Almost any restaurant can offer delivery

By VEGAS INC Staff (contact)

Monday, Jan. 25, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Describe your business.

Bite Squad is an on-demand restaurant delivery service that connects customers with local restaurants. Using our website or mobile app, people can place orders from hundreds of restaurants and have them delivered in less than 40 minutes.

Who are your customers?

Our customers tend to be 25 years of age or older, relatively tech savvy and “foodies” who are avid movie and television watchers and enjoy being entertained.

You partner with more than 300 restaurants locally. How do you manage and coordinate with so many locations?

Initially, our sales team conducted outreach and invited restaurants to join the site and be exposed to the service. After several years in business and as the industry changes, we frequently hear from restaurants looking to get on board.

We provide tablet devices to all of our restaurants. When an order is placed on the website, the restaurant is notified through the tablet, which then gives staffers the opportunity to respond with prep time. This ensures that Bite Squad picks up the food as soon as it’s made and delivers using insulated bags to ensure fresh food, fast. Restaurant owners have a back end on the tablet as well, where they can keep track of all transactions, orders and payments so they can see the value for their business.

What is the hardest part about doing business in Las Vegas?

For us, it’s mostly about logistics. At times, the Strip can be difficult when trying to pick up from our restaurant partners because of construction, road restrictions or parking. Hotels with difficult-to-maneuver access ways and parking or venues with high-security elevators can make it difficult to get to customers, but we do everything we can to learn from our experiences.

What is the best part about doing business here?

Las Vegas is a unique place where people come to indulge in food, shopping and entertainment, and it’s very service-oriented. People come here to really treat themselves. Our customers appreciate the service we provide because many of them work in the service industry. Las Vegas has become a foodie town with plenty of options. But as much as there is going on in this city, sometimes it’s just nice to stay at home with friends, family and a good meal, so locals are often relieved to not have to visit the Strip to enjoy the food they love.

What obstacles has your business overcome?

In the beginning, it was difficult explaining how the service worked to new restaurants who weren’t familiar with this kind of technology. We started the company in Minneapolis with just 17 restaurants. At the time, the website wasn’t completely up and running, so we were telling restaurant owners about this idea without having the technology to demonstrate it. Restaurant delivery in the past was a difficult process for owners, and many of them had bad experiences with other services, so we had to prove that we were different.