Connect With us60% of local searches on mobile convert into customers buying within the hour, so it’s clear that the idea of mobile apps for restaurants is an upcoming trend, but the real question is, is it worth the investment for your business.
We’ve list down 11 points to help you make that decision for yourself.
1. Location-Based Deals
If you are a restaurant with multiple locations or franchise, a great way of attracting customers is sending push notifications to users of the app who walked within a 50-meter radius of one of the restaurants by relying on a person’s GPS settings to tell you where they are and send out relevant deal information.
But beyond sending push notifications about deals to prompt more purchases, you can make sure customers know where they’re going, get to the right place, and don’t get side-tracked into another restaurant.
2. Loyalty & Referral Programs
According to research, 65% of restaurant customers would be willing to download your restaurant’s app if you promised them exclusive offers and deals from time to time, and a whopping 80% of those people would proactively return to your restaurant to reap the benefits… even if it meant they’d have to keep buying a few times before they got anything.
A pizza joint on low days like Mondays or Tuesdays ran a promotion that gave their customers double points for coming in and buying from them that day, which generated 67.6% more business for that day than they normally do.It was such a successful and low-cost strategy to employ that their ROI was 780% on the money and time they invested.
Beyond that, you can incentivize your customers to refer their friends and family to your restaurant by offering them points or credit towards their bill based on how many people they refer to your location and come in to make a purchase.
3. Easier Internal Order Fulfillment
Beyond making more money, mobile apps (especially the ordering options for pickup or delivery) make it easier to fulfill your orders.
Instead of having someone constantly man the phones and try to understand what the person on the other end is saying and relying on their handwriting to accurately convey what needs to be done to the cooks, the people responsible for filling orders can see plain and clear exactly what needs to be made, along with any special requirements given by the customer.
And with in-app payment, there’s one less thing your front desk staff or delivery guys have to worry about.
4. More Seats Filled
Knowing that you’ll have a table at one of your favorite places when you’re traveling in an unknown city or just trying to plan a nice night out is really important for hungry eaters who don’t like to wait. By allowing your customers to just use your app to make a reservation without the worry of having to call in, catch the host or hostess by the phone at the right time, and compete with the roar of a typical restaurant’s background noise, you make the process of making a reservation pleasant.
5. Better On-Site Service
Though creating a mobile app for your restaurant is mostly about catering to the customer and their experience, using one can also improve on-site service. Instead of waiting for in-shop fulfillment, your staff can see a new order as soon as it comes in, put it together, price it, and prepare it for immediate carry out. Your carry out customers only spend a few moments in your shop if they are looking for take-aways, or the orders can be placed on tables as soon as the customers have been seated.
Fulfilling an order that takes place via a phone conversation takes two minutes to fulfill, while mobile orders only takes 45 seconds resulting in a much quicker turnaround and streamlined pickup experience.
6. Social Media Sharing
One of the best parts of integrating a mobile app into your restaurant’s other online profiles is the ability to collect more reviews the instant someone happily leaves.
If you run either reservations, ordering, or payments through your mobile app (or all three), you can set a timer for after one of those transactions is completed to ask your patrons to review your app on one of your online profiles or share their experience on social media, possibly for more loyalty reward points 🙂
Getting your customers to share positive experiences on social media is a great way to advance the word of mouth and social proof around your business, boosting your reputation in the mind of the public, leading to increased business over time.
7. Better ROI on Specials You Offer
Push notifications can easily solve eating out decisions.
If it’s Friday or Saturday, you can plant the idea of eating in your restaurant that night as early as lunch time. For example, if you’re running a special on some popular dinner plates, you can send a push notification to your app users to let them know. When the time for choosing a restaurant comes, they’ll already be thinking about eating your food and validating it with the fact that they can save money on it.
8. Easy Menu Access
62% percent of customers are less likely to stop into your restaurant if they can’t easily see your menu on their mobile device. Instead of relying on funny renderings of mobile-responsive web pages, you can make sure your menu is easy to access, front and center, in your app.
9. Click to Call
Beyond building ordering, reservations, and delivery directly into your app’s functionality, you can also add a click to call button for customers with questions they’d like to have answered about the menu, reservation times, or location.
The line with the phone icon and the store’s number is a click to call link, meaning that all a user has to do is tap on it to start a call to that branch instead of going to Google to search for your restaurant number and getting side-tracked into other restaurants that would come as adverts on Google.
10. Higher Coupon Redemption
Coupons or Promotion Codes have historically been one of the most popular ways of boosting business, and today is no different.
The only thing that’s changed, however, is most people don’t read a physical, daily newspaper where coupons have been traditionally printed, so you’ve got to get a little more creative with coupon delivery and when you deliver your coupons via mobile, you’re not only getting more people to notice it, but you’re increasing their likelihood of actually coming into your restaurant and redeeming it since they don’t have to bother with carrying around tiny pieces of paper.
11. Photo Display
Much in the same way you’d use images of your food on your website and in your menu to prompt desire for the plates you’re trying to sell more of, you can insert enticing photos of your food on your app. Seeing an image of food that’s “ready” to eat taps into a core, desire to keep ourselves nourished and fed and the better it looks, the more likely we are to act on it.
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