Hospitality Ddigital cooperates with Google: free ordering of meals via Google-Search and Google Maps

• Hospitality Digital, the digital unit of METRO AG, and Google are jointly launching the next step in delivery services and offering free food orders to restaurateurs – in the 2nd COVID lockdown an essential opportunity to partially compensate for the loss of the stationary hospitality business
• Through integration with Google-Search and Google Maps, restaurateurs can offer their dishes as take-away or home delivery – without the need for an additional delivery service
• After the start in Germany, the first restaurants recorded an average increase in orders in the first month alone 11%, other European countries to follow

The experts of Hospitality Digital, the digital unit of METRO AG, continuously work on digital solutions for the HoReCa industry. The aim: to support independent restaurateurs in the digital transformation and thus contribute to their sustainable success. This includes both the development of digital solutions and partnerships. Through an integration in Google-Search as well as in Google Maps, Hospitality Digital offers the hospitality branch in Germany the option to sell their dishes as take-away or delivery – without the need to involve other service providers in the process. Especially in the COVID-19 era, many restaurateurs have developed new delivery and take-away activities as a relevant additional business pillar. So far, however, restaurants in Germany have paid between 14% and 30% of turnover for delivery services, while in other European countries the fees can be even as high as 50%. Thanks to the cooperation with Google, restaurateurs now have more flexibility and independence from existing delivery services.

"Since COVID-19, the demand for our digital tools has increased massively. Only through a courageous leap into the online world have many restaurateurs managed to survive the Corona pandemic so far," says Dr. Volker Glaeser, CEO of Hospitality Digital. "This year, every second innkeeper we talk to at Hospitality Digital has discovered the supply business for her- or himself. With the new Google function, our customers‘ guests can now order dishes in restaurants and receive them without contact. And all this at no additional cost to the restaurateurs," he continues. The process is simple: 

Google obtains the information about the restaurateur and the menu via the 2 – 2 restaurant’s existing ordering system. The technical prerequisite for using the Google buttons "Order to go" or "Order and have delivered" is therefore a separate ordering system via one of the suppliers cooperating with METRO, or from mid-January 2021 the DISH own solution DISH Order. Visually, the guest sees the buttons under the description of the restaurant in a Google-search and can order directly from there.

2 tools that can be booked via DISH – the digital platform for the digitalisation of hospitality – include already existing Google services. Google Listing ensures visibility. Restaurants, pubs and cafés can be found via Google with all essential information. Nowadays, to be found via Google-search is nearly as important as the own website of a restaurant. The other tool is Google Reservation, which is available through DISH in cooperation with Google. Similar to the new order function, restaurateurs can make reservations directly via Google. Here too, Google uses the existing technical otions that the website of the respective restaurant must have. In this case a technical reservation option. After the first 12 months of activating the reservation tool via DISH, the restaurateurs were able to see that 40% of the reservation volume was generated via Google Reservation.