15 Must have features for Restaurant app in 2019

Still, you are thinking out to adopt mobile app development strategy for your existing restaurant business? Still, you are in a dilemma whether it will be a fruitful return on your investment or not if you go for the mobility way for your business. So, this is a post for you to know about some important facts about the digital app’s potential for your business to take it to the next level and gain information about the must-have features for your restaurant mobile app when you are ready to dive into acquiring digital assets for your business.

1. 1. The bulk of your customers in different age groups already starts using the available mobile app of your competitors. Mobile apps are more popular between today’s generation of millennials. Based on the below states, overall food delivery service has been used by the customer of the age group below 35 years. Then followed by the upper age groups of peoples. Due to the fact of the convenience of ordering from anywhere, customers now use Restaurant mobile app more frequently. (Source)
   2. As per another research, Your customers generally like to interact & have more trust with restaurant branded mobile app as compare to the 3rd party web portals / mobile app where all multiple restaurants listed together. They feel more confident in transacting over Restaurant own branded app. (Source)
      
   3. 60% of millennial customers often like to visit the restaurant in off-peak hours to secure discount and offers from the restaurant.
   4. One out of five customers accepts that technology in restaurant business optimizes their experience with the restaurant services. They would like to visit those restaurants more where they feel technology advantage over others. Such an easy way to make payments on Table itself, Earn Reward Points on their orders & visit, surf food menu on tablets or kiosk without asking help from restaurant staff, etc.
   5. The quarter of your customer become now health cautions and they regularly visit online dishes with the nutrient contents. Which is hard to achieve through the paper menu. Distributing useful info which your customer seeking is possible through digital restaurant mobile apps.
   6. Technology makes easy to make reservations & optimum self-service operations of the restaurant. Customer making reservations for their Dine-In dinner or just to pick up an order from the restaurant while they are on their way from the office to their home.

In Short, Why you need Restaurant App for following sure shot reasons :

•  Customer love to place orders on your Restaurant Mobile app by just a few clicks due to the convenience of a smartphone device which makes everything on just a few taps of fingers.
• You can service a large number of customers at the same time as compared to your serving at your physical location.
• A Restaurant mobile app helps you to make your brand among your customers along with help in Marketing, Sales, Planning, Operation optimization, and Customer Data Analysis.
• Popular features like Updated Mobile Food Menu, Latest Offers, Reward Programmes engage your customer with your restaurant business and compels them to visit or opt your food services frequently.
• Grow your recurring customers, Repeat customers are always the core backbone of your business growth.

Conclusion for your Restaurant Business,

If you own a Restaurant of 10 dine-in tables or multi-restaurant at different locations, Food Takeaway, Food Truck or any type of Food serving business. If you still not have a dedicated restaurant mobile app in your brand then really you are leaving a bare minimum of 40% of your total sales on the open table and chances are your competitors are already in this game and keep earning profits. Think about the above facts and decide now if you want to drop into the mobile strategy for your business today before it will be so late like we have seen the experience of Nokia in the mobile industry. Nokia becomes late in adopting the latest trend of the technology of smart devices that time and now out of his number one position today and still struggling to come into the game of mobile devices again.

Essentials features of Restaurant Mobile App for 2019:

1. Distribute offers & discounts to your potential customers – In 2019, There are various ways by which you can communicate your latest offers & discounts to your customers to drive more per day sales. One of the latest adopted innovative ways to broadcast instant offers to all nearby customers who pass through your restaurant area based on the different interval of open hours. For example, Mostly day time on weekdays is the lean period for every food business because of most customers at their work or in college. You can install ibeacon devices at your restaurant entrance, parking area or on road pillars and broadcast offer of the day to drive sales. Each passing customer within the area of 500 mt. gets an instant push notification when they come in a range of the ibeacon device. How ibeacon device works for Restaurant business – Click here to see the details for how it works. Send regular Push Notifications with latest offers & deals to all the customers who have downloaded your restaurant app. It keeps your customer updated with the latest running offers in your restaurant & drive them to open your app and encourage them to place an order to make use of the sent offer. More conversion of offer means more orders, more sales & more revenue for your restaurant business. Make sure you utilize the utility of these push notifications with care & it becomes not annoying to the app user. For example, sending push notifications in the night time when everybody sleep is not a good idea. But sending the push notification at the right time always drive more conversion such as at day time, evenings, holidays, special days. Sending push notifications based on the user behavior or previous purchase is more convertible. Managing your push notifications efficiently and strategically helps in optimum use of your Own Restaurant mobile app.
2. Highly User-friendly login or sign up process in-app – Making effortless login & sign up process in the mobile app is a key to success of usage of a mobile app by your customer. In present time app user love to login via Facebook, Google email because they don’t write to fill information in fields and it just a way of few clicks. App automatically fetches the user data which is required to use your restaurant app. Another convenient way to log in via mobile phone only, Where system sends an OTP code to verify the mobile number and make a customer account in the mobile app.  Days are gone when the user needs to fill lots of personal details and verify it through email links, etc.
3. Auto-Populate user information – There should be program logic where the app will store the name, address, phone number like basic details of the customer in the user account after placing first order. So that when the customer makes another order those details should auto-populated. This reduces the time duration of placing an order by the app user. High ease of using the restaurant app helps in slightly more sales through the mobile app.
4. Loyalty, Discount & Rewards features in Restaurant Mobile App – Every customer like to have some value addition from the business they deal with, They would like to feel special or benefited from the business on using their offerings again. According to one survey, 38% of mobile app user uses their smartphone to find discount & offers where they want to head for lunch or dinner. These discounts & offers not only to help your customer to save the cost but also reduce or balance your overall customer acquisition cost.
   
   There are various features or ways of loyalty programmes which you can offer for your customers in your Restaurant app:
   1. Using Location-based Check-in ( Wireless ) through beacon technology to award them points on each visit to your restaurant. Different amount of points at the different time of the day to drive more traffic in lean time of the day.
   2. Transaction-based Reward Points, Customer earn reward points based on their order value. This is a traditional way of giving loyalty points in every time of retail business nowadays.
   3. Program to offer some free gift or fixed percentage off on achieving a fixed number of points in Reward Wallet. Make multiple short programs to participate.
   4. Broadcast instant in-restaurant offers to all customer who is present in the Restaurant for Drinks, Sides, Add-on orders.
5. Different Platform of Smartphones – In the present world, Two platforms of smartphones are more most popular these days – iPhone & Android. You should have your Restaurant app on both the app to cater to a wide audience. It should be available on both the app stores iTunes & Google play store so that it is exposed to both types of users who use Android or on iPhone. You can hire Restaurant mobile app development company who code your Restaurant app for both the platform with optimum features as per your need.
6. Customer friendly and Updated Food Menu – App should have user-friendly food menu in the Restaurant app. Which should be easy to navigate and place an order. There should be a WEB CMS panel so that you can easily update the menu from time to time. Easy to update different food categories and subcategories with Food menu pics, price, modifiers like quantity or combos meal.
7. Dine-in Table Reservation – As per survey customers like to make reservations for their Dine-In dinner for their favorite restaurants. So that they don’t need to wait outside when they visit your Restaurant. Table reservation features used to pre-book the time and date on which your customer like to have dinner or lunch at your restaurant. Some Restaurant app has the feature to make food order along with table reservation so that they also don’t need to wait on the table or for restaurant staff to take the order. Reservations also help your operation to serve your customer more efficiently because you can make plans and arrangements in advance for all booking for the particular booking date.
8. Food Ordering with Multiple Payment Options – App should have Food ordering facility similar to an e-commerce app to build order in a cart and then place an order with the option of choosing Table reservation, Delivery or Pick up from the Restaurant. The app should have multiple payment options for more convenient for your customer such as Pay at Restaurant / Delivery, Pay via Cards – Credit or Debit, Pay via bank, Pay via Payment Wallets ( You should have Payment Wallet those are more popular in your area ).
9. Food delivery options – Food delivery is a totally different revenue generation section for your Restaurant. If you drive your food deliveries efficiently soon it can become 60-70% of your total increased revenue. Today is a generation of On-demand facilities and it keeps on increasing day by day. You can offer a fixed number of areas around your restaurant where you can easily avail the deliveries. Your customer can know the status of placed order in the Restaurant App like – Order Received, In Preparation, In Packaging, Dispatched for Delivery & Delivered. You already have seen how Dominos grow their business which is majorly based on quick pizza deliveries.
10. Social Media Integration – Should have the capability to share your food menu items on preferred social media by your customer. Having a feature of sharing the item details with friends on WhatsApp or social media.
11. Restaurant Ambience information – Your customer like to have more information about your restaurant, In Restaurant mobile app you can showcase Restaurant Images, Customer taste notes, customer pics, Ask your customer to shot their pic and share on your Restaurant Facebook page, etc. This will further include informational pages like about restaurant founder, Directions to Restaurant, Restaurant call button, etc. Restaurant branding should be an essential part of your growth strategy. Brand your Restaurant business by having a Readymade restaurant mobile app for your business.
12. Customer feedback section – Feedback section in Restaurant mobile app is essential to know about your offerings and how to improve it further to greet your customers. Feedback helps you to remove deficiencies and further provide more optimum food services to your customers.
13. Rating & Reviews – Food items based ratings & reviews helps you to analyze which food item preparation is going well and which needs further improvements. In a restaurant different dishes are prepared from different chefs, Through ratings and review, you can ask your chef staff to make improvement in their preparations.
14. Restaurant on Table Payment Systems – Your restaurant app can automatically sense the table location and can get your customer with the bill to pay from the mobile app. This can be possible through location-based capability of ibeacon devices, Where you need to stick each beacon to the tables of different corners of your restaurant.
15. Restaurant App should have Engagement features – Restaurant mobile app should regularly interact with your customer so that your customer remind your business & latest happenings going in the business offerings. Proper mobile app functions lead the customer to use it regularly, feedback on the services and recommend it to their friends or relatives.

What is the cost to develop a Restaurant Mobile app for your business?

Regarding, Cost of development of a Restaurant is totally depend on which way you would like to move with. If you want to develop a custom mobile app development for your specific needs then it cost you something between $5000 – $10,000 from an Offshore mobile app development company like in India.

If you just want to try if it works with your business or not then you can go with the Ready Made Restaurant Mobile App or Mobile App Solution for Restaurant. Which will cost you between $599 – $899.