How to Make a Restaurant App Easy for Business to Use
During extensive research on the food industry, it was found out that a restaurant's profits can significantly increase by 10% to 20% by using mobile applications. Honestly, a fascinating discovery, to say the least, and another excellent reason to understand how to make restaurant apps.
And no wonder that many entrepreneurs took an opportunity and started actively developing so many mobile apps, including restaurant ones. Since the current global situation doesn't allow restaurants to be fully opened, a mobile app will solve this scenario. Plus, it is a useful tool to attract new customers to your brand-new business.
Thus, the JetRuby team took this chance to shine some light on the topic of making a restaurant app and prepared this article. Here we will cover basic instructions on the app's development process, reveal the truth of restaurant app costs, and share some insights on maintaining our development flow. So, get yourself ready, as we're about to begin an adventure of your future restaurant app.
Essentials services for your online Restaurant App
Let's first define some of the essential points and aspects that every startup or company founder should note. Not because every developer or creator should know these specific tips, but because they are considered a trend that every restaurant app should have. Without further ado, let's take a look at the most notable essentials.
Interactive menu
Guess this point doesn't only apply to restaurant apps but any other app out there. However, to create a simple restaurant app, this point is essential. Your menu should be attractive, simple, and interactive, making the user try out most of the dishes in your restaurant.
Fill in the correct information about the meals, ingredients, and size portions. Also, don't forget to add good quality images. They are also a must-have.
Home Delivery
A home delivery option is a perfect feature that mostly all of the restaurant's apps should have. Just remember about the current pandemic, and you'll understand why you need it. Ensure that your users can see and track the current status or even location of their food order.
Pre-order Option
Time is a valuable resource, and the possibility of making pre-order will help users not waste it in vain. So it's a "must-have" option, especially if you're going to build an app for your restaurant where visitors, as you know, should usually wait to make the order (and they wait in line).
Table Reservation
Don't forget about including table reservation features. It will be an excellent addition to your overall restaurant app user experience. Furthermore, your customers will truly appreciate such a simple yet efficient function. Everything to make their life easier.
Order through the app
Like any other food app, one of the essential things while making a restaurant app is to make orders online. With the help of an app, you can easily save your time and money on your waiters. Who will serve the tables instead of waiting for people to come?
Restaurants nearby
To attract the maximum number of people, you probably would want to develop a feature like that to allow your restaurant app to find places to dine in their location.
And of course, you can add some additional information about your restaurant, like available dishes, your menu, promotions, locations, events, etc.
Online payments
Any mobile app, including the restaurant one, should have an online payment type. It can work for both the pre-ordered food and during your table reservation process. It can significantly reduce your clients' time to spend if they were to come physically to your store and do the same thing.
Also, they can't do it due to the global pandemic state. As they make an online order and pay for it, the customers will only need to come by and collect their food or simply dine at an isolated table.
Loyalty programs
Award your constant customers with something special and unique. Something that they truly deserve for the loyalty of using your app. Like giveaways, coupons, discounts, bonuses, or any special deals exclusive for them. And since they always have a mobile phone right under their hand, they can efficiently utilize your offers at any given time.
How to make a restaurant app?
The process of making a restaurant app is not an easy one. Yes, it may require additional time to develop it, more discussions to understand the development path, or even several marketing campaigns to attract the right users. However, just as it is composed of different stages, you also need to prepare before the main development process kicks in.
Below, we illustrated a simple routine of how a restaurant app's development process is being created at JetRuby.
1. Market Research
Market research should be your first step in the restaurant app development process. It is essential to understand your future application's target audience, what problems your potential customers currently encounter, and how you can create a restaurant app that will address all of these struggles.
2. Business Model
You should fully understand the benefits that you expect to get from restaurant mobile app development. It is critical to remember that not all app ideas can turn into applications that bring in money. Think about the main KPIs, set business goals, and search for the best ways to receive the necessary results.
More about that and other core essentials that you might have overlooked, you can find in our Design and Discovery Phase. Exactly there, we execute an in-depth and thorough analysis of your business while constructing a correct development roadmap of your product.
3. Find a right technical partner
The process of finding the right technology partner is not an easy task. However, I don't think that this task is an impossible one. Just try to focus your attention on the references, reviews, and technical expertise for your chosen company. And always try to weigh your options and choose the one that fits your company the most.
4. List down your key and priority functions
Make a list of all the functions that you need for your product implementation. Plan your restaurant app development carefully and think about the features that you want to develop first. If you choose the right IT outsource company, the relevant experts can help you produce a product backlog and list all the features implemented during the restaurant app development process. For that, we can also help you during the Design and Discovery Phase.
5. Design and Backend Development
As you approach the core stage of the "how to make a restaurant app" guide, it is time to track back your business plan. Think about the goals you want to accomplish. Think about the problem that you are going to solve for your target market. Try imagining how your restaurant app can do that while providing an excellent user-friendly experience and showing an attractive design.
Both the design and development parts are on the sides of the same medal. They are the core foundation that any product needs to have to reach sustainable success. Some of the main stages during the creation of a restaurant app include:
- User experience design the creation of sketches and UX wireframes. All of that makes up a system skeleton with user-friendly navigation and a basic layout.
- Visual design design of the mood board and UI mockups to apply an appealing color scheme to the app.
- Branding both visual and information attributes that define your company identity.
- Tech Stack the core Backend functionality where the app is going to be operating.
- App infrastructure how your app is going to interact within its functionalities.
During the core mobile app development, aka the MVP, every person must know his role. All of your actions should be followed as you have prescribed them in your business plan. However, let's say you have suddenly stepped aside from your main development path, what would happen next? Well, perhaps you might make it out somehow, but only to find out later that your product does not have a clear market fit. To solve this problem, JetRuby has prepared a free service called Product Development Strategy Session, where our experts will estimate and guide you to the correct development path. Leave your project description, and we'll get back to you soon!
6. Test & Launch the App
After you have produced the first version of your mobile app, it is time to test the functional, performance, security, and device testing. Because by the time you make a restaurant app either by yourself or with professional experts' help. Just remember that you will want to publish your app by the time all of these functionalities should be ready to be developed.
7. Marketing campaigns
Once you have already tested out and published your product's first version, it is time to deploy a marketing campaign. The main goal is to try whether you can get enough attention from the identified target market. By making that, you'll gain enough brand awareness and secure a stable place as an entrepreneur for a potential investment round. But only if the product will indeed be recognized and the monetization system will already bring some concrete results.
8. User Feedback
Collecting your users' feedback is one of the first things you should do before you go any further. Since exactly they will show how your product should be developed, what they like and what they don't, and which features are the most valuable one. This process should be continuous, so pay close attention to feedback after the initial release.
9. Further App Support
As any app's development process is a long and continuous one, it doesn't stop the deployment. Instead, you are the one who will push further development, advertisement and make your brand develop more awareness. Check out the users' feedback, improve your app features, debug your current app architecture and add more functions to it.
Considering the difficulty and uncertainty of the development steps on how to make a restaurant app, it is true that some entrepreneurs are having trouble with it. But it's not a shame to admit it. The first step towards a successful business path is to accept that you are having trouble with understanding the correct development step or the app cost that you are going to implement. Whether you found yourself between these two flames, JetRuby has produced the first step towards your product technological development, and that is the Product Development Strategy Session. Exactly where we will pass through your project, analyze its value, discover the correct development path and make a ballpark estimate on its cost! Leave your project information, and we'll contact your startup in no time!
How much does the restaurant app cost?
To tell you the truth, there is no concrete price or cost for a restaurant app. It all depends on your requirements and the business goals you want to accomplish. However, as a digital agency such as ourselves, we have experience making restaurant apps (like the example below). We compared the prices of all the projects we were developing and compared other companies' prices. On average, for a standard restaurant mobile application with a set of minimum features, the price is estimated at $11,000. The full completion of a restaurant app with all the functions and services included, the total cost varies from $30,000 $70,000. Further complex requirements that your restaurant app should have may go higher.
On the other hand, if you want to distribute your budget and allocate your resources correctly, then you're up for an MVP Development time! This product version contains only the key and the most valuable features that your restaurant app should have. Then, after 2 to 3 months of testing, you should be able to see whether your target audience will like it or not. Depending on the outcome, you can either continue the development work or switch to creating another unique idea.
The average cost of developing an MVP varies somewhere around $20,000 $25,000, depending on the company you have contracted with. For JetRuby, we estimate an MVP development process in the range of $18,000 $20,000. Not only is it significantly cheaper than most of the companies offer, but we do provide both technical and business development for your company, which means that we will guide you through your product technology development and educate you on how to manage your business model properly.
If you want to try out our expertise, you can quickly sign up for our Product Development Strategy Session to make a short overview of your product potential. Absolutely for free!
JetRuby Log: Saffron Cooks
Just as we told you before, we do have extensive experience in creating and developing restaurant apps. One of such successful examples is Saffron Cooks. This was a young Swedish startup that made the idea of having excluding restaurant meals delivered right to your home. So it's kind of a hybrid between a restaurant and a mobile delivery app.
After analyzing all of the product's business data, we built all of the core requirements needed to be completed for the correct product development process. To lay a definitive path towards successful product development, we decided to propose the desired solution through the Design and Discovery Phase. We showed and explained the value of each deliverable that it had, which are: the product vision document, the marketing campaign, and the complete product branding. As a result, we built a product worth showing other startups and competed with other restaurants across Stockholm.
In the end, the startup gained substantial public attention from the entire Stockholm. It began rapidly developing and creating other food branches on the restaurant app. Right now, they are up to new heights, making successful business ideas from the experience they gain after developing Saffron Cooks. For a more detailed success story, you can check it in this article.
Conclusion
All in all, the process of creating restaurant apps is truly a unique one. It does involve various business processes and development branches that differ this type of app from the others. But it doesn't only affect this factor. This also significantly impacts your deadlines, the estimated expenses, and your business revenue model.
Keep in mind all of the takeaways we provided in this article are must-have options that you should have in your fully developed restaurant app. So in the early stages, try to identify or understand what makes your product unique apart from your competitors. And be always confident in the development process of creating your restaurant app. It doesn't matter whether you will win or lose at the end (which, by the way, does matter). What's important is the experience that you'll gain as an entrepreneur.
As an experienced and professional development team, JetRuby understands how to develop a restaurant app and what it should have. During our first meeting, the Product Development Strategy Session, we will prioritize and highlight only the most essential and vital functionalities needed to attract your first customer leads. That's the reason why our highlighted prices are pretty much based on the marketing and business aspects. That is to grow and extend the realistic approaches to gain more customers for your developing app. So, leave your project description, and we will estimate your project business plan while giving the correct development directions!
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Source: https://jetruby.com/blog/how-to-make-a-restaurant-app/