Restaurant App Development in 2022: How to Get Started?

Restaurant App Development in 2022: How to Get Started?

Almost every industry is transforming itself with the wonders of digital transformation. The restaurant industry is also changing drastically with digital transformation and mobile apps. In fact, many international restaurant businesses are investing heavily in restaurant app development. 

This is bringing significant improvement in their daily operations and customer experience. In this blog, we are going to learn how you can get started with effective restaurant app development. 

Before we learn about the restaurant app development process, we should know why you should develop your restaurant app. 

Reasons for Developing a Restaurant App 

Improving Customer Loyalty 

In the age of cut-throat competition, it has become very important to build a loyal customer base who would come back to your business is repeat customers. Providing access to your services through digital technologies can drastically improve the customer experience. In fact, you can engage people for a longer duration when you have your own restaurant app. 

It helps you to launch personalized customer loyalty programs that provide them offers and rewards points. Thus, they engage more with your products and services. The Starbucks App is the best example of a world-class customer loyalty program. This is only possible through quality restaurant app development from a top mobile app development company

Improvement in Payment Convenience 

Customers want multiple options to make their payments at a restaurant. Having a restaurant app gives you the opportunity to integrate multiple payment gateways for smooth transactions. 

Improvement in Marketing Efforts

Building a restaurant app lets you improve your location-based marketing efforts. In fact, you are able to run custom ads through your mobile app and attract more customers. Moreover, you can learn from their preferences to make ads more personalized and effective. 

Online Ordering & Deliveries 

Your restaurant business should expand beyond the dine-in experience. In fact, your customers should be able to have doorstep deliveries and enjoy their favourite meal. 

Investing in restaurant app development can help you build a robust online food ordering & delivery system. Ultimately, this would help you expand your business horizons and expect more revenue growth opportunities. 

Considering the Features of Your Restaurant App 

If you want your restaurant app to be successful, you have to define the most relevant features for your app. You can hire a top mobile app development company for this critical step. Below are some of the most important features that you should in your restaurant app development; 

Customer Panel Features 

Smooth Login & Registration

Both login and registration processes should be fast and super simple. 

Rewards & Achievements
This would be very useful if you are planning to start a customer loyalty program.

Search Options
The customers should be able to search for items from the menu.

Multiple Payment Methods
There should be multiple payment gateways and the payment process should be smooth.

Order Tracking
Real-time order tracking is important if you are launching a food delivery service. 

Push Notifications 

The users should be constantly notified about the latest offers and updates through notifications. 

OTP Verifications
This would make the login process faster and smoother. 

Digital Wallet
You can build your own digital wallet to engage your customers better. 

Live Chat Feature
This would improve the user experience and let them directly reach you. 

AI Recommendations
You can implement AI to learn from your customers’ tastes and preferences. 

Table Booking
This would allow the users to book tables for a dine-in experience. 

Menu Customization
Allowing the users to customize their orders greatly improves the customer experience. 

Chatbots
These bots are very useful in resolving simple issues which don’t require human intervention. 

Admin Panel Features 

Smooth Login & Registration
The admins should be getting easy access to the admin panel. 

Menu Management
It should be possible to manage the entire menu according to stock availability. 

User Management
Admins should be able to manage individual users using the mobile app. 

Offers & Discounts Management
Managing the offers and discounts must be easy from the admin panel. 

Reports & Analytics
This would allow the admins to gain critical insights and customer information. 

Loyalty Program Management
This is important if you want to create your own loyalty program for users. 

Multi-Level Access
Define the access rights of individual admins with smart permissions. 

Automatic Invoice Generation
Automatically generate digital invoices whenever a customer makes a purchase. 

Easy Accounting
This panel would help the admins to manage all the financial transactions of their restaurant business. 

Easy Marketing Tools
These digital marketing tools would help the business to promote its services. 

Order Management
This critical feature is very useful if you are planning to start online food delivery services. 

Delivery Fleet Management
This panel would help you to manage all of your delivery agents from a single app. 

Building Your Restaurant App Development Team 

The restaurant apps market is already full of stiff competition. Thus, it is very hard to build a successful mobile app on your own is very hard these days. Even if you have the experience, it is still very challenging to develop a restaurant app. 

For this reason, hiring a top mobile app development company makes more sense because it saves you from the challenges and headache of developing everything on your own. They often have the right experience in mobile app development with multiple clients. If you are planning to develop a cross-platform mobile app, then you should definitely hire React Native app developers. They will be helping you in the following ways; 

  • Strategizing and Analyzing the App 
  • Analyzing Market and Competitors 
  • Building Mockups & Prototypes 
  • UI/UX Design 
  • Core App Development 
  • Rigorous QA Testing 
  • Successful Deployment 
  • Continous Maintenance 


Analyzing the Market 

Before starting any work on your restaurant app, you must understand the market demands and what your competitors are doing. In fact, you must have the right idea to solve your target audience’s problems. Your restaurant app should provide value to your customers and improve their experiences. 

Defining the Development Roadmap 

You need to define a clear development roadmap to start the restaurant app development process. This would consist of the possible challenges that you might encounter while developing your mobile application. Above all, a top mobile app development company can help you draft the best possible development roadmap.

Designing and Developing the Restaurant App 

This is the most important process in the restaurant app development process as it consists of multiple steps and challenges. Thus, you have to work carefully on the design, functionalities, and experience of your restaurant app. 

Working on the Design and User Experience 

This process requires in-depth strategizing and creativity to develop the best user experience. Thus, you have to work with wireframes, mockups, user guides, and prototypes of your restaurant apps. Ultimately, we have to goal of making the user experience user-friendly and visually pleasing. 

Core Development 

The core development process requires extensive work on the backend, API(s), and the frontend of your mobile application. In fact, it will be the amalgamation of features, design, and core technologies behind your restaurant app. 

Rigorous Testing 

The development process cannot complete if you don’t conduct rigorous testing. Above all, the testing process is necessary to discover the possible glitches, bugs, crashes, and errors in your mobile app. 

Deployment and Launch 

After completing the testing process, you have to focus on the deployment process. Your mobile app development team have to follow the strict guidelines of both the App Store and Play Store for the successful deployment of mobile apps. They will be maintaining a strict checklist for effective deployment. 

Marketing and Learning From Feedback 

Once you have successfully deployed your restaurant app, you have to start marketing to encourage people to download it. For this reason, you can start using your social media channels to start promotional campaigns. In fact, you can also run paid search engine campaigns to increase the number of users. 

After getting a decent number of downloads for your restaurant app, you can start learning from user feedback. This would greatly help you to improve the user experience and functionalities of your app. 

Summing Up

So this was the process to get started with restaurant app development. In 2022, every major restaurant business wants to invest in digital transformation services to build their mobile app. 

This helps them capture a larger market, provide better experiences, and streamline their business operations. If you are also planning to build a restaurant app, the MobileCoderz could be a great choice for restaurant app development. They have an extensive team of developers, designers, QA professionals, and project managers who build robust restaurant apps. 

Author Bio

Josephine Baker is a professional mobile app developer at MobileCoderz, a top mobile app development company. Over the years, she and her team have helped dozens of clients with effective restaurant app development services. Lastly, apart from her professional life, she takes a keen interest in bike riding and playing with her dogs.