The Low-Hanging Fruit Most Restaurants Miss
Up to 20% of lost orders and bookings can be recovered with the right follow-up. See how restaurants are turning abandoned carts and reservations into real sales — automatically.
From the Desk of Jonathan Lim, Founder & CEO, Oddle
Imagine a guest walking into your restaurant, browsing the menu, even ordering a drink — then walking out before the main course.
Unthinkable, right?
Yet online, it happens every day.
Whether it’s a delivery order left in the cart or a reservation abandoned halfway, these are guests who have already said yes in their minds — but something at the last step changed it to maybe later.
We’ve seen restaurants win back up to 20% of these missed opportunities just by following up automatically. For some, that’s thousands of dollars a month recovered without spending a cent on ads.
Delivery & Pickup: The Digital Walk-Out
A customer finds your ordering page, signs in, browses your menu, builds their order — then stops.
| Stage in Funnel | % of Visitors Reaching This Stage | Drop-off % from Previous Stage | No. of People (based on 5,000 visitors) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visit Ordering Page | 100% | - | 5,000 |
| Browse Menu | 80% | -20% | 4,000 |
| Added Items to Cart | 60% | -20% | 3,000 |
| Reached Checkout Page | 35% | -25% | 1,750 |
| Completed Purchase | 30% | -5% | 1,500 |
Example: Drop-Off Stages in a Restaurant’s Online Sales Funnel
The intent is there. They’ve:
- Found you directly (not through a marketplace).
- Logged in.
- Spent time curating their order.
And yet they leave. Why?
Common culprits:
- Delivery fees that feel too high.
- Minimum order thresholds.
- Second thoughts about portion size or delivery time.
For most restaurants, this is where the trail goes cold. But it’s actually the hottest signal you’ll get.
Reservations: The Silent Drop-Off
The same pattern happens with bookings:
- Guests start to reserve but never confirm.
- Guests confirm but don’t show.
No-shows frustrate owners, but making a booking takes effort. For most, it’s not a habit to reserve and then disappear without reason.
Life gets in the way — meetings run late, kids fall sick, plans change.
Treating these people as “gone” instead of “almost here” means losing out on guests who are still reachable with the right nudge.
Why Most Restaurants Miss This Goldmine
- It’s Invisible Without Data
- Bias Toward New Traffic
- No Quick Way to Act
Where Automation Changes the Game
We built Oddle’s automation module to handle this follow-up instantly:
- Cart Abandonment: A friendly reminder when someone leaves without checking out.
- Booking Abandonment, Cancellations, No-Shows: A prompt to rebook, or a “hope everything’s okay” message with a link to try again.
Because the nudge happens while intent is still warm, some restaurants are seeing 20% of lost orders and bookings come back — automatically.
The Takeaway
Most restaurants obsess over getting more people to the door.
But the smarter play is also to focus on the ones who were already there, about to step in — and just needed one more reason to.
The signals are already in your system. The question is: are you acting on them?
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