Published on March 14th, 2020 | by Manish Gehlot

Important Parameters to Consider While Developing a Restaurant App

Restaurants have become an integral part of our lives, not only in terms of food consumption but in terms of lifestyle, culture, and social aspects. It has to be agreed that even if the core offering of a restaurant remains food, people do not go to a restaurant any longer just to consume food. They would like to have a holistic experience which includes the dining, the ambiance, the variety in the menu, and above everything, extraordinary customer service.

Technological advancements have made it extremely easy to ensure that customers stay satisfied. Social media and review systems have made it possible for restaurants to understand the pulse of the customer, the pain points, and the plus points as well. One of the latest manifestations of technology is the mobile application. Mobile applications like UberEats Clone for restaurants open up a plethora of opportunities.

Before that, let us look at a few statistically significant metrics that emphasize the need for mobile apps for restaurants.

Mobile devices have ceased to be a fad. It is no longer the destruction that was playing the youngsters as it was once perceived by the older generation. Today 83% of the adults use electronic devices to search for restaurant locations, directions, and hours of operation. After all, the need for food is not specific to age, right?!
Any business should embrace new technology and that alone will guarantee its relevance in the rapidly changing world of customer expectations. 79% of the diners agree that incorporating technology into restaurant businesses makes the entire experience for guests a better one.
If you are still visualizing a restaurant where the waiter comes up to your dinner table, takes the orders, and informs the kitchen, you might be a bit outdated! 26% of the consumers say that they would prefer a restaurant that facilitates tableside ordering and a payment system.
As much as customers, restaurants also agree to the fact that technology serves as a big catalyst it comes to boosting sales and improving the efficiency of the restaurant. A whopping 80% of the restaurant operators believe that technology is bound to give their brand a competitive edge.
Ordering food using websites or mobile apps is no longer considered an auxiliary wing of the restaurant business. It is considered the core of any food business, and 51% of the adults are likely to order takeout or delivery by using a restaurant website or mobile app.
Earlier, table booking was a process confined to pen and paper. There were a lot of uncertainties and multiple points of contact only meant that there could be a possible clash in the booking of slots. However, with UberEats Clone technology, it is possible to reserve a table online. 36% of restaurant patrons believe that the facility to book a table online should be an essential feature provided by a restaurant.

Considering all these aspects, it is no longer an option but rather mandatory to have an app for your restaurant. Creating an app for your restaurant might not be a big hassle. There are a lot of UberEats clones available in the market. Purchasing a clone of UberEats and customizing it to fit your restaurant requirements would save you quite a lot in terms of both time and money. You can also be assured that the app is free from all the basic glitches that you might possibly encounter if you develop one from scratch.

An app for your restaurant is not just about cost and complications. There are a lot of advantages it brings to the restaurant as a service provider, as a business, and as a brand.

Flexible payment processing: Let us all admit it! Any business is about money. Today, when people are moving to words digital payment means it is important that your restaurant keeps up with this paradigm shift. Processing payments digitally ensures that no human intervention and consequential uncertainties are completely eliminated. It helps increase restaurant accountability and productivity.

Create a feedback mechanism: Most of the feedback platforms reside outside your app. While you do have valuable learnings from those points of feedback, it leaves a permanent scar in a public forum. However, having a feedback mechanism within your app ensures that you stay in complete control of the content written by your frustrated customers. You can use this platform to even incentivize those who have given constructive feedback by rewarding them with a discount or some loyalty points.

Run a loyalty program: The last part of the previous section brings us to the importance of a loyalty program. Although it is basic that you will need to perfect your food quality and service, the need for loyalty cannot be overlooked. Loyalty helps in retaining your customers and keep them coming back for more period. A good loyalty program is bound to turn the most loyal customers into your brand ambassadors. You can pamper those customers with complementary dishes and even honorary mentions on your social media platforms.

Create a channel for bookings: Your app can have a system using which your customers can book tables for an oncoming dining session. This ensures that your staff are well prepared for the crowd and it also gives a sense of assurance for the customer knowing that they will surely get a table. If you can get additional bits of information on the occasion, you can even get a chance to pamper your customers with a complimentary cake or even your staff singing the wishing song! They may be little gestures, but they still go a long way in achieving customer satisfaction.

Brand boosting: All these exercises culminate in being a branding exercise for your restaurant. Having a restaurant app is today’s equivalent of word of mouth marketing. The app has the potential to increase your restaurants’ visibility, and makes the restaurant and its brand more accessible.

Some key features: Well, we have been talking a lot about what all restaurant apps can achieve. Now let us talk about what your restaurant app needs to essentially have to ensure that it achieves what it is intended to.

Menu: When it comes to the physical menu, the space is limited. The search functionality cannot be introduced and there cannot be any filtering or segmentation. However, all these challenges can be effectively addressed in a mobile app. This means that you can upload a visually appealing menu that can properly be segmented and filtered. The restaurant app also gives space for the menu to have enticing pictures of the food items. The visual appeal of these menu items can easily translate into table bookings or online orders.

Online order: That brings us to the next essential feature – online ordering. The food delivery provider GrubHub has stated that the time taken to order food using an app is about 45 seconds as compared to the two minutes it takes when you order by phone. This makes an enticing avenue for the customer to place their orders and avail the awesomeness of your restaurant food in the comfort and confines of their home.

Online ordering can be made a part of the menu where users can just add the item to their cart with a single touch on the screen. They can choose to either pick it up from the restaurant or dine at the restaurant, or have it delivered to their home using UberEats Clone like app.

Table booking: We have discussed the importance of table booking in the earlier sections. In addition to all the advantages mentioned above, it also greatly reduces the magnitude of frustration faced by the users if they have to wait for long stretches of time to get the table. It is to be understood that the more the number of people in a dining group, the more the waiting time! Table booking comes in extremely handy in these situations because you do not want to frustrate multiple customers at the same time!

Push notifications: Push notifications, according to Noah Weiss, the head of Search at Slack, should be timely, personal, and actionable – three simple words that take quite a lot of market knowledge to figure out. Push notifications are like a double-edged sword-they can either build or break your brand.

Push notifications as discussed above should be actionable and should contain information that the customer would find useful or interesting. Examples could be discounts, special promotions, new menu items, and upcoming events.

There have been instances where some big global brands have used push notifications to their advantage by bringing in advanced technologies. Starbucks, for example, uses geofencing to generate push notifications when you are near one of their outlets.

The Cost of Creating a Restaurant App – To finish it all…

Just like how a grand meal in the restaurant should end with a scrumptious dessert, we would like to end our write-up with a piece of good news that creating an app for your restaurant is not as complicated as it seems to be on paper! All that you need to do is to find a mobile app development company that specializes in the customization of white label clones of UberEats. They will take care to understand your requirements, customize the app in line with your restaurant needs, and present a fully functional app loaded with all the features that you wanted!

Tags: app, app design, app development, restaurant

About the Author

Manish Gehlot I am a privacy, security, encryption and software freedom enthusiast. I am into VPNs, TLS security. Recently I also got into technical writings. I am working as a VPN support and consultant at some nordic VPN providers.