Add multiple restaurants with order & delivery system
Accept secure payments with credit card, PayPal, Stripe, & COD
Get an overview of orders through a live order management system
Separate apps for Delivery Personnel, Restaurant & Customers
Attract customers when they are near you and send timely offers
Offer lucrative coupons and let users redeem them to earn their loyalty
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Last Updated on November 24th, 2020
Select an amazing app layout. Personalize it to your liking.
Drag and Drop features like payment, photo, etc. Create your restaurant app with no coding skills.
Publish your app on Google Play and iTunes. Make your restaurant mobile and reach out to more customers.
Building an app for your restaurant is not optional anymore. If you want your restaurant to stay ahead of the competition, mobile applications are the only way to go. A restaurant app ensures that you, as a restaurant owner can reach out to a larger audience and serve more people without spending all the time on phone, taking orders.
Online food ordering apps help restaurants make their processes faster and more efficient with as little scope of error as possible. Apps can help restaurants in different ways that eventually improve their bottom line, increase brand recognition, improve customer loyalty, and encourage repeat orders from your customers.
Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder is the best no code app builder that lets anyone create a restaurant app without coding and at a fraction of the cost. This is why even smaller restaurants with limited resources can create their own restaurant app in just a few minutes.
5 billion people in this world use a smartphone. That is nearly 65% of all people on the planet. For a restaurant business looking to go mobile, a large portion of smartphone users is their customer base. A restaurant app markets your restaurant to these potential customers. A restaurant app also helps retain customers. Existing customers can use your apps for various services.
The food industry is worth nearly a trillion USD. It is also extremely competitive and a food-related business not focusing on marketing itself, is likely to fail in the long run. A business that does not interact with its customers faces a similar fate. A restaurant app helps making both marketing and interaction easy for you.
Creating an app for your restaurant gives you an opportunity to boost your brand. By incorporating your brand values, aesthetics, and theme that represents your brand you increase brand recognition and memorability. It could be in the form of content, logo, brand colors, and more.
By making registration compulsory for your app, you can get certain basic information from the customers. This not only allows you to reach out to them later with promotional offers, but also gives the customers a highly personalized experience.
Using a mobile app, you can attend to the needs and orders of a greater number of customers in a more efficient and organized manner. This automatically improves the overall service standards of your restaurant earning you good reviews.
As you start offering a great user experience, it is only natural that you would have a highly engaged audience. In fact, with features like geo-fencing and push notifications, you can reach your app users in real-time and give them a reason to come back to your restaurant.
Location-based advertising makes sure that you are reaching out to an audience that is more likely to convert. Not only can you send out relevant promotional messages to people who are located in the same area as your restaurant but even encourage the casual passers-by to step in.
Your restaurant app gives you an additional avenue for earning. By adding food delivery option, you can make sure that you can serve even those customers who prefer eating at home. This means you get to serve more customers than you can seat in your restaurant.
Once your customers install your restaurant app on their phones, the chances of them ordering from your restaurant or booking a table with you are considerably higher. This increases the overall brand loyalty of the customers encouraging them to come back to your restaurant more often.
Studies reveal that over 80 percent of customers have searched for a restaurant on their smartphone. Creating an app with a restaurant app maker is crucial given the possible base of new customers you can have. Given below are a few types of restaurant apps that you can make:
A customer can use a restaurant locator app to find and locate restaurants in a particular location. A restaurant finder app can also be used to see reviews, photos, view menus, and locate directions to the restaurant.
With the help of the Food Delivery App, you can assign, track, and ease the delivery of orders of your customers.
Customers can book tables and pay bills using the Table Booking App for a great dining experience. They can even search for the restaurant, invite friends and get recommendations. Like booking a table well in advance the customers can also order food in advance by using the Food Ordering App so that the food is prepared just in time without any waiting involved.
The Delivery Tracking App allows the restaurant owners to keep track of their delivery drivers to ensure they don’t laze off on duty.
This app helps manage customer loyalty and referral programs. It sets up customized reward programs and informs the users from time to time.
The customer can search for a specific cuisine or restaurant and see the reviews for a place. This app helps customers know more about a restaurant that they want to visit. The reviews can be divided further into various categories like ambiance, atmosphere, etc.
Franchise apps are suited to restaurants that manage multiple branches. They do everything a food app does but only for a single franchise. Domino’s is an example of a franchise restaurant app.
Depending on the type of restaurant app you make, its working will be different. We choose a food app since it combines all the various functions of restaurant apps. Here are the features how the general functions of a restaurant app function.
The food court feature helps restaurant owners improve their sales and increase business. It helps them manage various aspects of the restaurant like Staff management and Kitchen management.
There are three parts of how an order circulates in an app. The first part is the customer who interacts with the app UI and finalizes his order. The second part of the delivery app connects the user’s order to the restaurant through clouds and separate software installed in the restaurant. The final part of the ordering is sent as a notification to nearby delivery boys on a separate delivery only app who can choose to accept or reject the order. If the restaurant has its own delivery boys, they can skip the third part of the ordering cycle.
The restaurant finder feature works by pinpointing user location and correlating the restaurant addresses stored in their databases.
There are two ways this can be addressed. Either a user can request a reservation through the app and allow the restaurant to confirm their booking or in the case of larger restaurants, a user can directly reserve a seat of their choice. In the first case, a simplistic ticket is raised whereas in the second case a virtual outline of the restaurant is shown to the user. It works similar to online theater bookings.
With the Dine-in feature, you can help improve user experience by letting them read the menu, choose an ingredient, book a table, call the waiter, manage inventory, place in-app orders and make mobile payments through the app.
You can unlock your brand’s potential with your mobile app. You can let customers make payments and book tables well in advance. This will let your customers avoid queues and long waiting hours. It will also help in increasing efficiency and accuracy. It will allow you to reserve tables, assign seats, and remember customer preferences.
The notifications help you grow your app significantly. The restaurant owners need to use push notifications smartly and in a sophisticated manner. Let the customer decide when they want you to send the notifications.
A customer always looks for free stuff. This appetite for the free stuff can be fulfilled by using the loyalty and rewards feature or incentivized last minute bookings on the app. These are simple and work the same way as they work for other apps. You can periodically update offers and set conditions for user rewards on the backend. Starbucks increased sales by 80 percent after introducing loyalty programs.
It is highly relevant to look for customer feedback to improve the app for better optimization. A continuous review and rating cycles are important for any existing app. This will help you provide an improved user experience. A feedback page acts as a stimulator. Review and rating on a restaurant app is simple and straightforward. For a food app, the restaurant is registered on the app either itself or by professional critics.
Driver tracking uses the same framework laid out for the ordering functionality. It pinpoints the location of the delivery boy and simply shows it to both the restaurant and the user.
Apps for restaurants are a new concept. Customer expectations for restaurant apps are still evolving but they are usually very generic. Here are a few listed:
Simplicity is the prime customer expectation. Apps with a good UI are important and a restaurant app with multiple functionalities needs to maintain that. While designing a restaurant app, keep in mind that most of your customer demographic is likely to be older. They like simple apps. Make them simple!
Customers want an optimized app that loads and responds quickly.
Technology advances fast and keeping up with it is necessary. Similarly, having the latest payment technology makes it a better deal for your customers.
Rating and reviews are the backbone of your app. Try to enhance the overall experience for your users by getting their feedback and improve on your weaknesses.
Each app has a special feature to keep customers engaged. For instance, Urbanspoon is one of the best Restaurant Finder App that runs on both, iPhone and Android. OpenTable is a popular table booking app. Starbucks works on the Promotional and loyalty program model. Domino’s Pizza has incorporated the Driver tracking feature in its app. Let us pick up four case studies to understand the various features a restaurant app can offer:
The Starbucks app is a success story and one of the finest examples of marketing through customer engagement. Starbucks makes a remarkable impression on the customer with its user-friendly app and sought-after loyalty programs. With the help of the Starbucks app, a user can pay bills online and earn & collect rewards. Starbucks runs reward schemes on user birthdays and free in-store refills through notifications. After gathering information about the user, Starbucks tries to enhance their personalized experience by offering them relevant perks and rewards.
Key Features of the Starbucks app:
The Starbucks menu tab features the list of all the drinks available in their outlets.
Starbucks engages with customers by offering rewards like discounts, gifts, and complimentary beverages.
Starbucks has a loyalty program feature in the app that offers stars against every purchase leading to earning a free drink and other goodies.
This feature helps Starbucks during the rush hours as the customer can pay in advance and pick up his drink later.
Customers can fill in-app surveys sent to them by Starbucks, in return for star rewards.
Customers can save songs being played at any Starbucks outlet to their own playlist within the app.
Starbucks is always active with their app and keeps revamping its loyalty program to offer a seamless user experience to the customer.
The Chipotle app has witnessed a high number of downloads and offers a great user experience to the customer. Chipotle is currently working on enhancing user experience further. The app helps collect online orders, manage deliveries and promote offers and advertising. The app further helps the restaurant process more orders without interrupting wait times for customers. Witnessing about 700,000 downloads on the iPhone alone, Chipotle app features include:
Chipotle offers customers a feature that lets users save their information for repeat orders, where they can place orders or reorders through a secure payment method.
The Chipotle app has a feature where the customer can receive, store and redeem Chipotle offers in-app. Chipotle rewards each customer 10 points for every order they make.
The app offers a streamlined and secure payment option for users. Chipotle has tied up with reputed digital wallets for in-app payments.
Location-based technology helps customers locate the nearest Chipotle restaurant and this feature is a hit in the Chipotle app.
Domino’s, the major pizza chain has more than 15,000 locations worldwide. It also has an app that helps their business grow. By using the Domino’s app, users can order and pay online. Users can even track the live status of their orders. It feels like having a pizza store in your pocket.
The features of Domino’s Pizza app are listed below:
To take ordering to the next level, the Domino’s Pizza App has a feature where the user can see all the variety of options available. With the easy to navigate the menu, they can order their favorite pizza side dish or dessert.
A consumer can now make a new pizza by selecting the crust, cheese, and change toppings with a drag and drop function in the app. This feature lets the consumer get exactly the pizza they want.
Domino’s has tied up with digital wallets to receive payments. Domino’s is extremely safe and that alone might be their app’s USP.
Users can track their order from the pizza store to their doorstep with the delivery tracker. The user can receive Pizza Tracker notifications even on a smartwatch.
The self-serve yogurt chain Yogurtland created an app with website features. Like other brands, the Yogurtland app allows tracking and managing rewards to earn free yogurt. It offers the latest Yogurtland news and flavor updates in-app. The app also helps users create flavors of their own from the ingredients available. Listed below are some features of Yogurtland app:
Users will be able to find their nearest store locations and see the flavors that are on the customized daily menus. They replicate menu features in-store and let users read details and nutrition information on the app.
The app offers a Flavor Finder, which allows users to search the unique flavors and discover which outlet is serving their favorite flavors.
The user can perform a customized yogurt creation through their mobile phone to earn reward points. Through digital wallet integration and an intuitive interface, they can even create program signups.
You can attract more customers to your restaurant and increase your table reservations by creating a mobile app for your Restaurant, Cafe, Bar, or Club using Appy Pie’s App Builder. Appy Pie’s Restaurant App Builder allows you to create beautiful mobile apps with premium restaurant app features.
With Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder, you can easily create a mobile app for your standalone restaurant or for multiple restaurants in a food court. To make it simple for restaurant owners, our app building platform has two different features: food court and online food ordering.
Let’s discuss in detail, how these features can prove to be beneficial for your restaurant business.
The food court feature allows users to add single or multiple restaurants with order and delivery management system. Backed by multiple functionalities, the food court feature eases the process of food ordering by bringing restaurants, delivery persons, and customers, onto a single platform. With this advanced feature, not only the food court owners get to upscale their business growth, but even the associated delivery persons and restaurants stand to earn a good chunk of revenue in the long run. Under the food court, we provide a super admin web dashboard and three different apps – restaurant app, customer app, and delivery app.
1.1 Super Admin Web Dashboard
The super admin web dashboard allows the app admin to:
1.2 The Restaurant App
The restaurant app allows the restaurant owners to:
1.3 The Delivery App
The delivery app allows delivery persons to:
1.4 The Customer App
The customer app allows end-users to:
The online food ordering feature has been specifically designed for standalone restaurant owners and allows them to create a restaurant app with great features like table reservations, push notifications, etc. With Appy Pie’s next-gen online food ordering feature, restaurant owners can create amazing restaurant apps within a matter of minutes and keep their business in the hearts and pockets of the customers. Under order food, we provide a web dashboard and customer app.
2.1 Customer App
The customer app allows end-users to:
2.2 Web Dashboard
The web dashboard allows restaurant owners to:
Appy Pie’s food court and online food ordering are great features to make it easy for customers to order food on the fly. Now, you may be thinking of solutions to streamline your food ordering process at your dining area through smartphones. Appy Pie has the answer for that also! Yes, with our Dine-in feature, you can easily improve user experience by letting customers perform various operations in just a few taps. Listed hereunder are some functions that our Dine-In feature provides:
Now it is time to build your own restaurant app. There are many restaurant mobile app builders but Appy Pie Restaurant App Builder offers a simple no-code platform that helps you create restaurant apps in just minutes. Follow the steps below to create your own restaurant app:
Step 1: Go to www.appypie.com and click on Get Started.
Step 2: Enter your business’ name and click Next.
Step 3: In the next menu, choose Restaurant &Food as your business category.
Step 4: Pick a color scheme. Remember, you can change this later.
Step 5: Before you go ahead with creating your app, you need to choose a platform to test your app on. This is just to test your app.
Step 6: Go ahead and create an account on Appy Pie.
Step 7: Sign up with Appy Pie.
Step 8: Once you sign up, the app maker dashboard will be opened. You can customize the app and then click on Save & Continue.
Step 9: Clicking on Save & Continue will start making a test version of your app. Once it is done, you can download your test app.
Step 10: Downloading your test app first allows you to test and create your app simultaneously saving time in the process.
Step 11: After downloading the test app, you will be redirected to My apps section. To start editing your app, click on Edit. It will open up the app builder dashboard.
Step 12: A section will open where you can see the Gold Pricing. You can edit your app with the try now or buy now feature. The ‘Try now’ option comes with a 2-Day Trial so that you are fully satisfied with the app before you make the purchase.
Please note whichever option you choose, you need to provide credit card details. We use credit card details to check the authenticity of the users. Don’t worry, we don’t charge anything without your confirmation, even after the trial ends
Step 13: In My Feature click on View All and search Food Court to add it to your app
Step 14: This your page name. You can change it as per your needs. From here you can change the page icon. Let’s add the restaurant now. Click on Add Restaurant to continue
Step 15: A popup ‘Add Restaurant’ will open, enter all the necessary information such as restaurant name, email, mobile, cuisines, minimum order amount, etc., and click on Save
Step 16: On the dashboard, you will see the restaurant has been added. Click on Manage Menu to add products to your restaurant
Step 17: You need to create new category. Click on Add Now
Step 18: A popup ‘Add New Category’ will open, enter all the necessary information like restaurant, category name, product sorting order, category status, etc. and click on Save
Step 19: You will see the category on the dashboard. If you want, you can add a sub category and then add products, or directly add the products to this category from here. Let’s add a sub category. Click on Sub Category
Step 20: Click on Add Sub Category. A popup will open. Enter all the mandatory information and click on Save to continue
Step 21: Let’s add products now. Go to Products and click on Add Product. A popup will open. Provide all the relevant information like product name, type, SKU code, order availability, quantity, price, images, videos, etc. and click on Save
Step 22: You will see the product has been added to the restaurant. From manage orders, you can manage all your orders at one place. The General Settings option allows you to make changes to app language, rules, coupons, taxes, etc. From Sales Report section, you can download the sales report of the app, while reviews lets you to keep track of user reviews
Step 23: In the Advanced Settings, you have the option to enable or disable the delivery system, i.e. if disabled, you won’t be getting the delivery person app
Step 24: Next click on the Design icon to open the design page
Step 25: It will open the design page from where you can customize the look and feel of your app the way you want. Once you’re done, click on Save & Continue.
Apps for restaurants can be a powerful marketing tool and help you increase brand awareness. Appy Pie Restaurant App Builder helps you build apps that work seamlessly on multiple platforms making a mark in the food industry. So, go ahead and get started with your restaurant app.
The Restaurant App Builder from Appy Pie offers a broad range of services, tools, and features. Here’s a list of our top features that you shouldn’t miss!
Here is how you can create a restaurant app without any coding –
It is totally free to make a restaurant app using Appy Pie AppMakr. However, if you want to publish your restaurant app to app stores like Google Play and iTunes, you need to upgrade your app to one of our paid plans. To check the pricing plans, please visit – https://www.appypie.com/app-builder/pricing-plan.
You can set up home delivery in your restaurant app using Appy Pie’s food court feature
Here are the top reasons why your restaurant needs a mobile app –
Here are some of the best food ordering apps –
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