The food/restaurant industry, being one of the fastest growing industries, has always managed to keep up with technological advancements to meet the ever-changing demands of customers. The rise of mobile app development has helped restaurant businesses with consistent on-demand delivery services. Most of the fine dining restaurants, cafeterias, and takeaways are now striving to invest in a smart Android or iOS app to increase their nightly sales. These are all the features that a restaurant business owner needs to incorporate in order to make their app popular and user oriented.
- GPS order tracking
Any of the on-demand apps for food ordering won’t keep up for a day if they don’t come with the location tracking feature using beacons or GPS. Foodies will always deliberately want to know how far the point of sale is and how long it will take for the delivery person to reach them as soon as they confirm their order. The GPS tracking function serves both ends. While the customers can track the delivery route and the time it takes for the delivery executive to reach them, the latter can easily know the location of the customers and follow the shortest route to make the delivery.
- Simple search in the menu
Just like all restaurants make it mandatory to provide a menu card at every table or display it in bold at the front counter, having an easily obtainable digital menu card is a prerequisite for apps. It is crucial to allow users to choose the dishes or drinks they want from the batch and seamlessly order with a few taps. It is also imperative to incorporate the search option in the menu so that customers can retrieve any item they wish to have and place an order.
- Geofencing to send push notifications
While geolocation is all about tracking all users who are near a specific store, restaurant outlets can take advantage of the technology to gain an added advantage for their business. They can send push notifications for personalized offers to specific audiences as soon as they get close to the geofence.
- mobile payment options
With any reliable feature to facilitate payments via credit/debit cards or mobile wallet, an app cannot survive any longer. You may lose many end-customers who are uncomfortable carrying cash or paying through a third-party payment system. Therefore, it is always suggested to offer in-app payment options in addition to COD by integrating trusted gateways like PayPal, BrainTree, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, etc.
- table reservation
In addition to increasing takeout orders per day, such an app can simultaneously help owners increase traffic to their restaurants. With the slot or table reservation feature, the app can enable users to reserve a table in advance and have a pleasant dining experience amidst the crowd and congestion at peak hours.
quick conclusion
On-demand food ordering apps are helping restaurant businesses to clearly stand out from the crowd by reaching out to foodies anytime they need to. Therefore, getting a user-friendly app is right now the most prudent solution for most catering businesses.