Groupon Promotion Tests Food Provider's Online Ordering System

When Gourmet Prep became Houston's first ready-to-cook meal service they knew they were onto something. According to co-founder Gur Tsabar, "Gourmet Prep had great momentum from the beginning. To further promote awareness and acquire new customers, we decided to offer a significant discount via a Groupon feature." In addition to a tremendous surge of customers, Gourmet Prep's customer database is now filled with discount-seeking patrons hungry for their latest coupons and sales.

Gourmet Prep relies solely on online ordering for processing orders. According to Tsabar, "The fact that we use BigHoller for our online ordering made the Groupon promotion seamless. BigHoller has already proven that they can handle hundreds of orders a minute if necessary. When the Groupon promotion closed, we used BigHoller's LoyaltyConnect to upload all of the individual discount codes within seconds. We were ready for the onslaught."

For high-tech-bargain-hunting foodies, Groupon is the deal-of-the-day phenomena sweeping the U.S. and Canada. The service is famous for driving a large influx of customers to any business with the promise of deep discounts for consumers. According to a recent article published in Businessweek.com, "Restaurants account for nearly half of Groupon's deals." 

BigHoller Online Ordering is a powerful tool for local and small businesses that are considering Groupon to drive new customers to their doors. Larger ticket sizes and more repeat customer visits are the trademark of a truly mature and effective online ordering system. To this effect, through online ordering's ability to capture e-mails, one-time bargain-hunting customers can be enticed to become repeat customers with online coupons and deals via e-mail. Strategic up-selling and combo deals can also increase ticket sizes and introduce different menu items to customers interested in savings. Capitalizing on the newfound Groupon customers could prove overwhelming on an in-store basis as owners and employees hurry to get orders out the door, but online ordering makes it easy to make the most of it. Post-sales and customer data generated can guarantee sales for months to come.