Why Your Restaurant Absolutely Needs a Mobile App

 

There’s a lot of preachy advice out there on how important it is to develop a mobile app and make sure you have a strong mobile presence.

But the vast majority of that advice is written by app development companies with no real concern over how well your business eventually does as a result of your marketing efforts… they just want to scare you into signing up for their services by throwing out scary-sounding numbers that may or may not be backed up by actual, published facts.

But when you consider that 60% of local searches on mobile convert into buying customers within the hour, and the fact that Starbucks (a company notorious for leading the trends in the food and beverage industry) conducted 16% of their monetary transactions over their app alone.

Which means that even though someone has to be in a physical Starbucks location to buy one of their drinks, $1.6 billion of a $10 billion revenue was all done via mobile.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think $1.6 billion is anything to cough at.

So it’s clear that the ideal of mobile for restaurants is an upcoming trend… but the real question is, is it worth the investment for your business?

We’ve got 14 data points to present to you… all complete with real-life examples to help you do the math on the potential revenue and customers you’re missing out on so you can make that decision to invest in a mobile app for your restaurant.

1. Location-Based Deals

I think by now we’re all familiar with Apple’s iBeacon.

For those who aren’t, it’s basically a small device you can set up in and around your location to send push notifications and deals to people in your location’s physical proximity to lure them into your restaurant during meal time.

Beyond that, you can also rely on a person’s GPS settings to tell you where they are and send out relevant deal information if you’ve got more than one location.

The Bookatable app, for example, started using beacon-based technology in 119 of their participating London restaurants, sending push notifications to users of the app who walked within a 50-meter radius of one of the restaurants.

By doing so, they were able to jump out at users of the app who might be looking for a bite to eat, but weren’t sure exactly where to go. By helping totally eliminate or expedite that decision-making process, Bookatable was able to get more visitors into their participating restaurants, boosting their business.

Bookatable offers location-based deals using beacon technology.

But beyond sending push notifications about deals to prompt more purchases, you can make sure people know where they’re going, find the right place, and don’t get sidetracked into another restaurant while they’re walking that last stretch to your restaurant’s front door.

 

2. Loyalty & Referral Programs

On Black Friday 2015, a pizza joint called Pizza Ranch 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.

One of the biggest reasons this works is the fact that mobile-based loyalty programs are far more personal than the ones that involve a simple punch-card being handed out to every customer who buys a drink.

The data and the interaction is on their phone, a device that hardly ever leaves their side.

Plus, you can insure continued use of your loyalty program and more purchases to contribute towards final goals by sending push notifications reminding your loyal customers how close they are or suggesting for them to come in for a meal or a drink that would put them over the edge points-wise for their prize.

But don’t just think that loyalty programs are solely about the free stuff.

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.

Broken down, that’s 52% of ALL restaurant-goers (which in the US, is just about everyone—so you’ve got over half of the population) willing to download your app and proactively return to your restaurant to redeem deals and loyalty promotions.

Effective rewards programs don’t have to be elaborate or difficult… as you can see with this screenshot from Starbucks.

Ka-ching.

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.

Fronto Lock Screen makes referrals for their app easy and incentivized.

 

3. Easier Internal Order Fulfillment

Beyond making more money, mobile apps (especially the ordering options for pickup or delivery) make it easier to <a href="https://rileylife.com/what-is-order-fulfillment/Even if you only pay minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour) for that position, it’s labor you could completely do without by having customers place their order, write out special instructions (like no pickles) directly into a comment section, and have them confirm their saved address directly within the app itself. It’s quicker & more painless for everyone involved… and it saves you around $2,000 per month.

Traditional Order Process	App-Based Order Process
Customer calls in to place a delivery order.	Customer places order directly in the app.
Back and forth communication with receptionist.	Special instructions written in a comment section.
Receptionist writes down and double-checks the order and address.	Customer confirms saved address within the app.
Credit card details communicated over the phone.	Payment processed in-app.
Labor costs for receptionist.	Saves around $2,000 per month.

Taco Bell lets customer customize their orders from directly within their app without having to take the time to speak with someone over the phone about their preferences. This also makes it easier for the cooks because they can plainly see if any ingredients need to be tweaked.

4. Increased Sales Amongst Millennials

Arguably, you’d increase your sales amongst all demographics, but the millennial market is quite strong in their preferences here.

According to Food Tech Connect, 98% of 18 to 34 year-olds who’ve paid a bill via mobile would like to do so again. But beyond simply paying, 35% like to place their orders on smartphone or tablet, and 40% actually prefer a mobile payment over other options, especially for restaurants offering quicker service.

When possible, millennials prefer to pay for their order directly within the app itself.

According to Restaurant Marketing Labs, each millennial spends an average of $174 per month on eating out. ($21 more than the average non-millennial.) So by catering to their preferences of offering mobile payments, you can get a larger chunk of their monthly spending power into your business revenue.

8. More & Better Reviews on Ranking Sites that Matter

Scenario	Action	Outcome
Few reviews on Yelp	Send push notifications to satisfied customers	Increase in positive reviews
Using Appirater for iOS	Ask for app-based reviews	Gather feedback at session end
Prompting after dining	Direct customers to Yelp	Encourage post-dining reviews

And beyond asking people for social shares when they leave and are satisfied with your restaurant experience, you can also send push notifications asking them to leave a review… directing them to the ranking and review site that matters most to you at the moment.

Plugins like Appirater for iOS let you ask for app-based reviews when someone is ending a session.

And though such a plugin doesn’t exactly fit the purpose of this point, you can easily see how you could prompt a customer to rate their experience in your restaurant in connection to a third party site like Yelp after their dining experience is over and they’ve completed the function of paying their bill.

And rather than worrying about building the functionality directly into your app, you could simply prompt a button to show up that would direct them directly to the Yelp page for your restaurant where they can start typing their review.

13. More Referrals

In line with the ideas of creating a rewards program and the idea of prompting reviews and social shares, developing a mobile app as a tool for your restaurant’s marketing campaign can boost referrals when you pair these two concepts.

If you have a happy customer participating in your rewards program, you can promise them even more rewards points for sending out SMS or social referrals to their friends.

Customer Willingness to Refer	Actual Referrals Made
83%	Less than 29%

By offering incentives to your loyal customers for making referrals and offering a deal for first-time visitors, you can both increase your client base and customer retention.

This restaurant ordering app offers a $7 incentive to make referrals. (source)

14. Photo Display to Entice

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, animal desire to keep ourselves nourished and fed… and the better it looks (and the more hungry we are), the more likely we are to act on it.

Pizza Hut displays a partially-eaten pizza front and center on their app’s main screen. So even if you weren’t that hungry when you opened the app, you are now.

Yogurtland even does this with their flavors. Though they don’t serve food that looks exactly like this, they serve this flavor. A picture like this is much more enticing than simply seeing the words “Salted Caramel Pecan” in a list of 30 other flavors, isn’t it?

Where possible, try to add photos of your product (food) in context (people eating it). Showing the food “in use” adds action, interest, and helps app users imagine themselves happy and in the exact same situation.

Geez, is anyone else hungry now?

 

Conclusion

I’ve got a secret for you.

Even though it feels like app marketing and app development is being preached to small businesses and restaurants like crazy, 95% of restaurants didn’t have an app a year ago.

So this means if you do decide to develop one, you’ve got the potential to be one of the top 5% of restaurants in your area. Which is a pretty big deal, if you think about it.

The reason, we think, is because while the idea to develop an app is a good idea, the work behind making it a reality is too much for busy restaurant owners to handle.

Which is why we’ve set up a system where you can set up a basic app for your restaurant that will get you a lot of the benefits we’ve discussed above. The creation is free, won’t take even the slowest person more than half an hour, and you don’t start paying for it until you’re ready to use it.

Go ahead, check it out.