Did you know that the online food delivery market is projected to grow to nearly one trillion dollars in 2023? The COVID-19 pandemic saw a huge explosion of users ordering groceries and food for delivery or pick up, and while that slowed slightly in 2022, it’s beginning to pick up again in 2023. Many businesses that had online ordering capabilities were able to stay open and profitable during the pandemic thanks to their custom restaurant app design – the UI made the app easy to use and ushered customers through their orders. Do you know what kind of businesses couldn’t take advantage of the food delivery and online ordering craze? The restaurants that didn’t invest in restaurant mobile app design and didn’t have an online ordering system in place. In the days since the pandemic, digital ordering has become an expectation.
The customer experience in the restaurant industry is one of the most important things a restaurant must get right to survive. Restaurants thrive off customer feedback and interaction – a positive customer experience can influence other customers and encourage more business. In the same way, a negative or lackluster customer experience, either digital or physical experience, can hurt restaurants and lose business. Investing in a quality restaurant app UX design can impact and improve the customer experience in multiple ways.
Restaurant app or restaurant website UI design can streamline online orders and delivery processes. If your customer goes to your mobile app or website and is frustrated or confused by the design and interaction experience, they may not finish their order. That results in lost business and may compound over time as more and more customers find restaurants that utilize apps and websites that are not only easy to use, but also provide a unique value that only a particular brand can offer. App design for restaurants is vital to the customer experience. Not only that, but apps and websites that integrate with your restaurant’s internal processes can change the game when it comes to online ordering. A customer can place an order through the app, which notifies an employee at the restaurant or automatically prints a ticket. Rather than manually checking for new orders, restaurant workers can be notified instantly.
A quality restaurant app UI design can also increase customer engagement and loyalty. Feedback on the service, food, and more, can be given directly in the app, not only making it easy for your customers to share their thoughts but also giving you as the restaurant owner one simple place to collect and store all your data.
Done properly, a good QSR app design could totally revolutionize the way a restaurant operates.
Best App Design For Restaurants
The best restaurant design app is going to be one that has been custom-created for your business. While white-label restaurant apps may seem like a good idea in the beginning, they can ultimately be stifling and short-term solutions. White-label restaurant apps are created to serve multiple kinds of restaurants, not all of which may be in your niche or offer the services you provide. It severely limits customization and ultimately prevents you from creating a genuine connection with your customers that is unique to your brand. Custom restaurant app development can be built specifically for your customers and staff’s needs. Custom apps can create a customer experience that is all about your brand and your customers – personalizing their experiences and strengthening your relationship. This can improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.
If you want to choose the best app design for restaurants, you should seek out a restaurant app development company that has experience working with restaurants and food-service organizations. Restaurant app code must be designed to integrate with many other types of software that other developers may not be familiar with. In addition, the best app design for restaurants should be created with your customers and staff in mind – unique to your products and services. Restaurant UI and UX is unique to the food service industry – other app developers from other industries might not immediately grasp how to position a new offer in a way that makes it seem more enticing than an old favorite. Or vice versa – maybe you want to give your patrons the opportunity to reorder their usual as quickly as possible. Partnering with a restaurant app development company like Bottle Rocket Studios is the best way to give your customers an experience that is truly personalized to them and seamlessly integrates with your existing systems.
Bottle Rocket also provides a custom mobile app accelerator solution that helps growing restaurant brands get more from their mobile app than a white-label offering can provide. Bottle Rocket’s accelerator solution, called Ignite, helps restaurants enhance their digital growth, loyalty, and retention. It provides a flexible foundation upon which a differentiated experience can be created, at a lower cost than a ground up custom app, and in a shorter timeframe. The solution is fully customizable across iOS, Android, and the web and can help your brand deliver a customer-centric product to market quickly and cost effectively.
Utilizing a restaurant app can change the way you do business – it certainly has for many of Bottle Rocket Studios’ other restaurant clients!
Restaurant Ordering Apps
An online ordering app for restaurants will usually contain a restaurant’s menu, the ability to place an order and select either pickup or delivery option. If a restaurant does not offer delivery, make sure that the customer is aware of that through the food ordering app design. Many restaurant ordering apps also offer a loyalty program. Loyalty programs can be incredible tools that increase customer retention and engagement. A popular form of loyalty program is that the dollars they spend are converted into points, and when a customer passes a certain point threshold, they receive a reward of some kind – usually in the form of a coupon, discount, or free food item. Common examples of this type of app include Dominos or Starbucks.
A restaurant menu app should contain the restaurant’s current menu and keep track of loyalty points, but it may not always be used to place an order. In the Dutch Bros app, customers can peruse their full menu, take stock of their loyalty points, receive Dutch Bros-related news about new drinks and offers, and earn stickers, but users cannot place an order directly from the Dutch Bros app. Instead, the app points users to their nearest Dutch Bros restaurants with an in-app map that integrates with their chosen navigation app.
Restaurant Management Apps
It may not always seem that way on the outside – but restaurants nearly always need top-notch technology to be their most efficient. Point of sale apps, inventory management apps, restaurant staff management apps, table management apps, marketing apps – all of these pieces of software serve an integral role in the running of a modern restaurant. However, not all apps are created equally. Restaurant management app design can streamline restaurant operations through clear workflows and well-designed UX. On the other side of the coin, restaurant management apps that are not designed with their users in mind can cause frustration and extra work.
Restaurant POS app design needs to be created with several user types in mind – the cashier, the manager, and the patron. Yes, the patron too! Many POS apps are designed these days to be visual from both sides of the counter, with the patron viewing each item as it is entered. POS design also needs to be streamlined for payment and the addition of a tip. It should be as easy as possible, to encourage patrons.
Restaurant staff management apps are used by restaurant managers to create and rearrange schedules, track employee hours and attendance, as well as communicate with employees. These apps may or may not serve some kind of human resource functions such as tracking PTO and sick days, requesting PTO, and can also give managers an insight into employee productivity and efficiency.
Table managing apps give restaurant workers the ability to manage their table reservations, waitlists, and seating arrangements. They can also provide real-time data on table turnover and occupancy rates. Waitlist management apps on the patron side should integrate with whatever table management app a restaurant is using to provide the best customer experience and employee experience.
Restaurant app development can be highly specialized and should be performed by an organization that has experience partnering with restaurants and other food-service businesses. Custom-made apps can be created to enhance your customer’s experience and make life at a restaurant much easier.
Restaurant Customer Engagement Apps
Restaurant customer engagement apps are often used by restaurant owners to attract and retain customers through promotions, loyalty programs, and other incentives. These apps help to create a relationship between restaurants and their customers. They can also improve customer retention through loyalty programs that are built on offering rewards for x amount of dollars spent. A restaurant customer loyalty app should provide a simple and intuitive interface, a personalized experience based on the user’s purchase history, preferences, and location, gamification features such as points, levels, or badges, clear and valuable rewards, easy access to restaurant or app support, and more.
While some apps can be built through a restaurant app UI kit, partnering with an app design agency to create something truly one-of-a-kind and functional for your business is going to be your best bet. An agency such as Bottle Rocket Studios can take the best of restaurant reservation app design, restaurant rewards app design, and other types of design and blend it into a seamless experience for both you and your customer – that integrates with all of your previously used systems.
