What are the main ranking parameters?
Distance: The most important ranking factor is distance. At Thuisbezorgd.nl we prioritise restaurants that are closest to the delivery address to spread the orders on our platform as much as possible between the active restaurants. We also want to ensure a customer’s waiting time is short and restaurants only need to travel a few kilometres when delivering their meals. When ‘Pick-up’ is selected instead of ‘Delivery’, we rank all restaurants based on distance in the default listing.
Quality: The quality score is a measurement based on our customers’ average feedback via their most recent food and delivery ratings. This way, it shows a fair image of the delivered quality because Thuisbezorgd.nl has millions of customers, all with different preferences. Please note that the content or characteristics of a restaurant's menu or meals will on its own not have an effect on its position on the platform, but could in turn impact the quality score due to better reviews.
Popularity: We determine popularity by the number of recent orders processed by a restaurant compared to other restaurants in that area. While this mainly applies to chain restaurants, it could also apply to more prominent restaurants in a city centre. ‘Popular restaurants’ also tend to employ more delivery staff and therefore can typically cover a larger delivery area and more orders. Based on their popularity, we place them somewhat higher on the list than restaurants that do not have this kind of capacity.
New restaurants: New restaurants temporarily receive an improved position on Thuisbezorgd.nl because they have fewer reviews. To help these restaurants get started, they receive a higher placement for a short period of time. We indicate new restaurants with the ‘New’ label.
Logistic efficiency: Thuisbezorgd.nl may temporarily move restaurants down the list if we know that their orders are unlikely to be delivered to customers within a reasonable timeframe due to capacity issues at the restaurant or our delivery services. In addition, both Thuisbezorgd.nl and the restaurant can decide to "close" a restaurant on the platform if it is too busy in which case it will no longer appear in the restaurant list. For chains with multiple restaurants that deliver to a customer's location we show the closest open branch first and move the further away chains down the list.
Sponsored Results: Thuisbezorgd.nl offers a paid sponsorship service, allowing restaurants to improve their visibility on the platform by moving up their rank in the ’Best match’ search results. This improved visibility is in proportion to the ranking they would otherwise have on Thuisbezorgd.nl based on the ranking factors listed above.
For example, a quality 4-star restaurant could appear below a 3-star if the customer is further away, so that restaurant may wish to boost its visibility. It is also possible that a restaurant may want more orders on a certain day of the week, and uses the sponsorship services to increase orders for that day.
While our sponsorship services are important tools for restaurants, relevance to customers continues to be one of the main aims behind our ranking. To ensure that the results remain relevant to customers, restaurants have limitations on improving their visibility. For example, it will be too costly for restaurant #150 in an outer suburb to use our sponsored service and obtain the number 1 position for the entire city.
We also restrict the number of spots a restaurant can move up the list to ensure that even when restaurants are using our sponsored services, customers feedback will always directly influence their position in the restaurant list. We want to reward restaurants that provide excellent service to customers while offering customers the best food-ordering experience possible.
Favourites: Customers have the possibility to save restaurants as a ‘Favourite’. These restaurants will appear higher up in the restaurant list in order for customers to find them more easily.
Other factors: Furthermore, if any filtering, sorting, or searching actions have been taken, this will affect the order and types of restaurants shown based on the eligibility of those restaurants to the filtering, sorting, or searching criteria.
Testing: From time to time, we may run tests or experiments to monitor and improve our service, which may temporarily impact the restaurant order.