How To Build A Restaurant App? - Prismetric

How To Build A Restaurant App? Features, Development Process, Cost

How To Build A Restaurant App

In the last decade, the restaurant industry witnessed several technological transformations. Now, restaurant businesses are run and operated in an automated and simplified way. It seems the culture of using notebooks and calendars to accept orders with hands, cash counters for transactions, and performance report generation has become a thing of the past.

Self-ordering tablets, contactless payment, reordering with facial recognition, handheld entertainment, and Bluetooth temperature sensors to know food quality during cooking are new restaurant technology trends that lead the way in 2023.

After the pandemic, people are warmly embracing technology and restaurants have gone the extra mile to enhance customer experience with innovations. In the recent 2022 franchise customer experience conference, the checker’s and Rally restaurant received the award for AI-based restaurant app development wherein the app takes order more efficiently, delivered consistent experience, and upsell at scale.

It indicates that restaurants can make the recipe for success with the right blend of technology and teamwork, that’s restaurant app development. this guide will take you through the foundation step to survive and thrive in the market, that’s the step-by-step process of building a custom restaurant app.

Before heading to the development process, if you are still not convinced about restaurant app development and need evidence to see if it’s essential to make your business future-proof, the next section will help you.

Why Does your Restaurant Business need a Mobile App?

It is important to know how mobile apps benefit restaurant business. Restaurant app development is certainly helpful to users for easy ordering, checkout, and more. In this section, we will discuss how restaurant app development is beneficial for businesses.

Gain access to a wider audience

Millions of people use mobile every day and use different mobile apps daily to perform various tasks. Creating a restaurant app allow your restaurant business to gain space on the users’ phone that they use the most than anything. Taking a step ahead, geolocation marketing helps in increasing the user outreach of specific locations, which is impossible traditionally.

Increase restaurant sales

Restaurant app development is a good idea to extend the reach to a large audience base and improve conversion with the least effort and resource investment. For instance, enabling table booking options by restaurants with mobile apps cut down the number of customers in waiting areas, mobile payment eliminates the need to stand in long queues for checkout, and mobile menu checking makes ordering time-savvy.

Drive customer loyalty

The users no more like to check about offers or discounts manually. That’s where building a custom restaurant application come to the rescue. The app sends seasonal offers, rewards, discounts, and more to the users that appeal to them. The restaurant apps when sending personalized messages to the right customers at the right time as in-app push notifications, the chances of bringing customers to the restaurant app and making them order food repetitively are more. It helps in engaging and winning customers forever.

Simplify payment processing

When restaurants get an integrated pre-payment feature that involves allowing users to make payments as soon as they order food, it speeds up the ordering process. Additionally, enabling multiple payment options makes payment effortless. The great restaurant app development solution simplifies the payment process.

Iterate with customer feedback

The restaurant app also helps in gaining users’ feedback. The reviews and ratings from existing customers act as a marketing weapon to attract more customers. The suggestions from the customers for restaurant services or regarding the app help in iterating the app accordingly that syncs well with their expectations.

What types of food businesses will benefit by getting a restaurant app developed for their eatery?

After having understood how a restaurant app will benefit? let’s understand who will benefit from a restaurant app. Mobile apps are transforming the restaurant space and a restaurant app can benefit a wide range of food businesses that includes small food trucks to large chain restaurants. Here are some types of food businesses that can benefit from a restaurant app:

  • Fast food restaurants
  • Fine dining restaurants
  • Cafes and coffee shops
  • Food trucks
  • Bakeries and dessert shops
  • Pizzerias
  • Juice bars and smoothie shops
  • Bars and pubs with food menus
  • Catering services
  • Take-away food joints
  • Drive-in eating places
  • Food stand eatery
  • Grocery stores with prepared food sections

How to Create a Restaurant App: Step-By-Step process

Want to build your own restaurant application? Congrats! Shaping your app idea into a full-fledged restaurant application does not involve a single step of coding. Instead, when you create the restaurant app, following a 7-step process is important to get build and launch a successful restaurant application.

Create a Restaurant App Step-By-Step Instructions

Conduct Market Research

You are partnering with an App development company to get an app that’s ultimately used by the users and enables them to enjoy restaurant services easily. It’s essential to research and analyzes the target audience, market conditions, competitors’ apps, and key types of apps.

The analysis helps in knowing what customers want and what’s the gap in the market that your restaurant app can meet. It makes the app stay on the top of the customers’ minds. You can look for these app types- restaurant locator apps, table reservation apps, online ordering and delivery, on-table ordering and payment, and loyalty program apps that are popular in the restaurant landscape.

When you are creating any restaurant apps say a table booking solution is your preference, you should analyze the competitor’s app and the strategies they are using to attract and retain users. It helps you find USP and create unique functionalities that make the table booking app stand out.

Business Plan

You did the research. Do you know what you want to achieve with restaurant app development? This step helps you know the business goals behind the app development, which ultimately clarifies what type of app you want to build and the expected profits. Studying the business model of the competition helps in developing a business plan that summarizes the app’s specifications and business model to generate revenue, which makes easier it easier for developers to get started.

For instance, a table booking app built for one of our esteemed clients that enable users to search the nearby restaurants for lunch, dinner, or coffee, and book a table online at the flick of a switch- after knowing the client’s requirements and business plan to hold a tight grip in the market. The clear business specifications, technical specifications, features development, and technical implementation needs enable us to turn the client’s aspirations into a business reality.

Select app Development Partner

The most critical step that can make or break your app’s success is- choosing the right restaurant app development service provider. As the market is crowded with lots of app development companies guaranteeing app development at low cost. Let’s face it: the cheapest options are not the best alternative.

To get build a custom, secure, and scalable restaurant app, you need qualified restaurant app development services provided by reliable development companies. Instead of building an in-house team or working with freelancers, you should prefer hiring dedicated developers that work dedicatedly on your project and ensure quality delivery.

Figure out restaurant app functionality

With a ready business plan and accomplished app development company selection, you need to create a final list of restaurant app features that you want to keep in the first version and then in subsequent releases. Initially, you want to test the target audience response through app development with basic features, and then gradually want to enhance the app with advanced functionalities that help in bringing expected results continuously. Take a look at the core features that your app should have.

Core features

  • Search restaurants: With multiple franchises across the city, the feature made it easy to search and locate nearby restaurant franchises.
  • Menu: Create a list of cuisines that users will enjoy at the restaurant. Add images and ingredients used in every cuisine that appeals to the users.
  • Online ordering: Allow users to order food online after selecting the cuisines and specifying the quantity. You can also enable preorder food and offline pickup.
  • Table reservation: Users can book a table on mobile after looking at available tables at their convenient time. The waiting time saves time that gets wasted in the waiting area.
  • Online payment: Users can pay for food orders from their mobile without needing to stand in queues during checkout.
  • Order delivery tracking: Enable users to track their food orders in real-time so that unnecessary delays won’t frustrate them.
  • Loyalty program: Make your users feel special and keep ordering food by sending them offers, deals, or discount coupons.

UI/UX Design

Presently, saying people eat through their eyes before they taste the food in reality- is not an overstatement at all. The restaurant app interface should be designed in a way that delivers an unmatched experience to the users and makes them place an order. It starts with design research to get an idea of creating wireframes, navigation, layout elements, and app flow.

Post-wireframe creation, UI mockups, and mood boards created to craft visual design, that’s enhanced with animations and illustrations. Jumping on the mobile app design services bandwagon after UX wireframe creation is a good move.

UX Design Strategy and Tips For Mobile App Development

Test and iterate

With an appealing designed app with high-performance functionalities ready, it’s time to test how the app performs in the real world before it’s launched. The rigorous testing ensures all the bugs, crashes, and issues are fixed to make the app ready for app store submission.

Post-successful app launch, iterate the app based on user feedback to ensure the app meets evolving expectations of the users. It also makes users feel that restaurants pay attention to what they say.

App support and enhancement

The app development is an ongoing process that continues till the restaurant offers services to customers. It requires restaurants to analyze user feedback and iterate the app, add new features according to market trends and technological progress, and improve existing functionalities to win customers forever.

Updating the app according to the app store’s UI/UX design guidelines and security protocols is also important. That’s where app support and maintenance services

How much does it Cost to Build a Full-fledged & Futuristic Restaurant App?

You are building the restaurant app to increase ROI, but it’s possible when your restaurant app gets developed within the planned budget and thereafter improves sales. It’s essential to know the app development cost beforehand. Typically, the restaurant app development cost differs based on the type of basic, mid-range, and premium restaurant app you build.

If you want to know more about App development cost, dig deeper into the business guide for app development cost in 2023 that takes you through all the parameters that influence the development cost.

Get your Restaurant App developed with Prismetrics

Restaurant mobilization has become a part and parcel of the restaurant business. It’s adding wheels to the restaurant business and making restaurant services available everywhere. It indicates restaurant app development makes your restaurant business future-proof. The latest mobile app development trends and technological innovations that we have discussed confirm that there is a dire need for a restaurant app.

If you want to rejuvenate your restaurant business with a well-planned and strategically built restaurant app, you need the help of a reliable restaurant app development company. Prismetric stands out as a qualified restaurant app development service provider that has helped restaurateurs mobilize their restaurant services and increase the bottom line with innovative solutions.

Share your idea with our business consultants to know how can you move your business into mobile orbits cost-effectively. Let’s talk!

Our Recent Blog

Know what’s new in Technology and Development

Have a question or need a custom quote

Our in-depth understanding in technology and innovation can turn your aspiration into a business reality.

14+Years’ Experience in IT Prismetric  Success Stories
0+ Happy Clients
0+ Solutions Developed
0+ Countries
0+ Developers

      Contact Us

      Connect With US

      x