Published: June 22, 2017
18 min read
Last updated: May 2, 2022
In this article, you'll learn:
1
🍽️ Top 3 reasons to build your own restaurant app
2
⚙️ Features: what do mobile ordering apps for restaurants consist of?
3
🔧 Tech tips from Stormotion Developers
4
💰 What is the cost to develop a restaurant app?
5
🔎 Case study: Taco Bell, The Capital Grill
6
💡 Conclusion
Warning: have a bite before reading this article, because today we’re going to talk about restaurant app development. And while you enjoy your meal (I really hope so!), we will tell you about the reasons, tips & costs to create a restaurant app.
Bon Appétit!
We have it everywhere. I bet it will take no longer than 10 minutes for you to reach the closest eatery, no matter whether it’s a pizzeria, a store with donuts, or a casual dining restaurant. We can see the cult of food everywhere - in our Instagram feeds, on TV, and in the mass culture, so it seems to be the golden age for restaurant owners. Yet, everything is not so simple.
As the competition grows, restaurants try to find new approaches to retain old customers and get new ones, increase sales and brand awareness (as well as loyalty).
A restaurant app (image by Dwinawan)
Actually, you don’t have too much choice. The history remembers enough examples of once super successful restaurant chains that hit multimillion-dollar revenues and owned hundreds of locations but ended up in the worst way.
How to avoid such an unwanted scenario? Constantly develop and follow (or even create!) the trends. Since 2 of the biggest trends are food and mobile, why don’t you combine them by creating a restaurant mobile app for your business? Here are 3 reasons to start it as soon as possible, so read on!
Every business owner thinks about increasing incomes and it’s okay. Since the scheme “spend less than you earn” is true for any business, you should apply only those changes that can noticeably boost your revenues. And a restaurant app development is among these changes!
Do you want proof? How about amazing statistics by AppInstitute:
You can take an advantage of it too (image by AppInstitute)
“Well,” you may object, “it’s just abstract numbers, are there any real cases?”.
I guess you know the Taco Bell chain well enough even if you have never eaten there. In late October 2014, guys released Taco Bell application simultaneously on iOS and Android. In less than a year the app has hit over 3 million downloads and greatly increased sales. Moreover, it was reported that in-app orders were usually $10+ which is about 20% higher than average orders made in person. Pretty good, isn’t it?
Taco Bell app
By the way, the app is pretty well designed and has several interesting features, so check the case study of it at the end of this article!
The ability to retarget customers is a great advantage of a mobile app over a website. What does it mean? Let me explain.
When consumers enter your restaurant, for them you exist only at this exact moment. After they leave it, you literally disappear for them till they don’t visit it again.
This is not the same with apps. Let’s be honest: a restaurant mobile app isn’t Facebook or Snapchat, so people are not going to use it daily. However, there is one thing that completely changes the rules of the game - push notifications.
Don't underestimate the power of push notifications when you create a restaurant app
So what are the advantages of using push notifications for your restaurant business? For example, you can:
If you already have a website you may object to me that almost all of the above can be done with email. Yes, it can be done, but no, it can not be done just as effectively. And the research by PushEngage proves it:
Impressive, isn't it? That's why you should consider push notifications when you build a restaurant app (image by PushEngage)
Moreover, push notifications are usually small, so people are more likely to read them. However, don’t send too many of them as it may annoy users. For the best result we advise sending about 2 push notifications a week.
More and more marketers these days talk about growing not a wide but deep customer base. They advise businesses that it’s better to have fewer but more loyal customers. Actually, that's one of the key reasons why owners make a restaurant app.
In practice, it means that you should think more about inclining old customers to make even bigger orders and more purchases rather than attracting new consumers. In our opinion, the truth lies somewhere between.
Your business can’t successfully grow having only a few even very loyal clients. But on the other hand, from a long-term perspective, it’s profitable to have regular customers who generate repeated orders and drive you more revenue than one-time visitors.
Make sure you have an eye-catching logo. Thus, the app for your restaurant will stand out
The app allows to kill two birds with one stone:
Special offers help you build brand loyalty. So we recommend adding them when you create an app for your restaurant (image by Aqeela Valley)
So, with the reasons above it seems almost necessary to build an app if you want to increase sales, generate repeated visits to your restaurants and, of course, keep your customers satisfied (and your business is all about them, right?). Let’s move on to the features that your app should contain to win the love of exacting mobile users.
Read Also
Why Create a Mobile App for Your Small Business?
The list of your app features depends on the specifics of your restaurant business. For example, if you own a chain of fast-food restaurants like Taco Bell the table booking feature isn’t the one users will be looking for in your app. On the other hand, if you want to create a restaurant app for casual dining, this feature may be the reason why many users actually use your app.
In this article we’re going to review features that are important for different kinds of restaurant businesses, so let’s get started!
The first impression is always the most important one. Don’t waste the time of your consumers and make sure the first screen they see is not only beautiful and eye-catching but also offers some value them. What value can you offer them right away?
Make sure that even the first screen contains some value for your users (image by sumit chakraborty)
Also, don’t forget to provide consumers with the fast access to the other main features (like a menu, table booking and delivery service) from this screen. Thus, it will be much easier to use the app for your restaurant!
The menu is definitely going to be the second most viewed screen after the mentioned above one so it is a very important part of restaurant app development. The perfect UX and UI at this stage is your powerful tool to influence users’ behavior and incline them to book a table or make an online order.
Your menu may be pretty simple but still stylish — but it's a really important part of restaurant app development (image by Nick Buturishvili)
What about features? It’s pretty clear that this screen is nothing more than the list of dishes with descriptions, bright photos and prices. Yet, that’s not all.
Don’t leave your consumers in a mess where desserts are shown near steaks and hamburgers neighbor avocado salads. Categories are indispensable navigation tool for any restaurant mobile app.
Convenient navigation means a lot to users of the app for your restaurant (image by Anton Borzenkov)
Sometimes users may be looking for a specific dish (or its price). With the searching feature, they have no need to surf through the categories list and then through all the items in the selected category.
Despite this feature doesn’t seem very important at first sight, many users will delete your app if they have to spend too much time searching on their own. You don’t want this, do you?
So we recommend adding it to the list of features you want to see in the app for your restaurant!
Dishes and meal sets with discounts or free extra items are known as a great marketing tool for a long time. Take advantage of it too: place the section with special offers so as your users can easily see and reach it!
A special offer in a restaurant mobile app (image by Ramotion)
Do you know what this feels like when you want something yummy, but do not know what exactly? Your customers know this feeling too. So as they never have such trouble in your app, create a restaurant app with suggestions!
You can form them according to the user’s previous orders or the most common buyer patterns.
Filters allow excluding from the screen items that don’t fit users' requests. For example, your customers can browse only those dishes which “cost no more than...” or don’t include any meat (vegetarians, hello).
Sorting is another tool for managing a menu. By choosing any specific parameter (price, ongoing discounts, popularity, etc.) users can change the order in which dishes are shown.
Filters help make the searching process in restaurant apps more accurate (image by Jajang Irawan)
This feature may be meaningless if you offer customers fast or takeaway food (like McDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC and so on). However, if your restaurant is focused on serving food indoors the booking feature is definitely a must-have.
There are 2 approaches that restaurant mobile app developers can follow:
Include a table reservation feature when you create a restaurant app (image by Manuj G)
Tip: let your users order beverages or appetizer along with making a reservation, so they can have a bite at the arrival.
While the booking feature is necessary for casual dining restaurants and not so important for fast food stores, the situation with the delivery services is reverse. For example, let’s take a pizza. According to The Pizza Joint, about 83% of pizza franchise units in the US offer delivery, but only 51% offer dine-in service.
Food delivery is a complicated but useful and demanded feature when you create a restaurant app (image by Divan Raj)
Honestly, food delivery is a pretty complicated process that requires consistent and detailed planning. There are a lot of issues to consider, for example:
As you can see, this topic deserves a separate article. Luckily, we already have one for you! Check it out here.
It’s the last step before your hungry clients exchange their hard-earned money for tasty burgers, juicy steaks, healthy salads or other yummy dishes. It may erroneously seem that if a customer has gone so far, he will definitely finish his order. E-Commerce Checkout’s research shows us that:
The checkout stage(image by Deyu Wang)
How to avoid these mistakes? Check out our top tips for you:
The payment process should be fast, easy and secure (image by Ivan Pashko)
We all know what a push notification is. It’s a customized message that pops up on your screen even when you’re not using the app.
In my opinion, push notifications may be the most underestimated feature when when we’re talking about the restaurant app development. We’ve already learned how they can influence your business, so in this paragraph I want to pay more attention to the technical side of this issue.
The example of a push notification
Let’s find out how to create a powerful and engaging push notifications for your restaurant mobile app with 6 tips from Stormotion developers:
Another example of a good push notification
So, the features above (except table booking and delivery features) make up an MVP of your restaurant app. But if you want to improve the app and achieve the even greater UX, you can also implement a number of additional features. Let’s review them too!
The great advantage of mobile apps is personalization, and profiles are all about it! On the one hand, they let users save their customized settings, provide them with an access to loyalty programs, keep information about their previous orders and so on. On the other hand, you can use collected information about users to analyze your target audience and make wise data-driven decisions.
A user profile (image by Lynne Lan)
You can also enrich users’ experience with the following features:
Credibility means a lot for modern customers. That’s why many businesses use artists and sportsmen for advertising. However, people are more tend to believe someone who they know or, at least, who has a lot in common with them. Seeing positive reviews from your other customers may incline them to make a purchase.
Positive reviews can increase your sales too (image by Dwinawan)
This feature plays a huge role in building brand loyalty. But how to turn your visitors into regular customers and encourage them to make bigger orders? For this purpose you can use:
Loyalty programs keep users interested in using your app
The feature is simple as that: just a button that allows a user to call you with one tap. Despite people hate making calls (and it’s another reason to build an app), some may find it convenient.
So it seems we have reviewed both essential and additional features used to build a mobile app for restaurants. How much would it cost you? You’re about to find out! But before that I would like to share with you a list of tech tools that will come in handy during the development.
Finally, you are going to find out development costs, so read on!
Read Also
Android vs iOS Development: Which Platform is Better?
Let’s start with the MVP-part of your app:
** MVP of a restaurant app estimated in hours**
Features | Android | iOS |
---|---|---|
| 45 | 42 |
| ||
2.1. General Info | 11 | 13 |
2.2. In-app Map | 15 | 13 |
2.3. Photo Gallery | 10 | 9 |
| ||
3.1. Categories | 9 | 8 |
3.2. List of Products | 28 | 25 |
3.2.1. Product Info | 18 | 20 |
3.3. Searching | 17 | 19 |
3.4. Filters | 18 | 16 |
3.5. Sorting | 12 | 12 |
3.6. Suggestions | 10 | 9 |
3.7. Special Offers | 30 | 27 |
3.8. Order a Delivery | 60 | 60 |
| ||
4.1. Date, time & location picker | 25 | 26 |
4.2. Select a table on the map | 18 | 16 |
| 33 | 31 |
| 55 | 55 |
| 15 | 11 |
Total Hours | 429 | 412 |
Approximate costs | 17,160$ | 16,480$ |
*common tasks include: project setup; repository setup; architecture setup; libraries integration; local database setup; local models creation; cache configuration; authentication setup; navigation setup.
Thus, costs to build an MVP of restaurant app start from 16,480$. However, it’s only a rough estimate, so if you want to get the exact estimation of your app project, contact us. We will understand your business case and send the estimation to you within 24 hours!
What about the additional part?
Additional Features estimate in hours
Features | Android | iOS |
---|---|---|
| 27 | 22 |
| ||
2.1. Settings | 11 | 13 |
2.2. Bookmarks | 6 | 6 |
2.3. History | 12 | 13 |
| ||
3.1. Coupons | 11 | 10 |
3.2. Points | 22 | 20 |
3.2.1. Product Info | 18 | 20 |
3.3. Events | 7 | 6 |
| 4 | 4 |
Total Hours | 118 | 114 |
Approximate costs | 4,720$ | 5,560$ |
Thus, the final costs to build a full restaurant app with a great number of cool features start from 21,200$.
Note: we took an average rate of $40/hour but it depends on many different factors so don't think of it as the final price.
As for the costs of the BackEnd part development, it can be divided into 3 parts:
It’s difficult to tell you the exact time which development of the BackEnd part and the Dashboard will take since it significantly depends on integration with your POS and CRM systems. Therefore, in this article we assume that the development of this part can take from 150 to 400 hours.
Read Also
[How and Why] Outsource Your Mobile App Development?
What about examples? Today I’m going to tell you about two pretty good restaurant apps in different business categories - Taco Bell (a fast food restaurant) and The Capital Grill (a casual dining restaurant). Read on!
###Taco Bell’s app: bright & user-friendly
We’ve already learned how a mobile app managed to boost Taco Bell’s sales but what about the app itself? Is there something noticeable?
First of all, the app has a really cool UI. It contains a minimum of text and a maximum of beautiful, vivid images that without doubt stimulate buyers to make purchases. Because how can you resist when you have tasty tacos, burritos and quesadillas in your sight?
Taco Bell's app has a nice interface
Secondly, I would also like to note a great navigation system. All buttons are big and easy to notice, so users don’t have any problems to find the needed products. By the way, the menu is also well-designed and has an interactive and detailed description of every dish (you can shape it according to your own taste preferences).
You can customize your order right in the
app
The app also has several features that we already mentioned before:
The Capital Grill’s app has a pretty intriguing and promising name - Virtual Concierge. The application has the elegant design and is aimed at the first-class customer service.
The application provides access to all the important functions on the first screen
Using The Capital Grill Virtual Concierge app users can:
Food & wine pairings may be the most interesting feature in the app
Moreover, guys try to take an advantage of ongoing events. Thus, for example, on Valentine’s day they launched an offer called “#ReservationRescue” with the possibility to win “a 7:00 p.m. Valentine's Day reservation and complimentary dinner for two”.
So, we have finally discussed all essential issues of the restaurant app development. As you could see, it’s not so difficult to build your own restaurant app but it can significantly boost your sales and attract new customers. Pay a special attention to features from the MVP-list, learn from the best and keep up with the modern trends!
I hope you find this article interesting and informative. However, don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to discuss the costs to build an app exactly for your restaurant. We are happy to help you!
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