Our team has conducted a survey in restaurants to find the benefits of application usage and what edge it gives them. From the numerous pros, we have brought the seven best for you to discuss. Let’s start with a detailed discussion of these seven.

  1. Effective and efficient customer experience

Through the app, restaurants are able to increase their effectiveness and present to be more efficient, effectively reducing wait time and increasing sales. What comes to mind when you talk about a restaurant app is that now you can book for your table through the app instead of having to call and placing an order. However, as discussed in earlier articles, it is not a very good idea to focus on only table reservations strategy. To begin with, these apps do not promise any ROI for the owner of the restaurants. Secondly, if the tables are not organized according to the bookings done online through the app in a crowded restaurant, it can really create unwanted trouble and embarrassment, both for the employees and the customer. On the other hand, if the restaurant has many tables unattended, what exactly is the use of pre-booking a table?

Ordering your meal through the app before you arrive to reduce the wait time is a value-added service that the restaurants can provide but is not utilized very often. This can help the restaurants to attract more customers and make them loyal to your business, also increase the efficiency level of the restaurant’s employees. To make it more convenient, you can let the customer track their order and order history and save their favorite meals. Panera Bread is a very famous app that focuses on the meal ordering feature.

  1. More Market coverage through Active mobile users

In the latest survey, it was identified that people around the age of 25 and 34 use mobile apps the most in order to find new restaurants and make reservations. And 25% of those respondents have in the least one such app in their phone installed. So if a restaurant adopts this strategy, not only would they be able to make their service better but also attract the young generation who seek a good and advanced restaurant. Now for retention of the attracted customer, you’ll need the app, better restaurant service, and amazing food.

  1. Making the restaurant more prominent

By making it prominent, we mean all possible ways an app can make the restaurant prominent for the customer. The advanced technology in mobile phones aids in finding out the exact location of the restaurant and the menu that it has to offer. The aim of the app is also to build an emotional connection with the customer through the app design. The feature of finding the restaurant’s location is a must for food discovery apps like Urbanspoon and OpenTable and many other large brands. But in that people only knew the location, now with these mobile apps, they have complete access to the entire menu with appealing pictures of the food. Although care must be taken that customers should be provided with what they are shown in the picture.

This is also a very good way of people who visit your app to see how good your restaurant is by posting alluring and attractive pictures of your restaurant’s interior or even upload a 3D tour of the restaurant. 3D videos and good photos aside, a cost-effective app aims to establish a relationship with the customer and build brand loyalty. If you add a social sharing option, it can increase the brand awareness as word of mouth travels and the young generation who are more likely to use the app’s facility likes to share whatever they find to their friends on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. One way to reinforce this feature would be to give points convertible for a reduction in the cost of the meal for each share. (Loyalty programs will be discussed later in detail in the article. Agile’s Coast restaurant app was the first to give social sharing and 3D-tour facility

4. Effectively Retaining Customer

Mobile apps’ have a number of approaches that help in retaining the customer. Loyalty programs and user notifications are some of the ways that a restaurant can keep it. The restaurant’s apps and table booking services retain their customer through rewards and discounts. Coupons and gift cards are treated by a customer of much value and they use it very stubbornly, therefore, the best solution of this is mobile loyalty programs.

The transparent reward system and the gamification elements on Starbuck’s app received a very positive rise in the user base after the new loyalty program was introduced. This latest success of Starbucks Coffee Company’s app is owed to the Notifications of new reward program. No matter you are making your own app or are just providing booking and delivery services, the key point is to keep your user informed about the new happenings through push notifications and emails. If the deals they are getting the notifications are cheap and fair and also personalized they are likely to anticipate them instead of considering them just as an annoying span.

5. Food Delivery Service

In today’s time, it is very important to provide a food delivery service to the customer. Imagine a person not making a phone call and making the order online but having to come out of the comfort of his home or work and going to take the same order. However, it’s not a prime feature that restaurant mobile can offer but it is still a prospective direction for restaurants. There are restaurants that only allow food delivery service if the customer places the order through the mobile apps or website. The most famous restaurant who offers such a facility is a US-based restaurant called Momofuku. Momofuku’s Ando operates through iOS and a website and is a delivery-only restaurant.

6. Allowing many Payment Options

All e-commerce businesses have adopted the facility to allow for online payments. There are two options for you to choose from the online payment method.

  • Mobile payments processed by Payment gateways. E.g Stripe or Braintree. ( It’s a subsidiary to Paypal)
  • However, this may not get very famous as it makes the customer pay additional fees and it would hurt ROI adversely.

7. Customer Feedback

The success of business wholly depends on the customer’s feedback. Most restaurants and their apps allow the customer to leave feedback on their experience of the restaurant and to rate it accordingly. They play an important role for two reasons;

  • You can now know how to improve and where to improve.
  • Your customer’s review acts as additional motivation for others who sees your feedback.

Therefore it could be a good idea to place cards for customers to put their feedback on it.

eDeliveryApp Provides custom mobile apps with their Restaurant Ordering System. Contact Us today  to know more.