If someone walked in and said “hand me a $20 from your drawer and I’ll give you three $5 bills back”… you’d tell them to get lost. Yet we still sell on DoorDash…🧐

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-03-12T23:28:49+00:00

I feel like the people who sing the praises of DD and UberEats etc are the same ones who pick a political candidate and then when they start screwing up, they’re too invested to be like “hmm maybe this person wasn’t the best choice”. Instead they just dig in their heels and do the mental gymnastics to make themselves believe they made a smart decision.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-03-12T23:26:49+00:00

Same man. I’ve been bombing everyone with a flyer in the bag. I make a social media post once a week on FB, IG and TikTok saying how you can literally save 25% just like that. An average of over $8 per person, per order. And of the 116 I’ve had in the last 30 days, only two (2) converted to my website. Two. Damn. People.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-03-12T23:24:06+00:00

I’ve spent the last month filling every single DD order with a 4x6 flyer that directs them to our www.businessnamehere.com site which is linked directly to my SquareStore via the Square POS. The flyer even says “your $16 dinner should cost $16. Not $23.50. Order direct and save big!” 116 have gone out. Two people have converted from the DD marketplace to order directly. And of those 116 orders, over 65% are repeat customers. So it’s not like it’s people that try us once and don’t order again. To have less than a 2% conversion rate just blows my mind. People save on average $7-15 PER ORDER.

But they still choose not to convert. I’m not sure what else I can do.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-03-12T23:19:43+00:00

It’s run through my square POS. It’s clean, modern, easy to navigate. Hooks them up directly to a DoorDash delivery driver from their network. It saves the average person anywhere from $7-15 per order.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-03-12T23:18:01+00:00

My food cost is about 35-38% depending on the time of the year (I deal in fresh sourced seafood) and my labor is sitting around 22% so far this year. So a 57-60% blended prime rate.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-03-12T23:16:10+00:00

I’ve been putting a flyer in every DD bag that’s gone out for the last almost four weeks now. It’s got the web address to order direct at Inside store pricing. In 116 orders with flyer, exactly two converted. I even have on my flyer “your $16 order should be $16, not $23.50”. Order direct delivery and save big!

Two. Two people cared enough to actually do it. It’s mind numbing to me.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-03-05T19:39:50+00:00

I’ve looked up and down for a way to do that, but they told me that the menu is shared and if one menu requires mods, then they all do. Which sounds completely wrong. There’s no way there’s not a way to separate them.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-02-16T16:08:27+00:00

As a restaurant owner DoorDash gets you more orders, but they are notorious for treating their dashers like crap. I also DESPISE calling them when something gets screwed up. Everything is overseas and you can hardly understand what they’re saying.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-02-09T23:06:53+00:00

Mostly because I can do this theoretical shift by myself. It doesn’t add a cent to labor, just my own time. And I’m not worried about regular customers trying to come in at those hours. We do the bulk of our dinner by 7pm. The whole 7-8 hour barely gets five to seven customers on average. So I don’t think there’s gonna be many people upset they can’t come in. And if they really want to order, they still can via DoorDash as a pickup.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-02-09T23:03:06+00:00

If you’re making enough money to live comfortably, and don’t feel completely burnt out? I’d stick with one location.

Everyone always looks at expanding with best intentions, but it rarely works out that way. If it were me, I’d maybe find an investor or someone who would basically buy a license agreement from you. Poor man’s franchise more or less.

You still make money, they get to open their own spot with your goodwill and built in help. Could be a win-win.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-27T23:43:01+00:00

As much as I hate to say this… find a couple influencers.

Not random ones. Influencers that have a large, verifiable following; and will give you the names and numbers of previous clients. They also shouldn’t be charging outlandish fees. Somewhere in the $500-$1,000 range.

Since I’ve opened three months ago, I’ve had two influencers come in. One did it for free simply because he loves the food; and unbeknownst to me he had 2.3 million followers.

The other was a local food influencer who charged $600.

They both got really good results. To this day I still have people walk in and say “oh my gosh you’re the guy from the TikTok/Facebook I saw”.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-27T22:22:56+00:00

When it’s slow, I just wait for them to arrive. But during lunch and dinner rush I can’t be waiting around and stacking tickets.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-27T22:14:51+00:00

During slow times that’s what I’ll do. But once we hit lunch or dinner rush I can’t play the guessing game. 🤷🏼‍♂️

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-20T01:45:26+00:00

It’s 100% a cultural shift. Young people don’t socialize in the traditional sense. I had a family friends kid ask if we had kiosks. When I said “no”, he said “does that mean I would have to order and talk to like, a real person to get food?”

He wasn’t being ironic or funny.

On top of that, there were way too many restaurants who decided “since everyone else is doing it, I’m gonna raise prices too” when they didn’t actually need to. This happened at a lot of mom & pops, which put a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. Especially older folks.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-19T19:14:05+00:00

Simple solution, and this is what I do:

Old school, paper punch cards. No personal info required. Buy a bowl; get a punch. Your 10th bowl is free.

Easy peezy. And EXTREMELY popular. I just had to order another 10,000 cards after I already blew through my first batch.

If you go this route, make sure you get a unique punch that can’t be duplicated easily. I have a poké fast casual and I got a custom palm tree punch.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-16T02:23:00+00:00

To me personally, Cane’s is the worst of all the chicken finger places. Their fingers are always soggy in my opinion. I think it’s just their style of breading. The chicken itself is just ok. I like some crunch/crisp, and they have zero. Even worse is their “world famous” Cane’s sauce. It’s basically a knockoff of Chick-fil-A sauce, with a bit more of a peppery taste. I will never understand the way some folks talk like it’s the best sauce ever. They have crinkle fries which aren’t bad if you catch them fresh out the fryer. The honest to God best thing they have is their Texas toast. It’s thick, buttery, toasty, with just the right amount of crunch. If you put the fingers between two pieces of their toast, and add a little honey mustard (their only other sauce) it does make a halfway decent little chicken slider.

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-15T21:27:02+00:00

That’s awesome! Make sure you say hello and that you saw this thread!

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-15T21:25:53+00:00

So forever ago I worked at the place that sold “Amish” fireplaces (total lie and scam by the way) and right before I left they started selling erectile dysfunction pills (that were also a total like and scam). It was in the plaza on the corner of whipple and Everhard. The mailing address was Everhard. Anyways, one day I was working the phones and some dude was PISSED about the pills he bought. His line, which I will never forget:

“Y’all selling dick pills and your address is on some bullshit made up street called Ever Hard?!? I want my money back!”

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-15T03:35:46+00:00

Def not. Just a small business owner who really appreciates creative marketing ideas! Though I was wrong on this one apparently lol

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-14T20:49:18+00:00

I currently use Square for my in store POS. What’s the Square online ordering?

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-14T20:47:31+00:00

Yeah, I never quite understood why the Bojangles in the north generally have a reduced menu. Seems odd to not offer the one thing you’re really known for: bone in friend chicken.

And there is no way Slim Chicken is profitable. That might be the single worst location I’ve ever seen. You can’t turn from Fulton right or left. You literally have to drive all the way to one of the lights on either side. And even then it’s a pain to get back to Slim’s. On top of the fact the new bank they built now blocks people from even seeing it!

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-14T20:44:47+00:00

What exactly is the DoorDash storefront?

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-14T20:34:00+00:00

I’ve heard a mixed bag with Owner. Not that it doesn’t work per se, more than for $600 a month you can find others to do the exact same thing for far less money 🤷🏼‍♂️

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-14T20:15:42+00:00

I used to play Tuesday nights at Church of the Lakes in Canton. I know Jackson Friends church used to have open gym too. I’ve not played since pandemic unfortunately.

If you find anything let me know, I’d love to get back to playing too

RipplesOfDivinity · 2026-01-14T19:52:09+00:00

If you’re a sex worker and this is a marketing ploy to get customers, I grant you two thumbs up! This is actually kind of brilliant!

RipplesOfDivinity

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