How Much Does It Cost to Develop A Restaurant App?

Almost every sector is rejuvenating with the advent of the digital revolution in the current time. The restaurant industry is no exception as it is also adopting the new changes and working towards getting transformed for its customers.

In this way, several famous and even non-famous restaurants are getting developed their mobile application to have a better reach to their customers and provide improved services to them. Gone are the days when there was only a reception counter or management authorities to handle the restaurant operations but now all the activities related to a restaurant are managed by a restaurant mobile app.

It is the opportunity that can be gained by a restaurant owner or to the newbies of this field. If you are starting a restaurant venture, and want to develop a restaurant mobile app, then the below guide will help you a lot to know about the restaurant mobile app development and its costs. Without any further add-on, let’s get details about it-

Insights About Restaurant Mobile App

A restaurant mobile app is known as a bespoke SaaS solution that allows users to access the restaurant services from home as well as permits restaurants to connect with their customers easily & manage their events. It is a perfect thing for restaurant owners who want to improve the customer experience by digitizing the ordering procedure. 

Restaurants can remove the invisible line between their services & customers and enhance efficiency via the mobile app. Users will also be facilitated with the different services such as the digital menu, food delivery, pre-booking, checking the availability, pick-up services, etc. Restaurants can offer more services to their customers that can grab the palate of the people. 

Reasons why there is a need to make a restaurant app? 

Businesses are opting for restaurant app development solutions as these are getting popular among customers. But do you know why there is a need of creating these restaurant mobile apps or why these are popular? You will get all your answers here.

The restaurant industry is in the knowledge of people for a long time and now it is flourishing by adopting the restaurant & food delivery app solution. The restaurant industry has got new opportunities along with the large customer base with these mobile app solutions. The prime objective of restaurants has also changed as they are now focusing on establishing active communication with their users and providing them with an amazing user experience.

In the below graph, we have provided statistics about the prime factors related to the restaurant app. These stats are roaming around the features wanted by both restaurant owners and customers into the app, consumer attitude for restaurants, and the challenges faced by restaurants. Have a look-

Look at more reasons below to know why restaurant businesses should go for a mobile app-

• The main goal of any business is to offer an improved & advanced user experience. Restaurant mobile apps help them to provide users numerous options such as quick access to food menus, searching data, delivery options, etc.

• Table booking mobile app solutions along with different online payment options are much popular among users. It also helps restaurants to enhance the ROI.

• Areas, where restaurants were unable to reach, are now approachable by them as these mobile apps allow restaurants for location-based marketing. Businesses can also show ads about any of the new dishes according to the locations of the users. 

• These modern apps and included advanced features permit users to order the food from their home and get the delivery at their doorstep. It leads to tremendous business growth.

• Restaurant apps are fun to use that provide ease to do the task of customer retention. By applying loyalty programs and offerings, businesses can have a large customer base. This way mobile app development solutions can be advantageous to them.

Major Features to Comprise in the Restaurant Mobile App

Below, we have brought up a long list of amazing features that are considered for your restaurant application. Numerous famous businesses such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, etc. have included these features into their app to offer their customers a next-level experience. You must hire expert app developers to get these features into your app-

• Food Menu

These apps include a list including different food items divided into categories along with their pictures, cost, and even calories. All the dishes are parted into various categories & sub-categories so that users can have found and ordered their desired food easily. These are done to make the food order process user-friendly & simple. 

• Customizing the Menu

Different customers have different preferences and food choices. Hence, they look for a place that can understand their food habits and can serve them accordingly. Through this, restaurants will be able to provide food to even their diet-conscious customers as they can include or exclude the ingredients as per their concern.

• Online Order Process

The online order features facilitate the users to select and order the items as per their convenience and by taking the proper time to think about what they should order. It makes their interaction with the restaurant easier and service more useful for them. Users can also select the options among home delivery, dine-in, or pickup services. Although, it can increase the cost to develop a restaurant app. 

• Book the Table

Some people don’t want to take the risk at the last moment, therefore they choose to book a table before stepping out of their house. For such customers, the restaurant mobile app provides a table booking feature so that they can see if a restaurant has sitting availability at that time or not? This feature can save their evening to get ruined. 

• Geo-location Feature

Your chosen restaurant app developers should know the importance of this feature and must include it in the app. You will be facilitating with this to provide services and expand your business in different cities and nations. It will also work in another way such as helping customers find your restaurant. 

• Real-time Notifications

Whether it is a food delivery order, a pick-up order, or a table booking along with the lucrative deals, offers, and discounts, users will get notified about everything related to them or that can profit them in any way. It is a new way applied by the restaurant to attract new customers and retain the old ones. 

• Convenient Payment Process

Users prioritize the app that provides the proper security and keeps their details confidential. You can also include different payment options such as Apple Pay, PayPal, Online Banking, etc. to the restaurant app to provide safe payment transactions and make the app reliable to users.

• Social Media Connectivity

Restaurant mobile app must provide the option to users to sign up or register via their other social media apps. It will allow them to register quickly and share their photos on their different social media accounts. To use it properly, customers can also leave a review that will be displayed on various platforms. 

• Feedback & Reviews

Customers can leave feedback, rating, or review to your app about the restaurant they had services with. Other customers who are thinking of ordering food can get ideas from this feedback. It is a must-have feature for a restaurant app, thus ask both Android app developers & iOS app developers to include it to make your app trustworthy for users. 

• Chatbots

It is an advanced AI-enabled chatbot feature that will make your app worth using. A restaurant owner or executive can chat with the customers through it if they are having any problem with the app or their order. They can also provide a solution to them by answering their different questions.

Benefits to Get from Restaurant App Development Solution

Marketers need to know about the benefits provided by restaurant mobile apps before they reach the phase of how to create a restaurant app? There are numerous reasons why you should invest in a mobile app solution for the restaurant business. Get some of them below-

1. Improving the Brand Awareness & User Engagement 

Brand awareness is one of the essential aspects to make the market game strong by businesses. Undoubtedly, tasty food, amazing services, and an eye-catching interior are appreciable, but these are not enough to create a buzz around the audience. Businesses must go for restaurant apps to increase their customer base and awareness about the brand. 

A mobile app has a great possibility relevant to the market and brings new customers to your place as well. It will also help to better the business processes and make the restaurant services easily accessible to the users. 

2. Hike in the Bookings 

Restaurant booking app development solutions include an online booking feature that allows customers to book their tables or space in advance so that they will have no problem whenever they reach the restaurant. It also leads you to calculate the workload, assign the staff their responsibilities, and prepare the meal as per the quantity of the guest members. Restaurants can also have an idea about what are the off-peak or rush hours.

3. Customer’s Feedback

Getting instant reviews or feedback from customers, what they feel about the restaurant services, food, ambiance, staff, etc. will help you to do better in the future or alleviate your mistakes. It is essential to make the required changes to get back to the customers and stay competitive. 

4. Customer Loyalty 

Restaurants need to know the importance of customer loyalty. Users are not only limited to having good quality food or amazing customer service, but they also want to be rewarded or getting benefitted for their loyalty. You can make your customers earn points via ordering some special dish or by doing some actions. They can redeem these earned points in the same restaurant from where they have got them. Restaurants can also gain customers’ loyalty by providing them complimentary dishes or special offers.

5. Sale Increment

Marketers and businesspersons always think about enhancing their income and revenue; hence they also follow the rule that they should spend less than they earn. Having a mobile app can help them fully to follow this. An attractive restaurant mobile app design will attract the audience and included advanced features that will help to make them stay and use the app frequently. 

Step-By-Step Development Process for A Restaurant App

It is important to look at different aspects involved in the mobile app development services to determine the exact restaurant app development cost. This process needs years of expertise and a proper team of developers and designers to build a quality app. 

To have a well-built restaurant app, you must choose a restaurant app development company with much experience in the development field. Hiring a software development company is not enough but there are several aspects to scrutinize the cost and money spent during the app development process. let’s have a look-

• Market Research & Analysis

The first step to be done is to research the market you are going to enter. Market analysis and finding the problems will let you know about the unique services you can offer to your target audiences and the things that shouldn’t be repeated by you. It will help you to select the right features for your restaurant app. Identify the hot topics needed to attract the users.

• Business Planning & Implementation

In this stage, you need to do business planning, what are your targets, what are the ways through which you can generate revenue for your restaurant business, how can you save the development costs and time, etc. You can follow or take an idea from the famous restaurant apps. Pull out only goods from different applications and comprise them into your app. Set goals for your business yearly to get better results.

• Choose an Experienced App Development Company

Finding a leading mobile app development company will save the cost to develop an app and time as well. A leading company will provide your business with a perfectly executed application that will bring profits along with high revenue. Therefore, go for a firm that has a skilled team and must tackle such projects in the past. 

• Concept Visualization & App Designing 

It is one of the considerable things “how an app appears”? An eye-catching and visually better app will be far successful to grab the audience than an app with a simple design. After the documentation of mobile app development, now you need to UI/UX visualization of the application. Don’t minus any essential aspect to decrease the cost. it would be better if you develop a prototype first and then, have the ultimate mobile app designing services. 

• Restaurant App Development & Testing 

It is the stage on which the app development cost will be dependent. All the required features and functionalities will be implemented to develop an outstanding restaurant mobile app in the development phase. Here you must consider the quality of the app by integrating required elements that should be tested by the testers to make it error-free.

• App Launching & Marketing

After the testing, it is substantial to launch your restaurant app with proper planning and strategy in the market. There must be a strategy pre & post-marketing. It is suggested to launch the app at the time of any festival or a big event so that people can consider it easily. Restaurant mobile app design will give the marketing an extra boost as the audience will get attracted to it. 

• App Upgradation 

Users are always in search of an app with interesting and advanced features. Hence, you need to update the app frequently with the required features by the users. That’s why businesses should go for an app with MVP features as they can add the advanced ones later to keep the users engaged or gain new customers. 

Cost Evaluation of Restaurant Mobile App

Here you will get an answer to your question “How much does it cost to develop a restaurant app”? There are several factors to keep in mind at the time of determining the cost of a restaurant mobile app. Below, you can have an idea about those factors-

• Region & Experience of the Company
• Platforms for Application Deployment
• Tech Stack & Team Structure 
• Features of Mobile App
• UI/UX App Design
• Different Payment Integrations
• App Complexity
• Third-party API Integration

Although, there are still many aspects left except the ones described above. Depending on these factors, restaurant mobile app development costs will be around $15,000 to $40,000 comprising core features. It will be less for an MVP version of the app. The same goes with the website solutions as restaurant website development cost has less development cost than an app.

Final Words

To conclude, restaurant mobile app development will bring lots of profits and fortune to your business and it is a lucrative deal to go with it. At seeing the previous pandemic situation, it has become more important for businesses to accept digitization. Now, it is ideal for ventures to go digital and get benefits from the unexplored potentials. A well-built app with the stunning feature will bring new customers and retain the old ones for your restaurant business.

SemiDot Infotech is an experienced and reliable restaurant app development company that has been in the industry for years and developing such projects many times. You can join hands with us to have a feature-packed quality app that will help your business to touch the heights. Our expert team works as per the client’s requirements and keeps in touch with them whenever needed. We stick to our clients until providing them with a solution they want.