For much of history, restaurants operated on the same basic model: open a brick-and-mortar location, advertise your offerings, and prioritize quality in-person service. Provided you didn’t waver from those essential tenets, you could be reasonably assured of success.
That slowly started changing around a decade ago, as mobile penetration skyrocketed in western countries and delivery apps steadily gained market traction.
Then, the pandemic hit. Restaurants faced an uneasy dilemma: evolve or get left behind. An unprecedented number of consumers moved to mobile apps to order their meals, leaving traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants to either pay the exorbitant commission rates for big delivery apps, or forge their own path.
That’s where we are today. Restaurants that want to thrive in a mobile-driven world without sacrificing profit to big delivery apps need a custom app. Luckily, the mobile app development process offers several opportunities for you to bolster your business and drive engagement. Here’s how.
Loyalty Programs
Several large hospitality chains utilize loyalty programs through their mobile app – there’s no reason you can’t follow suit.
Loyalty programs are a fantastic customer retention strategy, ensuring that users frequent your app and buy from your restaurant. You can offer a common loyalty structure (like “buy ten sandwiches, get the 11th free) or develop your own points structure.
AI-Powered Recommendations
App development continues to evolve in leaps and bounds, embracing emerging technologies that help drive profit. Make effective use of new emerging technologies by implementing AI-powered recommendations.
Essentially, this feature uses artificial intelligence to offer product suggestions based on user data analysis. Users benefit by receiving recommendations based on their analyzed preferences. And restaurant owners can deliver relevant content more likely to turn a sale.
To deploy AI-powered recommendations, partner with an app development company experienced in emerging technologies.
Chatbots
For the unfamiliar, chatbots are AI programs that simulate human conversation. They pop up as users browse your app to offer guidance, recommend products, and answer questions. Don’t worry: they are remarkably “real-sounding.”
In the absence of a physical front-of-house presence (a server making recommendations, a manager dealing with complaints, or a host answering questions), chatbots are an essential customer service lifeline for your patrons.
Store Locators
Apps aren’t just self-contained retail experiences; they can also help guide customers to your brick-and-mortar location.
If you’re building a custom app with an app development company, chat with them about adding a store locator feature. It’s a fairly straightforward feature to include and can enable customers to discover the value of your dine-in experience.
On-Demand Ordering
In the US, food delivery app revenue skyrocketed from $8 billion in 2015 to $26.5 billion in 2020. That’s more than a 300% increase in just a few short years.
To capitalize on the trend, partner with an app development company to include on-demand and scheduled delivery features to your custom app. If your restaurant already has a delivery infrastructure, promoting it through an app should be relatively simple. If your restaurant isn’t yet optimized for delivery, you may need to tweak your menu and hire new staff to accommodate on-demand ordering through your app.
In short, a custom app can help your restaurant stay competitive in a rapidly evolving era of shifting consumer expectations and new technological features. It can help you offer superlative customer service, creative loyalty programs, discovery opportunities and on-demand ordering.