A family-run pizza restaurant, Wedgewood Pizza has been delighting their loyal customers for the last 25 years with unique traditional recipes passed down through generations.

Fernando Riccioni partnered with Pasquate “Patsy” Acconcia, to open the first Wedgewood Pizza restaurant at Austintown over two decades ago. The duo worked together to create original pizza recipes that are crowd favorites even today, with their sauce and homemade sausage deserving extra praise.

Unlike large chains, Wedgewood Pizza’s pizzas have that additional ‘something special’ that comes with homemade food. With time, Fernando’s extended family joined the business to carry on the rich tradition of Wedgewood Pizzas.

The family has always lived by the simple maxim, “Never go down in quality. That's the trick. If you change, always change to something better”. While the quality of their food and service is still as good as it ever was, they also realized that they need to adapt to the changing times and thus, implementing an online ordering service soon became a top priority.

But like every other aspect of their business, Wedgewood Pizza was insistent that they pick only the very best service for online ordering. They took their time and after a lot of research, they finally settled on Restolabs early in 2019. “We saw the need for online ordering a few years back. It took us a while but we finally launched our online ordering in January,” informs Joe Cupp, Manager at Wedgewood Pizza.  

Why set-up an online ordering service?

Almost every other study of the restaurant industry reveals that Millenials and Gen Z are both leading the way in online food delivery. According to an NPD Group report, “In the year ending December 2018, foodservice delivery orders by Gen Zs amounted to 552 million, just a million shy of Millennials’ delivery orders.” In order to capture this segment of customers, Joe felt an increasing need to embrace newer technological solutions, among which online ordering was a key necessity.

Once the decision was made and online ordering was implemented, they began to see an expansion of their customer base as well as a surge in brand awareness.

The above trend is confirmed by Joe, who says that ever since Wedgewood Pizza started their online ordering, the newer generations have really taken to it and are the biggest users of the new service. “We don’t have a POS so our online ordering is gaining popularity with a younger crowd”, says Joe

Just being listed on a food aggregator platform was not proving to be very beneficial. The lack of menu customization tools meant that they had to upload a very “dumbed down version” of their menu. This failed to show the expansive and assorted menu that Wedgewood Pizza has been known for years. Add to that the commission charged by these aggregator sites, which for a family-owned establishment proves to be impractical, Wedgewood Pizza had to look for a more feasible solution.

Choosing a "flawless online ordering platform”

The longevity and popularity of Wedgewood Pizza have a lot to do with their core ethics of not compromising on excellence no matter what. This principle was first laid down by Fernando and his progeny has ensured that they never swerve from it. “Fernando has set very high standards and this is religiously maintained day in and day out by everyone at Wedgewood Pizza”, says Joe. For instance, all their pizzas are freshly made from scratch and prepared using only the finest of ingredients.

So when it came to picking an online ordering system for a brand that firmly believes in impeccable excellence, it was never going to be quick or easy. “We wanted to make sure that the technology partner that we choose for online ordering provides the same outstanding experience to our customers that we have been providing at our brick and mortar stores”, informs Joe. “It had be just flawless”,he further adds!

After much consideration, Wedgewood Pizza narrowed down to Restolabs. According to the owners, this was the only online ordering service they felt fully confident in to fulfil all their requirements.

A year on, the owners reveal that they “couldn't be happier” with Restolabs. In the feedback, they expressed that they haven’t come across a single issue so far and that everything has worked as they’d expected. Joe goes on to say that Restolabs has proved to be “a flawless online ordering platform” for Wedgewood Pizza.  

The many ways Restolabs has given Wedgewood Pizza’s business a boost

Simplifying an expansive and complicated menu

The biggest challenge that Wedgewood Pizza was facing when choosing an online ordering system was being able to seamlessly transfer their physical menu online. “We are a pizza shop and we sell half and half pizzas. We charge for the most expensive half. While it’s easy to work this out when dining-in, on an online space this can be quite complex for the customer. We needed to make sure that our online customers face no such confusion. That was the most difficult hurdle for our online ordering,” admits Joe Cupp.

Certainly, when you have items like half and half pizzas, the digital menu must work seamlessly, because if the customer faces any confusion when creating their pizza order, there’s a good chance that they might drop the order and move on to another website. Not only that but there’s a fair chance that they’ll not return to the brand again after having one bad experience.

Taking all of Wedgewood’s concerns into consideration, Restolabs offered a customizable menu design that was simple and straightforward, with distinct categories which made choosing toppings for their half and half pizzas like a breeze.

Joe attests to this saying, “From day one Restolabs was confident they can successfully set up our complicated menu and they’ve proved themselves to be right on every account.” Retolabs also allows for a swift payment process so that customers don’t face any roadblocks in any step of their ordering activity.

Moreover, with Restolabs customers don’t have to sign up and can choose the ‘Guest Checkout’ option. All these features ensure that the ordering process is brisk and as effortless as possible.

Effortless handling of large volume orders

Another concern faced by Wedgewood Pizza was that they are a restaurant that has to handle large volumes of orders. Besides the small orders, they also cater to customers who want to order in bulk. So they had to make sure that their online ordering system was capable of handling such orders. “One of the things that sets us apart from our competitors is that we can do very high volume orders,” explains Joe.

With Restolabs, Joe found out that managing such orders was no problem at all. In fact, he says that he can’t believe how much time they’re now saving because accepting bulk orders online, he has discovered, is much more efficient than taking such orders over the phone. And, of course, due to this new sales channel for their bulk pizza orders, the revenue has increased tremendously.

Systematic order management system

What most clients’ testimonies show is that after installing Restolabs, their everyday operations have become much more organized. The order management system allows restaurateurs to access the dashboard 24x7 and from any geographic location. This makes it extremely easy for them to manage orders and inventories, update their menus etc.

Keeping a check on sales also becomes much simpler with business owners being able to track information like cash flows and lifetime sales. This can be invaluable in assessing profitability on a day-to-day basis.

Joe agrees to say that the order management system has really simplified their business. “I especially like the toggle features in order to add and remove items from the inventory.”, he says.

Increased customer base

One of the primary reasons why restaurants install online ordering systems is to improve their sales and profit. As Wedgewood Pizza has learned, Restolabs has been indispensable in executing this objective for them by increasing their customer base as well as ensuring return customers.

This has been possible because of a number of features. First, because, Restolabs provides flexibility by offering multiple online ordering channels, including websites, mobile apps, and social media ordering. The digitally active younger generation has, especially, appreciated Wedgwood Pizza’s new online ordering system and are the most active users of this service.

Secondly, Restolabs offers real-time analytics feature, which provides important customer data like the most regular customers, their dining preferences, order volume, frequency and expenditure, the best and worst-performing dishes etc. This allows restaurants like Wedgewood Pizza to improve their services and offer personalized attention to each customer.

Tips for someone choosing a restaurant online ordering system

Joe advises that it’s one thing to find the most popular services in the industry, but another to find the one that can fulfill your specific requirements efficiently. Each business is different. A good service provider is the one that puts the effort to know your business, understand its requirements and provide efficient solutions. We were quite convinced with Restolabs’ approach and felt assured and confident that all of our needs would be taken care of and we were right.

With Restolabs, we’re getting everything that we desired in an affordable solution. Besides being able to integrate an entire system in my restaurant without paying everything at once is extremely lucrative. At the end of the day, Restolabs is the best online ordering system for restaurants out there.

“We are a family-owned business and not a large cooperation. We have always stuck to traditional recipes. But we felt that we needed to make a change in the way we operate and chose Restolabs to provide an online ordering system. This has been one of the best business decisions we’ve ever made,” says Joe.