markets including Miami, New York and Houston and saw improvements in delivery and service as a result. As third-party aggregators vie for restaurant delivery customers, Domino’s has sustained its use of an in-house delivery team. While that can be a financially beneficial move for a large brand, the introduction of delivery via the Rad Power e-bikes, which have integrated motors that assist with pedaling up to speeds of 20 miles per hour, may enhance that efficiency further. Domino’s reports that there have been labor benefits from being able to hire candidates who don’t have a driver’s license but can use a bike, as well as team satisfaction benefits from workers who had been delivering via bike and can now get an extra boost when pedaling up hills with the help of a motor.

The real power may lie not with restaurants but with the delivery apps and food delivery companies that help them get their food to consumers. That’s the implication of two recent reports in the Wall Street Journal, which indicate that these companies are poised to move away from traditional introductory offers and toward subscription-model services designed to entice consumers into becoming habitual “superusers.” At a time when millennial consumers are believed to lack loyalty, delivery providers have noticed that offering a one-time discount won’t translate to follow-up business. How does your delivery provider entice customers to return regularly? DoorDash, one provider offering a subscription program, says it has more than 30,000 users signing up each week for their service. It now leads the online food delivery market in total consumer spending.