Restaurant App Builder

How to Create a Restaurant App in a Few Easy Steps?

Last Updated on June 09, 2022

1. Enter your app name

   Choose the design scheme and customize it with your restaurant’s logo to match your brand.

2. Add food court, dine-in and other features

   Create a restaurant app for Android and iOS without any coding.

3. Test & launch your Restaurant App on Google Play and the App Store

   Expand your customer base and take your restaurant to new heights with your own mobile app.

Restaurant App Builder to Create a Restaurant App in Minutes Without Coding!

Allow your customers to place orders, pay for them, and track the delivery agent in real-time by creating a customized food ordering app with Appy Pie’s app builder. Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder allows you to create an app without any coding in just minutes. Our restaurant app creator offers some of the most advanced food-management features that can make your restaurant app more attractive to your users. Appy Pie’s restaurant app maker offers a large variety of templates. You can choose one and customize it by writing the text on the page and adding a logo, image, video, and other media.

With Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder, you can add all the necessary features for your restaurant app. You can add features like map views, forms, in-app purchases, and analytics. The in-app purchase feature that our restaurant app maker offers allows you to earn money from your app. You can also add social media sharing buttons and coupon codes to your app. Once your app is ready, you can test your restaurant app before deploying it on the App Store or Google Play Store.

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 the phone, taking orders. Online food ordering apps help restaurants in automating various processes while leaving little scope for error. A featured loaded restaurant app created with Appy Pie app maker can help you to increase your return on investment in every manner.

Benefits of Creating a Restaurant App

Going mobile is a necessity for any restaurant business. If you have a large number of customers who are always on the run and looking for a quick bite, your restaurant business will definitely benefit from the mobile app. Creating a mobile app for your restaurant business will help you reach out to your target audience while providing a seamless experience to both your customers and employees. A well-designed restaurant app has the potential to improve your restaurant business in many ways including:

• Build Brand Awareness

  Creating an app for your restaurant business gives you an opportunity to boost your brand awareness. 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.

• Increase Revenue

  When you create an app for your restaurant, you open new horizons for revenue generation. You can use your restaurant app to promote offers and deals, create loyalty programs and reward customers who come back again and again. As a result, you’ll be able to attract more customers and boost your revenues.

• Save Time & Increase Productivity

  Creating A mobile for your restaurant business is a complete solution that takes care of every aspect of your order-taking and delivery process. It is an integrated system that includes all the components necessary to create a smooth and reliable delivery experience for your customers. The use of a mobile app eliminates the need for manual order booking, resulting in increased productivity.

• Location-Based Advertising

  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. Appy Pie’s restaurant app maker has geofencing that allows you to send GeoTargeted push notifications.

• Better Customer Service

  The number one priority for every restaurant is customer satisfaction. Mobile for your restaurant business makes it easier than ever before to interact with customers and provide them with the best service possible. In addition, a mobile app also enables your app users to contact to provide better customer service through live chat or phone calls.

• In-App Payments

  App created using Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder helps restaurant owners to accept payment online, making transactions more convenient for both you and your customers because there’s no need for them to pay with cash or wait for change. Appy Pie has multiple payment gateways that allow you to accept payment digitally.

Top Features for your Restaurant App

The restaurant industry is very competitive and to increase your profit you need to make sure that your business will be noticed. One of the best ways to make that happen is by creating a mobile app. It is a great way to communicate with your customers.

When you create an app it gives you the opportunity to have a direct relationship with your customers. When a customer has the app then you have the opportunity to send them updates about new promotions, special events and etc.

With Appy Pie Restaurant App Maker, you can easily make a restaurant app in just a few minutes. Listed here are some of the best features that you must include in your restaurant app.

• Food Court

  The food court feature helps restaurant owners in managing all parts of their business, from order to delivery, in the most effective manner possible. This feature also provides real-time order tracking, helping your customers to track their orders quickly and easily. This way you can increase your customer satisfaction level.

• Dine-in

  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. Our dine-in feature also helps customers directly reserve a seat of their choice in your restaurant.

• In-app purchase

  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.

• Push Notifications

  Appy Pie’s push notification feature helps you grow your business more significantly. The restaurant owners can use this feature to promote Offers & Events or can target customers in a specific area. Push notifications can be a very useful feature to engage your customers and help your mobile app succeed after installation.

• Coupons and Loyalty Card

  Customers always look for free stuff. This appetite for the free stuff can be fulfilled by using the loyalty and rewards feature or incentivizing last-minute bookings on the app. You can periodically update offers and set conditions for user rewards on the backend. Starbucks increased sales by 80 percent after introducing loyalty programs.

• Rating and Reviews

  It is highly relevant to look for customer feedback to improve the app for better optimization. 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 are simple and straightforward.

Why Choose Appy Pie’s App Builder to Build a Restaurant App?

There are many restaurant app builders in the market which are based on templates or require you to invest a huge amount of money. Appy Pie’s Restaurant App Builder saves you time and money by letting you build a restaurant app that fits your needs without having to hire an expensive developer or programmer. Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder allows you to create an Android and iPhone restaurant app just with a few simple clicks. Here are some reasons why you should choose Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder over others, including:

• Drag and Drop Functionality

  Appy Pie’s restaurant app maker provides drag and drops functionality that allows you to build an app without writing any code. You can build an app just by dragging the desired template and dropping it on a page of your choice. This is one of the most important features of Appy Pie because it allows anyone to create a great-looking mobile application in a minute.

• Ease of Use

  Appy Pie’s app builder is easy to use even if this is your first time using an online web builder platform. There are many tutorials available on the website so that new users would have no difficulty using Appy Pie’s application builder. The platform also offers great support so that users can easily get assistance if they encounter any problems when creating their first application.

• Unlimited of Pre-Designed Templates

  Add a variety of attractive templates with options to tweak them so that your app users can create their own restaurant in minutes. Appy Pie’s restaurant app builders offer thousands of pre-designed app templates to choose from. You can personalize those templates by adding your restaurant’s logo or changing the color scheme.

• Hundreds of Features

  Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder comes loaded with 200+ built-in industry-specific features ranging from reservation to ordering and payments, to review, about us, form, contact, push notification, review & ratings, and even social media integration. You can also add a loyalty program for your loyal customers.

• 24/7 Customer Support

  Appy Pie Support is available 24/7. The support team is online round-the-clock and available to answer your questions whenever you need them via email, chat, or phone. Just select the most convenient method to get in contact with the support team and we’ll be happy to help.

• Saves Time

  Appy Pie’s restaurant app builder provides you with a full set of ready-to-use templates for creating restaurant applications and hundreds of built-in features to choose from. This way you can create your own restaurant app within a few minutes.

7 Types of Restaurant Apps

Studies reveal that almost 80% of customers have searched for a restaurant on their smartphone. Creating an app with a restaurant app maker will ensure that when users search for your restaurant, you will always be the top result. You will also appear when customers try to search for a restaurant app. A dedicated online restaurant app gives you a distinct competitive advantage over your rivals. Here are the 7 types of restaurant apps that you can make:

Restaurant search app

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.

Food Delivery app

Food ordering apps or delivery apps are excellent apps that allow your customers to order their food online. With the help of such an app you can receive, assign, track, and deliver food to your customers wherever they want. They are an extremely popular category of restaurant apps.

Table booking app

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.

Delivery tracking app

These apps are dedicated tracking apps for customers and restaurant owners. They can use this app to track delivery drivers and assign orders and track delivery times. It also helps ensure that your drivers don’t laze off.

Promotional and Loyalty program app

This app helps manage customer loyalty and referral programs. It sets up customized reward programs and informs the users from time to time. Loyalty and reward programs help you maintain customer loyalty and keep them returning for more.

Review app

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 app

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.

What do customers expect from a Restaurant App?

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:

The app needs to be simple to use

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!

The app needs to be fast

Customers want an optimized app that loads and responds quickly.

The app should have new payment technologies

Technology advances fast and keeping up with it is necessary. Similarly, having the latest payment technology makes it a better deal for your customers.

The app should have a ratings and reviews section

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:

Case Study 1 – Starbucks

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:

In-app menu

The Starbucks menu tab features the list of all the drinks available in their outlets.

Special offers

Starbucks engages with customers by offering rewards like discounts, gifts, and complimentary beverages.

Loyalty program

Starbucks has a loyalty program feature in the app that offers stars against every purchase leading to earning a free drink and other goodies.

Mobile order and pay

This feature helps Starbucks during the rush hours as the customer can pay in advance and pick up his drink later.

In-app messages

Customers can fill in-app surveys sent to them by Starbucks, in return for star rewards.

Music

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.

Case Study 2 – Chipotle

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:

Reorders of favorites or recent orders

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.

Receive and redeem Chipotle offers

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.

Apple and Android Payments

The app offers a streamlined and secure payment option for users. Chipotle has tied up with reputed digital wallets for in-app payments.

Store locator

Location-based technology helps customers locate the nearest Chipotle restaurant and this feature is a hit in the Chipotle app.

Case Study 3 – Domino’s Pizza

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:

Menu Browser

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.

Customize your pizzas

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.

Safe payment methods

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.

Delivery tracker

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.

Case Study 4 – Yogurtland

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:

Store Locator

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.

Find Your Flavor

The app offers a Flavor Finder, which allows users to search the unique flavors and discover which outlet is serving their favorite flavors.

Real Rewards

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.

Why does Appy Pie Restaurant App Builder have an edge?

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.

• Menu Creation with Food Ordering Page
• In-App Ordering with multiple payment gateways, like Stripe, PayPal
• Loyalty Card feature to Incentivize repeat customers
• Coupon feature to offer Discounts during Happy Hours
• Reserve tables using the Appointment Feature
• Add-on features like Opentable & GrubHub
• Give restaurant directions to customers via GPS
• Event Calendar to showcase Special evenings with Google Calendar
• Promote Offers & Events via Push Notifications
• Showcase Your Restaurant using Photo Gallery with Picasa, Flickr, etc.
• Study patterns of dining behavior with Google Analytics
• Manage inventory & orders via web Admin dashboard

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.

1. 1. Food Court

   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:
   • Add, update and manage restaurants and food inventory
   • Manage food orders & other settings like restaurant opening & closing time, minimum order amount & others
   • Add, update and manage delivery persons
   1.2 The Restaurant App The restaurant app allows the restaurant owners to:
   • Manage Inventory through White Label Web Admin Dashboard
   • Manage food orders and track delivery persons
   • Accept orders only after the delivery person has confirmed the request
   • Send push notifications to the assigned delivery person and customer when the order is accepted and ready for delivery
   1.3 The Delivery App The delivery app allows delivery persons to:
   • Register themselves directly from the mobile app, (but the delivery person goes live only when app admin approves his/her profile)
   • Accept/reject any new order request within a given time frame, showing them pickup point with distance from current location and also the travel distance between pickup & delivery point
   • Update the customer when he/she has:
   • Accepted or rejected the order
   • Picked up the order
   • Delivered the order
   • Track the order history and monitor the status of each, including canceled orders
   • SOS SERVICE
   • GPS Navigation to restaurant and customer’s destination
   1.4 The Customer App
   The customer app allows end-users to:
   • Register themselves directly from the mobile app
   • Register their cards directly from the app for the auto payment (We use Stripe for payment processing and ensure that the mobile app is PCI compliant.)
   • Order food from nearby restaurants listed on the app
   • Tip the delivery person
   • Track status of the delivery person in real-time
   • Make automatic payments once the order is successfully placed
   • Track the order history
   • Rate and review the restaurant or dish
   • Mark any dish as their favorite

2. 2. Online Food Ordering

   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:

   • Register themselves directly from the mobile app
   • Register their cards directly from the app for auto-payment (We use Stripe for payment processing and ensure that the mobile app is PCI compliant.)
   • Order food, or book a table at the restaurant through OpenTable
   • Track the order history
   • Rate and review the restaurant, or dishes
   • Mark any dish as their favorite
   2.2 Web Dashboard The web dashboard allows restaurant owners to:
   • Add, update, and manage food inventory
   • Accept/reject the food order
   • Send push notifications to customers when order is accepted, dispatched, and delivered
   • Track the order history and monitor the status of each, including canceled orders

3. 3. Dine-In

   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:
   • Allows restaurant owners to manage inventory, users, waiters, and orders through White Label Web Admin Dashboard
   • Allows customers to select a table, call waiter, place a food order, ask for a bill, make a payment, and tip the waiter
   • Notifies hotel staff about customers’ requests

Steps to make a restaurant app with Appy Pie?

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.

Appy Pie Restaurant App Builder helps you build apps that work seamlessly on multiple platforms making a mark in the food industry. Apps for restaurants can be a powerful marketing tool and help you increase brand awareness.

So, go ahead and get started with your restaurant app.