Delivery Service Providers - Key Differences
The following is a breakdown of the services offered by the leading Delivery Service Providers - from integration to Lightning Online Point of Sale and others.
Delivery Services
Industry Best Served
Drizly.com
Drizly.com
Alcohol based
Minibardelivery.com
Alcohol based.
Merged/Acquired/Partnered with www.thirstie.com
Delivery.com
Alcohol, grocery, food, and beyond
The companies noted above are online marketplaces. They only capture and distribute orders to the selected retail outlets. You can sign up for their service only if you have your own delivery personnel as you will need to send your team members to make the delivery*
Instacart.com
Alcohol, grocery, food, and beyond.
Instacart has a different business model as they make the delivery for you. When an order arrives, their people will come to the store and pick up the merchandise and deliver it. Therefore, although not required (check their terms and conditions), it is always best, for you to package the items for the Instacart driver.
Is there a Commission payable?
Yes, each of these companies has to be paid a commission to service your business's order. Unfortunately, in most situations, this is expensive and would cut into your profit margin making it no longer be feasible.
Not so with Lightning!
Lightning has different pricing levels for each product and delivery service.
Here is an example of an ideal pricing model for item XYZ:
Your pricing and inventory levels are automatically streamed in the background every hour to each service, except for Delivery.com, which only receives data once per twenty-four hours.
Other notables:
Uber/Uber Eats - Alcohol, grocery, food, and beyond
You can sell your products on their portal, but they don't offer integration services, which means no POS systems can automatically upload data to their portal. Instead, you must upload an Excel file to participate in their service.
Uber Eats does offer a workaround utilizing Drizly's technology which Uber acquired in mid-2021. As stated above, Drizly has the technical capabilities to accept inventory data feeds from POS systems such as Lightning Online Point of Sale. With that reiterated, if you have a Drizly and Uber Eats account, your Drizly representative can redirect your Drizly feeds to Uber Eats. However, merchants have complained that this is not an ideal solution since Uber Eats pricing is usually hirer to accommodate their fees.
The Door Dash Variable:
There are two different Door Dash divisions; each would require a separate account:
Door Dash (Merchant Account)
If you would like to sell your products on www.doordash.com, please note similar to Uber Eats, they also don't offer the ability for third-party systems to upload products to their servers. However, please get in touch with them if you would like to participate in their service regardless, otherwise known as Door Dash Market Place.
Door Dash (Drive Account)
If you are using Lightning E-Commerce, our platform enables you to hire Dashers to deliver your products. A Dasher would come to your store to pick up the items and make the delivery for you.
In your Lightning E-Commerce Dashboard, orders marked as 'Deliver' will include a 'Hire Dasher' option, which will allow you to obtain the following:
-Pricing
-Pick-up time
-Signature requirements
-TIP
-Delivery time
Plus, our technology includes order tracking and the ability to cancel the Dasher.
See more on Lightning E-Commerce Door Dash capabilities at https://www.computerperfect.com/doordash
Notations:
Not all services are available in all regions of the United States
You must agree to their terms and conditions of service.
Some services collect the sales tax on your behalf, which varies from state to state.
Even if you apply to delivery service X, that does not mean they will accept you due to market saturation. They may have sufficient retailers servicing your area.
