Pizza Marketplace - Winter 2007 - (Page 6) Online ordering: A flourishing trend By Richard Slawsky Online commerce has taken the world by storm in the past 15 years. Nearly every retailer operates a Web site, and many of those allow for online ordering of goods and services According to an October 2006 report by Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research report entitled, “U.S. eCommerce: Five-Year Forecast and Data Overview,” revenues from online retailing, excluding travel, will top $250 billion by 2011. Because restaurant operators generally survive on razor-thin profit margins, they’ve moved much more slowly in embracing the Internet, instead preferring to wait for the pioneers to take the arrows. “Restaurant operators care about technology, but they care more about selling food,” said Jim Melvin, founder of SIVA Corp., a Delray, Fla., software developer for the restaurant industry. “As technology has matured over the last few years, though, we’ve seen operators stick their toe into the technical side of the business.” Fueling the Internet revolution The name of the first person to order a pizza online has been lost to history, but the idea at least was introduced to the mainstream via the 1995 thriller “The Net,” in which a computer whiz played by actress Sandra Bullock ordered a pie online from her local pizza shop. While the movie might not have been Bullock’s finest moment on film, the idea of ordering dinner by computer dazzled moviegoers and quickly caught on. “As technology has matured over the last few years, we’ve seen operators stick their toe into the technical side of the business.” — Jim Melvin, founder, SIVA Corp. The Internet and the World Wide Web were the playground of academics and computer geeks in the early 1990s, and pizza was the fuel that helped launch the computer revolution. College students and those same computer geeks quickly adopted online ordering technology and made extensive use of it. There’s no doubt online retailing is here to stay, and pizzeria operators are increasingly turning to the Internet to help them boost their businesses. 6 WINTER 2007/SPRING 2008 | PIZZ A MARKETPLACE REPORT
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.