October 22, 2020 
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is far-reaching and has affected so many countries in the world, especially businesses. It will take time for things to become normal again, however, while we work towards a COVID-free world, essentials like food need to get to people; hence, Zebrabuzz’s new and improved food ordering chatbot is here to ease sales for you.
As a result of the pandemic, many people have been forced to stay at home, and essential supplies like food and drugs have been hard to come by.
A lot of people have their businesses closed, including restaurants that sell food, so it has been difficult for people who are usually now forced to cook every time.
Nevertheless, you can continue running your business online by setting up an e-commerce website to operate your restaurant.
However, although the process of creating an e-commerce site for your restaurant is relatively easy, it requires lots of effort to make it popular. And it is not rocket science to know that once it is not popular, you may struggle to find enough patronage.
You can also add your restaurant to popular food delivery services like UberEats, DoorDash, GrubHub, FoodPanda, etc. However, there are quite some limitations you may experience which will not be good for your restaurant in the long run – especially when COVID is gone.
To add your restaurant to these delivery services, you will be the one preparing the food while they deliver. As simple and easy it sounds, you need to be careful about it.
In almost all cases, after you prepare the food, your business is done. You do not have any relationship with the customers eating your food, which is not good for your restaurant and brand.
In fact, they are literally not your customers anymore but the customers of the food delivery services. One food delivery service has a slogan ‘our customers love good food’. Note the ‘our.’
Another slogan says ‘you prepare the food, we do the rest.’ Meaning you have no other business as soon as preparation is done. Your brand needs better than that. You cannot create a brand value for yourself when the delivery service does everything save food preparation.
As there is no way to connect to your customers, you cannot win their hearts, and it may gradually decrease your zeal of making good food.
However, it is possible to find a tool that has worked on these limitations of e-commerce sites and food delivery services to create a more suitable and better way of bringing food to new and existing customers whilst remaining tightly connected as you were even before the outbreak.
The Zebrabuzz food ordering chatbot like some of the features of Zebrabuzz is on Facebook Messenger, a platform that has become hugely popular in most countries of the world today.
Facebook Messenger is the instant messaging arm of Facebook and people use this platform a lot. In fact, Facebook data shows that the platform’s monthly active users are about 2 billion people. That is about a quarter of the world’s population.
As its popularity grows daily, more people have found it useful, especially during the pandemic. Many people now use it to buy and sell, pay bills, amongst many others. You too, can take advantage of this platform and put your restaurant back in motion.
It is now time to begin selling your food on Facebook Messenger and what better way to do this than using the Zebrabuzz food ordering chatbot.
You can speak directly to your customers the way you chat with friends, send pictures and videos and build a good understanding with your clientele.
Your customers can send their feedbacks straight to you, which means you will be able to work on them, sort them out swiftly, and improve your brand image.
Also, as the customers can chat with who makes their food directly, and not some middleman delivery service, they have the liberty to order to their specifics and not be forced to follow a particular menu. It is like them having a personal chef, and they will love you more for it.
In fact, if you want to sell food on Facebook Messenger, you may not have a restaurant at all. Maybe the pandemic did not even affect, and you just love making delicious food, you can make money from it, especially with the economic instability.
Most people who love homemade food will sometimes pay a fortune to get a well-cooked meal. Nevertheless, whether homemade or fast food, people want to order food from the comfort of their homes and you can give them what they want!
Although for starters, many people may not know you so you may have to sell to friends and families for starters and may also be at very cheap prices, if your food is good, word spreads fast quickly especially when it comes to food. People do not forget a good meal easily.
Cooking can be very stressful and time-consuming. Although if you love to do it, it gets better but it can be a lot of work regardless, especially if you are doing it for people.
There comes the burden of being on time, being very careful, and that takes its toll. Add this stress to that of selling on Messenger, and you have a big workload on your hands.
Sometimes people have to resort to hiring more hands to help deal with multiple orders. More workforce means more wages, salaries, bonuses, and many recurring payments.
Thankfully, all that worry has been put to bed by Zebrabuzz’s Facebook Messenger food ordering chatbot – a complete solution for all the above problems.
It is a new and improved feature that works like a normal chatbot but sells food instead. It is a food ordering chatbot that will take your orders easily.
The first step is to link your Facebook to your Zebrabuzz account. After you enable bot connection, create your virtual store on Zebrabuzz’s e-commerce in Messenger store, which will be your restaurant. The virtual store is an easy-to-use and maintains interface.
Immediately your store is created, your food ordering chatbot will be uploaded into your Facebook Messenger page. For easy step by step guide on creating your virtual store, please read this.
The Zebrabuzz food ordering chatbot takes orders on Facebook Messenger like a waiter. It will also manage your restaurant for you in that after taking orders, it can sell the food, i.e. take payments, advertise your food, upload the day’s menu, and update the customer as to when the food will be delivered.
The Zebrabuzz food ordering chatbot can show your customers all the categories of food available and the menu as well so they can choose the ones they prefer.
It is user-friendly and very self-explanatory. There are buttons like ‘Order Now’. Under each food, ‘Add to Cart’, ‘Remove from Cart’, Visit Cart’, etc.
It can receive billing and delivery address and integrates through as many as six payment options, including PayPal, Stripe, Razorpay, Mollie, PayStack, Manual Payments, and Pay on Delivery.
This will make things easier for customers as they can use any payment method they are most convenient with.
Your customers can also see their order status on the food ordering chatbot to know where their food is per time and how far away it is from reaching them. This eases the process of waiting.
After your food chatbot takes orders, you will navigate to the e-commerce in Messenger virtual store, and the order will be right there on your interface.
As the Zebrabuzz food ordering chatbot will take orders, receive payments and do every other thing for you, you can now focus solely on preparing the food as well as have time to do other things. You may deliver the food yourself or have a staff that works for you do it.
Even after the Coronavirus pandemic has been completely defeated, you can continue running your business using the Zebrabuzz food ordering chatbot for your business to make things easier and faster on yourself.
