By the Numbers
This month’s edition of PYMNTS’ exclusive Connected Dining report, “Connected Dining: Word of Mouth in the Digital Age,” which draws from a May survey of a census-balanced panel of more than 2,200 U.S. consumers, examines the importance of restaurants’ digital presences for today’s consumers.
The study revealed that 62% of restaurant customers use Google to search for restaurant, a greater share than said the same of any other digital platform. Plus, survey results showed, 51% of diners cite this as the single best platform for researching restaurant information.
The Data in Context
Indeed, given that Google is many consumers’ first stop for any kind of search online, the platform presents a direct way for restaurants to reach their customers.
“Obviously, a lot of restaurants are being searched for on Google, and [we enable] the customers who are searching for those restaurants to order directly on Google,” Vishal Agarwal, founder and CEO of order integration technology company ItsaCheckmate, told PYMNTS in an interview. “It’s an extremely effective way for restaurants to get direct orders from the customers who are searching for them.”
Earlier this year, restaurant technology firm Toast integrated Order With Google into its platform. Similarly, Grubhub added the ability for restaurants to display their websites built with Direct on their Google Search Business Profiles and to list those sites as the preferred online ordering option on Google platforms.
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“What we’ve seen through our data — the reason we wanted to invest in this feature with Google — is that merchants that promote their site through Google specifically, or through any mechanism that they have, like an existing website, receive upwards of 20 times more orders than those merchants who do not promote their site,” Kate Green, vice president, restaurant services and innovation at Grubhub, told PYMNTS in an interview.
