A restaurant app is different from an online food delivery app as it is specific to a restaurant, or a chain of restaurants. This blog sets up a stage for restaurant app development!
Restaurants have centralized their operations to accepting orders, preparaing meals, and dispatching it via delivery partners. But they can also include information on the restaurant’s loyalty program, ongoing promotions, specials, offers, seasonal discounts. Restaurant apps or Restaurant management systems allow guests to place table reservations or check the availability of the spot on the waitlist.
Although food ordering and delivery apps prove to be a profitable alternativeto developing restaurant app, but there are multiple issues that impact revenue associated with this approach like (1) Very high commission rate, (2) Unsure delivery quality, (3) Heightened competition, (4) Lack of control over visibility.
The growth rate of restaurant management software is estimated to grow at a rate of CAGR of 15.85% (2022 – 2027). This growth rate depends upon the growth of the food service industry, the rise in the number of QSR’s, FSR’s, the market segmentation of deployment (on-premises, cloud based), geography (North America, APAC, Europe, South America, Africa, and the Middle East.) Restaurant apps or restaurant management apps are platforms that intersect the online ordering, pickup and delivery. Most popular restaurant ordering apps are GrubHub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, Eat24, Foodpanda, Zomato, DoorDash, ChowNow, Swiggy, and MenuDrive.
What do you need a restarant app?
While customers might need a restarant app to to order food, book reservations, or to find the best restaurant, to make reservations, to place takeout orders or to modify existing reservations, the restaurant owners might need to automate all these requests and save their time to serve the customers waiting in the queue and those who are making online orders.
More reasons to use and build restaurant app:
- To check what is on the menu
- To check at what time they operate
- To look for nearby restaurants
- To search for deals
- To look for restarants by cuisine
- To search for restaurant reviews
- To order food online
- To check for directions
- Seach for restaurant contact numbers
- To researve a table
- To check for for all benefits of a loyalty program
- To post a review reagrding dining experience
- To check nutrition chart
- Increase in sales
- Brand loyalty and customer engagement
- Easy payment processing
- An easy way to fetch Customer Feedback
Most of the times such tools come with a wide range of features to cater niche restaurant types. Restaurant management software often overlap with point of sale (POS) systems. But besides this they must feature inventory management, employee management, order management, reservations, and payroll.
Restaurant App Features
Every features that we list here may not gel up with your requirements or niche, business model, and architecture of your application, but the core features of restaurant apps that best app developers include in their projects:
- Loyalty, Rewards and Discount Programs for special offers and deals, coupons, etc.
- Order placement (for takeout orders/delivery)
- Online Payments (both the order payments and tips)
- Table Reservation
- GPS to easily locate the restaurant and track order delivery
- Social Media Login
- Virtual Assistant to cater 24*7 for in-app chat for complaints and suggestions
- Customer Feedback Portal
- Online Food Tracking to keep customers informed of the order status
- Quick Ordering repeat your previous order in one click
- A digital menu, including photos and detailed info
- Filters (by price, discounts, popularity of dishes, a filter with some main ingredient included, etc.)
- Push notifications
- Waiter call
- User reviews and ratings for every position in the menu
- Menu customization to enable visitors to customizeIngredients themselves
- Gamification features where customers can earn points which they can redeem at the time of their next order.
- Third-party integrations (e.g. the ability to request an Uber without leaving the app as soon as an order is paid for).
Best Food Delivery Apps of 2023
- Uber Eats
- DoorDash
- ChowNow
- Grub Hub
- Caviar
- Seamless
- Postmates
- Delivery.com
- Swiggy
- noon Feood
- Zomato
- noon Grocery
- iFood
- Rappi
- Grubhub
- Delivery Hero
- Deliveroo
- Slice
- Wolt for Work
- Shgardi
- Deliverect
- FreshDirect
- TabSquare.AI
- Flipdish
- Foodhub
- LINE MAN
- Grocery Accelerator
What technologies do you require to run your restaurant management app?
A typical restaurant tech stack must be inclusive of these features:
- A CMS
- A point of sale (POS) system
- Social media management tools
- An email service provider
- Branding and marketing platforms
- Payroll software
- Reservation software
- Accounting software
- Customer service and feedback tools
- Phone and voicemail systems
- Loyalty programs
- Online and mobile ordering
- Digital menus with QR codes
- Food delivery trackers or partner programs
- Digital checks/receipts
- Digital menu screens
- Tabletop tablets with card payment systems
- Self-service kiosks
- Food and beverage inventory management systems
- Employee onboarding and training portals
- Vendor management platforms or spreadsheets
- Compliance and policy management tools
- Equipment management tools
- Employee communication apps
- Customer communication apps
- POS (point of sale) systems
- Online reservation systems
- Takeaway, click and collect and mobile order-ahead tech
- Inventory management tools
- Analytics and reporting
- Integrations with other tech solutions
- Square POS, POS, payment platform, online ordering, and more
- Toast, POS, online/mobile payments, all-in-one restaurant management
- Lightspeed Restaurant, POS, online ordering, loyalty program, and more
- Clover, payments, analytics, restaurant management
Top 10 restaurant management software platforms that restaurants are using in 2023
Compared to the competition in restarant management market, here is a list of 10 best software package for restaurants of all sizes. These enable restaurant owners in managing FOH, BOH, scheduling, delivery, and inventory. Here’s the list:
- Posist Restaurant POS
- toasttab.com
- Foodics
- Restaurant365
- Lightspeed Restaurant
- Owner.com
- Petpooja
- NCR Aloha POS
- Lavu
- Zenput
Other top restaurant management software are: IVEPOS, 7shifts, Petpooja, Posist, and Limetray.
How much does a restaurant app cost?
The cost to develop a restaurant management app depends upon features like features set, mobile app design, team size, location of the agency, platform for application deployment, technology stack used, and the app complexity.
Why is restaurant app a must-have these days?
- Availability of locally sourced food – 62%
- Discount offered for dining at off-peak hours – 56%
- Walking distance from home – 56%
- Availability of environment – fiendly food – 51%
- Reward and customer loyalty program – 50%
- Tableside electronic ordering and payment options – 26%
What are the key takeaways?
We hope this article helped you out with your impending queries on restaurant tech solution!
If restaurant owners train their staff and regularly update the software, they can save in the long run with an improved efficiency, tracking order delivey, attendance, and progress of every employee, finding ways to be cost-effective, and always on time. They get to utilize analytics and integrations for data-driven decisions. This ensures data security and privacy, and gives them a chance to continuously monitor and optimize software use.
Restaurant management tools help restaurant owners, managers, and staff to run the restaurant end to end. It helps them track their inventory, number and status of orders, payroll, and analytics. These tools are being used to compare business practices at multiple locations, ease the onboarding process for new employees and track the effectiveness of the staff.
Top app development companies can create a restaurant dashboard to streamline operations and improve efficiency of the hospitality staff. These act as a separate module for the staff to evaluate the progress of the orders or requests sent on the app.
It can either be a standalone app or can be a module within a whole, to help customers, and restaurant managers track the operations and processes and resolve any queries that the staff is entitles to. Whatever your biggest challenges as a restaurant manager best app developers can build a platform to help you out. If you’re overwhelmed with hiring, stocking, reaching new audiences, retaining customers, or managing customer service, there are new restaurant technologies that meet even the most specific needs.