20 Must-have Features Your Restaurant Mobile App

Are you facing a dilemma about whether a restaurant mobile app will be a worthy investment for your business? Are you planning to dive into online food ordering restaurant app development? Before starting your restaurant mobile app development projects, take a look at these statistics to understand what exactly you want to consider. 

Online Food Ordering and Delivery Statistics

The food industry is taking revolutionary leaps on every blink. The primary force behind this revolution is “technology.” Today, nobody has enough time to call different restaurants and order a pizza. 

• According to Statista, nearly 43% of the population prefer to order online. 
• Moreover, the total online food ordering revenue is expected to rise by $200 billion in 2025. 
• Eventually, Statista forecasts that the online food ordering and the delivery market will show a CAGR of 16.23% (approximately) in the timespan of 2022 – 2025. 

Paying high commissions to on-demand food delivery apps is not the only way to improve your sales. Now, you can develop your own restaurant mobile app that will increase your sales as well as serve as management, table reservation, ordering system, delivering, and much more. 

Major Restaurant App Types

Owning a physical restaurant is not necessary to manage your restaurant delivery app. There are various customer’s restaurant needs ranging from directory type apps to on-demand food delivery apps. Therefore, if you are planning to invest in restaurant app development, then you need to ponder on different types of restaurant apps:

• Restaurant Review App

This is the type of restaurant app where the users can check out the reviews of other customers about nearby restaurants and famous food avenues. Moreover, along with ratings, users can also view detailed information about the restaurants. Some renowned restaurant review apps are;

• Foursquare
• Yelp
• EAT24
• Zagat
• Urbanspoon

• Local Restaurant Finder

Before the emergence of the pandemic, people faced lots of problems in finding the best restaurant in their area. Today, local restaurant finder apps offer a location-based directory to see which restaurant offers a dine-in facility and other information about that place. Some of the famous restaurant finders are Restaurant Locator, OpenTable, Dine, TheFork, and HappyCow.

• Restaurant Menu App

It is an app with basic features that allow users to virtually access different menu items and then pick up their orders or dine out to enjoy those meals. Popular restaurant food menu apps are ReastApp, eMenu, and OkMenu. 

• Restaurant Booking App

It is the leading online food ordering app being developed by most famous restaurants. Users can choose their desired food items from the menu displayed and get them delivered to their doorstep. However, we have two significant categories of restaurant food delivery apps: 

• Aggregator Apps
• On-demand Delivery Apps

• Restaurant Booking App

It allows users to reserve a table at their favorite restaurant. Moreover, some advanced restaurant apps allow you to order food online and reserve a table from the same restaurant mobile app. 
Thus, different trending restaurant mobile apps are thriving across global food markets. Now, it’s time to have a closer look at the remarkable features of successful restaurant apps. 
Basically, restaurant mobile app development consists of three major applications to meet the needs of restaurant business owners and end-users. So, here is the list of key features of the restaurant admin panel, restaurant owner app, and end-user app. 

Features of Admin App

1. Reports and Analytics

It is an essential feature of the admin restaurant app as it allows the admin to access an extensive database of the whole restaurant business. Admin can use this app to view the orders from initiation of delivery to customers’ acceptance and reviews about the restaurant. Besides reports and analytics of food orders, it also provides daily sales, online payments, and delivery party commissions. 

2. Site Settings

With this feature of your restaurant app, you can design the general look and data of your restaurant website like site name, logo, and much more. So, with admin panel features, you can design and manage your restaurant business website effectively. 

3. Payment Settings

Adding multiple payment options to your online food ordering system helps you attract a wide range of customers. However, it’s tricky for the restaurant admin to handle multiple payment systems from a single platform. Different payment method integration is meant for credit cards, debit cards, online mobile payments, and COD (cash on delivery). 

4. Delivery System Settings

You can assign different location zones to various delivery partners. This activity is mainly carried out to ensure robust and faster deliveries to make your food business popular. 

5. Real-Time Delivery Tracking

Delivery is a critical feature of food delivery apps. This feature provides you with details of complete orders from food pickup to delivery on the customer’s doorstep. Moreover, the admin can also instruct the driver to divert the delivery route if there is any road closure or discrepancy. 

6. Customer Management

The customer management feature in the restaurant mobile app is to oversee the food delivery aspects like customer experience, easy signup, member profile, account details, etc. 

7. Category Management

There will be several products and their characteristics on the restaurant food delivery app to manage.

8. Add & Manage Restaurant Outlet 

Admin can integrate contact information, restaurant information, opening and closing timings, minimum orders, delivery charges, taxes, and invoice period. Moreover, the admin can also add details about their different outlets in different areas. 

Features of Restaurant Owner App

Restaurant Business owners have expressed the importance of having a dedicated online restaurant food ordering app that adds more value to their business. In addition to adding more business value, restaurant mobile app development is the best way to launch multiple targeted market campaigns, update customers with events and activities and new products on your menu. Here are some highlighted features that can make your restaurant’s online food delivery app more appealing and engaging to the users: 

9. Staff Management 

Managing staff effectively increases efficiency and productivity for your business. This feature of your restaurant mobile app ensures tracking team member performance. The restaurant owner can keep track of employees working on different tasks, assign duties to the chef, waiters, and other staff members. </p

10. Kitchen Management

The primary purpose of this feature is to ensure effective coordination between chefs and waiters. The restaurant owner can avoid miscommunication between kitchen staff, eventually leading to productivity improvement with less time consumed. 

11. Social Media Integration

Social Media Integration is an integral feature of every restaurant’s mobile app development plan. Just like other industries, restaurant customers should be able to review their experience on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. 

Social media integration is not limited to sharing reviews and remarks; you can also leverage social media and link your discount programs to attract customers and earn points and reward customers for inviting their friends and family. Therefore, in this way, social media platforms help attract new customers to your restaurant’s mobile app. 

12. Restaurant Reviews

A restaurant owner can use customer reviews to promote its restaurant by highlighting the more good ones. Moreover, customer reviews transparency will create a good image of your restaurant in front of new visitors and rank your restaurant mobile app on the top of the list. 

Features of Customer App

Food ordering apps for the users help them to access your restaurant menu and all other features just like they are virtually present in the restaurant. Here are the features that you need to consider while online food ordering restaurant app development:

13. Push notifications

Push notification is such a feature of your restaurant mobile app that can either make or break your customers. You can make your app progress only if you use this in a sophisticated and subtle manner. For instance, sending an alert in the middle of the night is never a good idea. So, you need to be aware of which medium (SMS, Email, Push Notification) will be best to notify your restaurant customers. Furthermore, you must ensure that your food delivery app notification increases your conversion rate rather than being a plain advertisement. 

14. In-app, online ordering, and Mobile Payments

The best thing about restaurant mobile apps is that they avoid the lines and wait to collect orders. Therefore, allowing customers to place orders and pay online will enable them to stay one step ahead. 

15. Location-Based Services

Beacons and Geofencing have given the restaurant industry the ability to engage potential customers, even those who don’t have easy access to the outlet’s location. So, your restaurant mobile app development is just equivalent to handling flyers to passersby that were used to promote your restaurant deals, discounts, menu updates, and other news. 

16. Table Reservation

If you have a limited restaurant seating facility, but your restaurant is getting popular day by day, and customers find it challenging to get a table at the walk-in. Either your restaurant only accommodates prior reservations or allows walk-ins at the same, restaurant mobile apps with table reservation features can increase your sales. The main benefit of this feature is that it cuts down the customer frustration caused due to long waits and allows them to plan their evenings according to the slots available. 

17. Chatbots

Chatbots in restaurant mobile apps are relatively new technology. This feature is mainly integrated with restaurant online food ordering apps to ensure quick replies to customers. It takes help from AI and has no limit to answering fundamental questions. Moreover, chatbots can also be manually operated when a customer asks something different from standard routine questions. 

18. Customer Help and Feedback Portal

Customers who are not familiar with the features and functionalities of your restaurant mobile app may face difficulties in placing orders, so you need to have a customer help and feedback portal. Gathering feedback from your customers will help you to observe areas where you want to improve the app. At the same time, the help section of the app should contain all the basic information about common problems as well as feature real-time customer support representatives. 

19. Register Profile 

The first time when the user opens your restaurant app, to avail complete functionality of the app, they must register themselves. The registration process is carried out to gather information like user name, address, mobile number, and other basic details. Moreover, the registration process is made even easier by facilitating users to signup with social media accounts.

20. Add to Cart and Placing Order

Add to cart functionality helps users keep track of the number of items and what products they have ordered. With this feature, one can add items to the cart and simply place their order with a single click. Some restaurant mobile apps allow users to schedule their orders. For instance, you’re leaving the office and are exhausted, so you can schedule your order and receive your food hot and fresh as you get home. 

Build Your Restaurant Mobile App with Clustox!

Whether you are suffering a loss in sales due to the pandemic or want to grow your business digitally as well, restaurant mobile app development is the best solution for you. However, if you don’t have any physical restaurant presence and you’re an entrepreneur willing to invest your next venture in online food ordering and delivery services, all the features mentioned above are must included in your food delivery app. 

If you have an idea to start developing your online food ordering business, all you need to focus on are essential features to include in the new app and how much it will cost to develop a restaurant mobile app. So, you’ve noted down the features you want to integrate into your restaurant app, it’s time to consult the top software development company around you. Get in touch with Clustox’s Tech Consultants, who will drive you through the complete path to build a successful restaurant food ordering and reservation app.

AboutEditorial Team