The past decade has been one of the most exponential growth phases of human history, with the advent of AI, social media, IoT, and much more. The spread of internet-enabled technologies and the rise in smart mobile devices around the world means more people are online today than ever before.

In 2019 alone 204 Billion mobile apps were downloaded around the world, out of which 34% were Gaming/Entertainment/Food delivery apps. These unprecedented developments have shaped a new type of consumer that is more technologically savvy, dedicated to their work, and in general more cognizant about their surroundings.

This new generation of customers have no patience for businesses that still latch onto the old and archaic ways of operating, they want a high quality of service with increased efficiency & utmost value at the best convenience. If businesses want to survive, then they need to adapt, and the hospitality industry is no exception.

By 2025, 30% of all U.S. restaurant sales will come from digital food ordering/delivery platforms, at the same time worldwide online food deliveries will see a 20% rise in their traffic to reach a gargantuan peak of $365 billion in sales by 2030.

Fortune favors the bold, and restaurant businesses that don’t evolve with time will eventually bite the dust. Here we try to explain to you the inner workings of food mobility to showcase how a personalized food ordering app of your own can propel your restaurant sales & secure your brand’s future!

What Is The Need For A Personalized Food Ordering App?

The need for having a personalized food ordering app for your restaurant business can only be understood once we understand your target audience. As this decade of the 2020s progresses the majority of the consumer base will irrevocably shift from boomers & GEN-X to Millennials & GEN-Z. This tidal shift in consumer demographic is reflected in the exponential increase of 970 Million users worldwide who will opt for online food deliveries by 2024.

As a restaurant, you need customers that will keep coming back to you to munch on the delicious food you make and keep the business running. The next consumer-base that will drive your sales is on the web that can only be targeted by mobile applications.

Nearly 85% of Millennials prefer safe, efficient, and rapid ordering food online compared to the cumbersome experience in the real world. Hence, the proof of the pudding is in its eating, a restaurant business must evolve, or be left behind by a fast-moving industry.

Here is a graph showing the potential revenue generation potential for restaurants from online deliveries:

Source – Statista

Pro Tip – #Restaurants is an end-to-end restaurant management system for restaurateurs allowing them to manage their menus, their outlets, and their orders. Along with a cloud-based restaurant management system, it comes with a white-labeled mobile application in Android and iOS for customers to order food online. Click here to learn more

Understanding The Market Of Online Food Mobility

Online food mobility is one market that was, for the longest period, a hostage of the technology available at the time. But now with the advent of accurate mobile GPS navigation, integrated third-party payment gateways, powerful mobile smartphones, and higher penetration of internet connectivity, you can truly deliver the full experience of ordering & delivery without any compromises.

We would even go on to say that mobile-app driven food ordering & delivery do many things better compared to traditional methods, like order cancellation, menu management, optimized customer-focused marketing channels, etc.

Today the food mobility market is dominated by third-party food delivery aggregator platforms that combine multiple restaurants and cuisines into a sell-able package. These food delivery aggregators use predatory pricing structures that harm the interests of individual restaurants in the long term, hence the market is ripe for disruption by small to medium restaurants by creating & deploying their own branded food delivery apps.

The online food-ordering market has just begun to open up as more and more people come online. The industry is set to grow at an exponential rate allowing you to tap into a massive user base of potential customers.

Pro Tip #2 – Did you know third party food-delivery apps charge restaurants up to 30% of their listed prices for the privilege of delivering their food? This is where #Restaurants comes to the rescue. Empower yourself to magnify your restaurant’s sales and revenue by paying 0% commission when someone places an order through your app! Click here to schedule a FREE demo.

Building A Personalized Food Ordering App That Propels Your Sales!

Now that we understand the need for a personalized food ordering app and the market of online food mobility, a third question comes to mind. How do you go about building such a mobile app that competes & wins against larger and more established players in the market?

To better answer this question, here are five characteristics your restaurant’s food ordering & delivery app needs to have:

#1 Brand Integration

The restaurant industry is buzzing with a competition that is fighting for the same target market as you, and if you want to stand out of the crowd you need to do something different. Having your personalized food ordering mobile app enables you to create hype around your restaurant and catapult its brand presence into the market. Your mobile app is going to act as a gateway for your customers to reach you and vice-versa, hence it must fully integrate your restaurant’s brand identity.

Just like an artist fills his or her blank canvas with ideas to create something beautiful, so does restaurants need to do with their mobile apps. Your mobile application is a blank canvas that must reflect your brand identity, from your logo to your company colors everything about the app needs to scream your restaurant’s name! It is our advice that you go for a modern & decluttered approach for your app design that is the result of sophisticated & robust development, along with an easy customer-friendly UI and you have yourself a winner.

#2 Digitized Marketing Solutions

Since the beginning of this decade, the world has been grappling with the COVID19 pandemic that has fundamentally altered many of the previous habits of humanity as a whole. Therefore, it would be quite short-sighted to expect that using the same marketing strategies that worked before the pandemic will also work wonders now.

The deployment of mobile app-enabled digital marketing solutions gives you a leg up against your competition and will have a plethora of digitized marketing channels that you can use to not only engage older customers but also increase your reach.

With a mobile app, you can send push notifications directly to your customers offering them personalized promotional offers, discount coupons, in-app upsells,and much more. A mobile app also enables you to create a robust two way feedback communication channel that allows your customers to voice their opinions & concerns. As a result of such a feedback channel, you also get an insight into your customer satisfaction and experience.

A masterfully designed mobile app coupled with robust marketing channels and a clean & uncluttered UI can boost your in-app transactions by a whopping margin of 50%!

#3 Seamless Menu Management

One of the foundational issues with the restaurant business, in general, is the fact that they are extremely slow to adapt to change. For example, since the COVID19 pandemic outbreak in early January of 2020, many Chinese food restaurants have taken a hit due to the rise in bad public perceptions.

Source – Yelp & Eater

This sudden change in customer behavior due to the stigma around Chinese food blind-sided many Chinese restaurants, and due to a majority of them using old & archaic legacy systems to run their operations took too long to adapt and lost business. Managing & processing your restaurant menu doesn’t need to be a cumbersome task as a personalized food ordering app single-handedly solves your problems.

With your mobile app and Restaurant Management System, you will be able to efficiently handle & update your menus across multiple locations from a single admin console. As a result of which you, will be able to create more value and increase your overall sales.

#4 Contactless Ordering & Payment Solutions For Customers

Keeping in line with the global evolution of customer habits, your personalized food ordering app provides you with the ability to offer your customers contactless services. Due to the pandemic, the average Joe has become hyper-aware of people who he/she comes in contact with and tries to minimize that.

With your restaurant’s own branded mobile app you will be able to offer your customers contactless table ordering, food delivery, and pickups where they wouldn’t have to interact with Stewarts to place their dine-in orders.

You can also enable your customers to pay directly from their phones with seamless third-party payment gateway integrations all possible due to your mobile app. Now your customers can maintain social distancing by opting for contactless services that allow them to select, book, order, pay, and get food delivered as per their convenience.

#5 Multiple Locations

If your restaurant is a multi-location enterprise, then your mobile apps need to have the functionality to allow your customers to select & order from the location/outlet at the most convenient distance from them. This not only reduces the chances of over-burdening any particular restaurant outlet but also effectively manages a wide geographic spread of your business.

For a restaurant to work effectively, many operational processes need to work in conjunction with each other to achieve a unified goal. Hence your Restaurant Management System must provide you the data of how each branch is performing in real-time.

After making the necessary operational changes to improve the functioning of different branches, you gain control over all your operations and help you reduce wastage of resources and increase the revenue you save.