Today’s applications grant tremendous benefits to specific facilities and their owners. That’s a giving. And the restaurant industry lives according to the same laws. So, answering the question of why you actually need to make an app for your restaurant, we have 7 valid answers to put any possible hesitations to rest.
#1. To enhance customers’ experience
Seeking to better the visitors’ experience? Your facility application will work the magic reducing the waiting periods, thus, increasing the sales volumes.
People like the possibility to reserve tables beforehand, therefore, that’s a perfect chance to help them enjoy your establishment, even more, providing them with such options. However, offering solely table booking feature is no longer enough to guarantee your success. There are some risks: you as the owner might not even receive any restaurant’s return on investment. And when running big places, remember to ensure proper e-booking system operation, otherwise, you might face serious logistics issues and chaos in your establishment.
The food ordering feature could be even more attractive and precious. What a great idea to let your audience select and order dishes online to minimize the time they have to wait! Thus, you also care about the personnel as simplifying their job.
Accessing the ordering history, as well as checking on the favorite meals orderings will significantly facilitate the ordering scheme in the overall.
Take a look at Panera Bread. Mentioned service has much to learn from.
#2. To reach a wider target population involving active m-service users
Young people from 25 to 34 years old prefer exploring various restaurants via their mobile devices, moreover, every fourth of them already has a restaurant m-service in the gadget.
When developing your establishment strategies taking into account such tendencies, you’ll enhance your current visitors’ satisfaction and attract the younger audience searching for great facilities by means of the mobile devices.
Thus, to make sure everything works to your best advantage you shall take care of your application, your place servicing and the foods itself.
#3. To promote the facility
The mobile app represents a tool to make the establishment more recognizable and visible. M-solutions serve to provide data on the facility location, meals’ selection, hence, an intuitive service design builds an emotional bond with the users. That would be another impressive benefit of a restaurant app to enjoy.
Various mapping solutions could be perfectly applied to the discover facility’s locations feature. Your restaurant business will only grow, on the condition you add simple menu access possibilities providing attractive pictures. Please, make sure those photos are true, don’t manipulate people who trust you. Why not provide even a 3D excursion of your place?
A well-considered design of your service shall assist with building your brand awareness together with the place recognition.
Social sharing feature shall expand your restaurant’s recognitionю In fact, you could reward your audience with some points encouraging them to share more.
#4. To retain customers more efficiently
Enjoy the benefits of various loyalty programs, as well as push notifications.
Your visitors will definitely enjoy such a nice touch of yours receiving diverse rewards and discounts as part of the loyalty program. Varied gift cards recede into the past since they’re so easy to get lost, and online loyalty solutions are much more convenient.
For instance, Starbucks’ gamification together with clear rewarding approach has largely increased the number of platform users.
As to push notification tools, that’s truly an effective approach to keep your people posted on the newest offers they may enjoy. When you create notifications case by case, making them personalized and useful, the audience will appreciate them without getting irritated or annoyed.
#5. To set up the delivery
Nowadays, installing the delivery feature into a restaurant m-service makes more sense than ever. It’s clear and reasonable. Certainly, it may not be the key app parameter, however, it’d be a dignified addition to your facility platform.
Furthermore, there exist establishments serving their audience with dishes delivery only. Such places apply both mobile services and web resources for customers to place orders. By the way, mentioned online businesses are pretty popular. Ando is a bright representative of delivery-only facilities. It’s affiliated with the Momofuku – a major US chain of restaurants. The service is available for iOS devices and as a website solution.
#6. To come up with various payment gateways
Online paying is something you cannot ignore while designing a certain restaurant service. Every kind of digital platform related to e-commerce has integrated such options, and the restaurant & catering segment isn’t an exception.
Online payment could be executed in several ways, so you as the app owner can choose the solution which fits you more. For instance, you could go for one of the multiple payment gateways, say, Stripe, Braintree and the like.
Still, the mentioned approach has few drawbacks. In the cases, when payment m-service is installed on booking platforms, additional charges could be imposed impacting negatively the restaurant’s Return on Investments. Simply keep that in your mind when deciding on your payment solution.
#7. To gather feedback
Here’s a great point to sum up the reasons for building an application for your place. Receiving the audience’s feedback is a precious information source to strengthen your company. Feeling the true value of such data-wise entrepreneurs ask their users to provide some comments and reviews after every visit.
Customers’ feedback performs two key tasks. Users’ comments show app owners how their services could be improved which, in turn, will increase users’ satisfaction. That’s the first advantage.
The second one is equally important. It’s been proven that feedback of your visitors usually motivates other individuals to go to specific places. By enabling your audience to leave reviews you invest in your business growth and prosperity.
So, right now we hope you don’t have any more doubts about building an application for your restaurant since you’re convinced that the idea is worth it.
