Guide on Restaurant App Development for Your Business Growth [Features, Cost, Advantages]

Mobile innovation has changed the manner in which numerous organizations work. The restaurant industry is a zone where mobile applications have a vast impact. Their growth pattern is extensively huge as compared to other sectors.

The food-related mobile applications have developed of late. Hence, there is an increasing need of restaurant app development for eatery mobile application advancement. Using mobile application innovation can help restaurant proprietors cement their quality in the market.  At the same time, it can help them advance their image on the web.

Let’s investigate the market trends regarding mobile app development. We will try and understand what primary highlights a fruitful eatery application ought to have. We’ll likewise talk about the advantages for eatery entrepreneurs. Here, we will know about the time and resources necessary to build a restaurant app.

The Necessity of Mobile Apps in Restaurants

You might consider several factors to build a mobile application for your eatery.

Many individuals are looking for restaurants using their smartphones. Many people look for locations, directions, timings etc. Few others see for customer’s feedback, menu charts, and so on. Some of them can order food directly through on-demand apps preferably. Few others are also looking for offers and discounts.

Most customers you will find would like to avoid rush hours. It will benefit them in two ways. Firstly, they will get tables quickly, and second, they can avail offers. Refer following top reasons to use mobile apps for your restaurant:

• Restaurant menu and prices
• Check for hours of operation
• Search for nearby restaurants
• Search for deals
• Restaurants by cuisines
• Better reviews on ranking sites
• Order food online
• Check for restaurant directions
• Get restaurant phone numbers
• Make a table reservation
• Benefits of loyalty programs
• More referrals
• Social sharing

How Mobile Apps Help Restaurants to Grow?

The first thing which a user lookout is for easy access to a wide variety of restaurants and eatery outlets which special offers and delicious foods. In today’s time, restaurants are adapting to the dynamic technology-driven solutions to cater to the needs of their tech-savvy users.

Mobile apps offer easy access to users and helps restaurants to grow their sales and revenue.

1. Reach and Extend User Base

Branding has become a crucial aspect of any industry vertical to grow in the market.  It’s a bitter truth that if you are not digitally active or own your application, you are added to the list of nameless restaurants who rely on word of mouth or recommendations by an acquaintance.

Restaurant businesses are trying hard to get explored by their customers. They either make their own website or social media page or take help from paid marketing. However, these methods are not sufficient for gaining attention from your desired target audience.

Mobile apps provide a platform that connects your business to a vast user-base. With the help of mobile apps, you are one touch away from your potential customers.

2. On-demand Delivery Option

To grow your business outside the boundary of your restaurant, delivering your delicious food to your customers at their doorstep opens a new mode of sales channel for your business. Through the mobile app, online ordering system opens a wider channel for your business. About 62% of users’ orders online and 55% explores restaurants before heading out for dinner. Ordering food online is convenient and easy in today’s hectic life.

3. Great User Experience

What users expect from a restaurant app? It’s easiness to browse the menu and restaurants near them before either stepping out for a fine dining experience or ordering online their favorite cuisine using user-friendly restaurant mobile app.,/p>

From making reservations to online ordering, to check to work ours, to booking your favorite table with perfect vibes and ambiance. Through a mobile application, everything becomes fast and easy.

For example, while making a reservation in a restaurant, the customer can add a comment about the ingredients they want to add or remove from a particular dish. This update will be reflected in the restaurant management application and staff can take note of that.

4. Better Restaurant Management

Having a management app for your restaurant simplifies the work of your employees. Managing orders, processing bills, customer feedback, waiters’ management, assignment of tables, etc.

You can customize your restaurant app with the features you want to incorporate to manage efficiently all the internal process of your restaurant.

5. Special Offers and Discounts

Let your customers know about the special offers and discounts to boost your ROI during low sale times. Use the push notification feature to notify your customers about ongoing and upcoming discounts.

6. Maintain Your Data

Handling data can be a cumbersome process over a due course of time. To handle large chunks of data, you can customize the app that maintains the incoming flow of the user data and helps you to improve your customer service.

Restaurant data management app collects data and provides analyzed data. Data can be customer feedback, most liked dishes, food quality, high sale day, weekend analysis, etc. The app collects these data and store for future use and to help businesses improve customer experience.

From the above points, it’s clear that having a mobile application is beneficial for your business to enhance the quality of your services and to boost your business growth.

Some Advantages of Restaurant Apps

These apps are useful in enhancing client satisfaction. Restaurant mobile apps help in sales expansion and lessening hold up time. One of the primary features of such apps is the capability for booking. There are a few mobile applications that interface clients with the nearest eateries. They give every single imperative detail for booking tables. Such an element can considerably help to lessen hold up time at eateries.

Related Article: What are the Challenges and Advantages of Restaurant Applications?

• • Apps Take the Marketing to the Next Level

    There are quite some restaurant companies competing to make their brands. Hence, it is imperative that one must raise their standards for building an image. Many restaurants offer great administration, a delightful menu, and beautiful stylistic layout. However, if there is no proper marketing, then probably all these features have no use.

    Eatery proprietors can show the stylistic design of restaurants through vibrant photos. They can implement a three-dimensional feature if necessary. Such a creative outlook of a restaurant can significantly help to draw more customers. It makes both the eatery and an application a stand out among the others.

  • Simple Revelation of Eateries

    Revelation implies recognizing all current and conceivable methodologies. It is an approach to make an app more visible to clients. Such a strategy not only brings new clients but also keep up existing clients. An engaging UI and paramount mobile application configuration can associate more clients to the eateries. Most updated mobile advancements help eatery proprietors to convey the required data about restaurants. They supply all information about the eatery’s area, menu, contact subtle elements, to the users.

  • Sharing through Social Networking

    One must include the feature of sharing through social media in restaurant apps. It will immensely help in building their image among clients on different social networks. For example, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Eateries can offer some discount programs to urge clients to share more data about eateries.

  • Payment is secured

    A smooth and simple payment process is what customers look. However, only smoothness is not good enough; it needs to have the security achieved as well. Make sure your restaurant has a payment gateway that offers both.

Related Article: How to Build a Mobile Wallet App for a Digital Solution

• • Enhanced Client Administration

    The client benefits the advantages of having a mobile application are immense. They are not constrained just to what the client can do using the app. It removes the ago NY of a client ordering something but never getting it. An efficient eatery application will satisfy a client with promptness in serving the order.

    They ensure that clients visit to take their order and leave with it in instantly. It diminishes wastage of time and resources and keeping your work area free of messiness. Your application ensures that you need not require checking the collection of orders after receiving payment.

Related Article: On-Demand Food Delivery Apps are taking the Market by a Storm

Few More Offerings of a Restaurant App

• • • It provides for linking with Google Maps. Hence, clients can find a simple route towards your restaurant.
    • Apps setup contact numbers to guarantee that clients can call with one tap. To do so, they will not have to leave the application.
    • There is a booking structure to see how many individuals you can book.
    • Applications list unique items under discrete areas of the menu. They do not feature them inside an original menu. Hence, this kind of listing helps to attract clients.
    • Apps help in building social media engagements with Facebook and Twitter.
    • Live Request that enables observing request to guarantee clients are getting dinner on time.
    • Pop-up messages and occasion date-bookings to know most recent offers and nearby occasions.
    • Apps offer the facility of different types of payment processes.
    • Options for customer feedback that helps offering even more improved quality service.

Types of Restaurant Applications

1. On Demand Food Delivery App

Designing a seamless food delivery application that caters to the need of the customers by providing the exact look and authenticity of a dish on screen. Ordering food online has become very common these days and thus, it has become utmost important for your business to either have a personal application that has a feature of online ordering or they are listed on applications like UderEats.

In this application type, you get features like Nearby Restaurants, Push Notification, Payment Gateways, Restaurant Menu, Rating and Reviews, Order Tracking, Transaction History, etc.

2. Restaurant Table Booking App

This application provides customers to book a table of their preference in their choice restaurant from anywhere. It also provides a feature where you can fix the menu online and enjoy your evening in peace. With the help of advanced technology like VR, 3D, and AR, you get to explore the restaurants’ interiors and designing before you book your table.

3. Food Coupons and Deals App

Customers get attracted to things where they can enjoy delicious foods at a cost-effective price. Offering coupons or discounts engage more customers to your business. Incorporating features like push notification will help your users to learn about the hot deals of the day. Add refer and earn feature and e-wallet discount to increase the traffic to your application.

4. Restaurant Management App

In this type of application, you get different section to manage your work like waiter panel, customer app, kitchen dashboard, etc. This app gives a better track to manage different aspects of the restaurant business. From managing orders to table reservation to order placement to manage restaurant profile online, all this can be done with one single management application.

5. Driver App

When you are extending your business to on demand online food ordering system, you will be requiring this app for your delivery services. To make food ordering and delivering system quick and hassle-free, this app is perfect.

You can incorporate features like a real-time tracking system, call extension to a delivery executive, sharing, multiple payment gateways, etc.

Popular Clone Scripts Available in the Market

Restaurant business is still in exploring and blooming stage and thus competition is tough to get a grip of the market. In the tech market, there are many ready-to-go applications available that are perfect for your initial business startup.

There are many clone scripts available of famous eatery apps like:

• • • UberEats Clone App Script
    • Foodpanda Clone Script
    • Grub Clone Script
    • Zomato Clone Scripts
    • Swiggy Clone Script

Some of the fundamental features that are inbuilt in the clone scripts are as follows:

• • • Login/Sign Up
    • Nearby Restaurant
    • Menu Selection
    • Rewards and Refer
    • Offer/Coupons
    • Food Categories, etc.

New Trends and Technologies in Restaurant App Development

Every year there are updates in the existing technologies and evolution of some new as well. But how well these technologies can work for your industry is a big question to ask. Over a decade, the restaurant industry is trying to explore the different aspects of technologies. Recently, a wide variety of technologies from restaurant software to mobile hardware to artificial intelligence to IoT, are being implemented into the restaurants.

Here is the list of trends and technologies to follow.

Growing Patterns in Food Application

• • • The anticipation of a customer’s order beforehand

      Restaurant owners are hoping to grasp techniques that may help anticipate a client’s next request. Restaurants may implement some new process to achieve the desired result. These features will foresee what menu you may arrange. It will predict what you need to eat by your past requests. Such a procedure will influence timely delivery and speediness.

    • Automation in Conveyance

      Restaurants can convey orders utilizing automation. Simply put, we are talking about implementing robotics in food delivery. You could quite possibly see your meal arriving towards your home from the sky. Online retailer, Amazon, plans to utilize automatons to convey bulk orders to clients. They will probably use robotics to communicate requests to clients in thirty minutes or less.

New Trends and Technology

• 1. Ghost Restaurants

     In recent years, co-work space has become popular in the IT industry, but who knew that this can be implemented in the restaurant as well. Some restaurants have gone one step ahead by only focusing on food delivery. They establish their kitchen in either in a sufficiently operational place or opt a big kitchen where multiple ghost restaurants are working along. This method helps in reducing the operational cost that is needed to run a restaurant.

  2. Implementation of IoT

     

     IoT is offering connected restaurants. According to Gartner IT Research Analyst, in 2014 the global IoT market reached $485.6 billion and it is expected to grow more than $1.7 trillion by 2019.

     For smooth operation and hospitality, IoT plays an important role in keeping all data connected and intact. IoT development offers some of the most realistic and useful solutions to generate high revenue for the restaurant business.

     • System Monitoring Through Smartphones
     • On-Demand Delivery Management
     • Customer Feedback / Communication
     • Improve in Stock Management

  3. Artificial Intelligence

     Who has ever thought that AI will make its way to the kitchen as well! AI in restaurants is gaining momentum as they are enhancing the customer experience as well as back-office operations.

     • Chatbots: They are being implemented into the restaurant operations to grow the customer experience. It is being observed that chatbots enhance the engagement rate and customer interaction while reduces customer support expenses. AI-enabled bots help in restaurant management, deals with customers, and gives extra free time to staff to focus on the customer.
     • Voice-Base Ordering: Established restaurant chains like Domino’s, Starbucks, etc. are using voice commands to place orders. User can directly interact with the devices like Alexa to place your orders.
     • AI-Powered Apps: Artificial Intelligence-based applications are helping restaurants to understand the customer dining choices and using that information to personalize the customer future experience. These apps collect the customer data like when customer go out for dinner, customer’s traveling time or new restaurants suggestions and based on these data, the app personalizes the experience.For Example: On every Friday you go out for dinner, then AI will start suggesting to you about new restaurants, menu, or discounts on every Friday.

  4. Augmented Reality

     AR is providing an extra-edge to restaurants to design a 3D model of their menus to provide a virtual pleasure to customers. Giving a detailed look of your menu including the ingredients, portion size, nutritious value, etc. onto customers screen through a 3D model. To create an interactive dining experience for customers where they can customize their preferences with the help of AR.

     For Example Starbuck’s Holiday Cups – Their AR app gets coffee cups to life by using smartphones.

Food and Restaurant Apps: Building Your Own as Opposed to Embracing What’s as of Now Out There

Numerous restaurant app developer may propose you begin your business with an effectively existing application. You must remember that having an app for your eatery business can be exceptionally profitable. However, there is no point in hurrying with building your application. Primarily, if your business is a start-up and your assets are restricted.

There are heaps of apps available that can enable you to accomplish your objectives partly.  For the time being, you may consider them. Think of including an application to your eatery allowing the clients to fill your tables. Enroll your eatery on applications like Zomato and others to build your image. It will undoubtedly help potential clients to find you.

Related Article: Factors you should consider while developing a mobile app.

Outlining and building up an application will require significant investment and assets. You may have to spend time and resources to promote your app to customers. Believe it or not, it takes hell lot of time for an app to be widely acceptable to users. A mobile application can be a whole apparatus once your business is off and running. It can be quite an essential tool for you to manage the business.

Making an excellent mobile application for your restaurant is an incredible method to build prosperity. It is when you have the essential resources for its development. Remember, apps can help you to make the giant stride in developing your business. So, what amount would it honestly cost? That answer indeed relies upon the kinds of highlights you will include.

Need to Build Up Your Restaurant App?

Having a mobile site for your restaurant is valuable. However, it doesn’t give the same fascination to new clients as a mobile application. It can do wonders for your eatery. Mobile apps are very vital since increasing the number of customers change to smartphones each day. Today, most users are abandoning their desktops and switching to mobile apps.

The Fundamental Features of Restaurant App Development

There is a set of basic features that comes in a pre-built restaurant application which is further customizable and scalable depending on the business requirements. Moreover, many restaurants go for developing personalize the mobile application for their business.

Here are a few features of a restaurant application:

• Interactive Dashboard
• Social Media Login
• Nearby Restaurant
• Rating and Reviews
• Push Notification
• In-app Payments
• Multiple Payment Gateways
• Offers and Coupons
• Order tracking
• Wallet
• Account Setting

How Much Does it Cost to Design an On Demand Food Ordering App?

The cost of any product depends largely on the functionalities/features that are essential for your business, the complexity of those features and the platforms or technologies that are required to develop the application. The average costing of an application with a basic set of features ranges from $15,000 – $25,000. However, applications with advanced features can range beyond $45,000.

• Cost Based on Demography

Asian Countries: Cost of hiring a developer is $15 to $25 per hour

USA: Cost of hiring a developer is $50 to $200 per hour

Easter Europe: Hiring cost is $30 to $150 per hour

• Cost Based on Professional Skillset

Project Manager: $55 – $65

Junior Developer: $40 – $50

Senior Developer: $60 – $80

Junior Quality Analyst: $35 – $45

Senior Quality Analyst: $50 – $60

• Based on Feature Set

Conclusion:

Restaurants applications are becoming the best instruments for food delivery services and eateries alike. Such apps are helping organizations with small spending plans to connect to crowds. Restaurant App help to reduce expense because of placing orders through a phone. At the same time, it expands sales when clients orders with an application. The transformation has just begun and achieving heights with rising innovations. You can hire dedicated developers to improve food order deliveries and build user-friendly applications.

Hemendra Singh

My name is Hemendra Singh. I am Managing Director and co-founder of PuzzleInnovationz, a Mobile App Development Company. I am having a keen interest in the latest trends and technologies that are emerging in different domains. Being an entrepreneur in the field of IT sector, it becomes my responsibility to aid my audience with the knowledge of latest trends in the market.