Whether you have a restaurant, fast food chain, or a cafe, a mobile app is the perfect companion to your business! Quality service throughout the whole customer experience is just as important as the quality of your food and drinks. 

This experience can start before they even step in the front door on their mobile device. Our platform has several features such as a reservation system, ordering system, and loyalty program that could greatly benefit your business. In this article we’ll go over some great features that can help you use your mobile app to bring in more customers, and enhance their experience when visiting your establishment.

When you’re first navigating through our system, it can be a bit daunting thanks to the vast possibilities of what can be done with your app. That's why we’ve put together a list of some features that you can start off with which we feel will help enhance your customer’s experience when using your restaurant's app.

To show your location and contact information, we recommend using the Contact Us feature. In it you can include all of your contact information as well as a map with your location which will allow the user to quickly tap on it opening up a maps application with directions to your establishment. The Contact Us feature allows you to input all of your contact information, and not just your restaurant's location. If you have more than one location, we recommend using the Places 2.0 feature which will allow you to give users information on all of your restaurant’s locations. 

Finding out what you serve is just as important as finding out where you’re located which is why  getting your menu into your app is really important. Do you have your menu in the form of a PDF? If so, you can use our PDFViewer feature to display your menu. Have your menu elsewhere on the web? Then we recommend using the WebView feature which is a versatile feature that allows you to link to almost any content found on the web.

It used to be that the only way to make a reservation was to call in, talk to a busy host or associate, discuss an open time to make a reservation, and then book it. While some restaurants allow for reservations to be made online now, it’s still not quite as convenient as simply taking a phone out of their pocket, and opening an establishment’s app. With our OpenTable feature, integrated with OpenTable, you improve your customers’ experience by bringing in the ability to make a reservation right in your app. This is the perfect solution for you if you have an account with OpenTable. If you would like to learn more about OpenTable, you can do so here.

Now that you know how your customers can make a reservation for your restaurant, let’s go over some features that will allow them to order food while in your app. With our PlaceBag feature, you can give your customers the ability to order food to pick up while in-app. If you would like to learn more about PlaceBag, you can do so here.

We’ve also seen restaurants use our Shopify and WooCommerce features to great effect. While these won’t allow users to pick up their orders immediately, if you sell products that are safe to ship, these can be a great additional revenue stream for your restaurant.

Ever wanted to have your own loyalty program similar to that found in the apps of known brands such as Chick-Fil-A and Starbucks? Well with our Loyalty feature you can! We know how important it is to build up a loyal customer base, and the Loyalty feature is just one of the features that can help encourage repeat visits from customers. With the Loyalty feature you can create different rewards that your customers can redeem with points they accumulate by doing specific behaviors (such as spend a certain amount of money or buy a specific dish or drink).

Another great feature that can help grow the amount of customer visits to your restaurant is our Coupon feature. With the Coupon feature you can offer one-time or multiple use coupons year-round. This is a great way to not only encourage first-time visits, but to also showcase seasonal drinks or dishes.

Does your restaurant have Social Media pages? If so, you can bring your social media pages into the app with our our Facebook and Twitter features. Have an Instagram account? You can bring that into the app with our WebView feature. This allows you to bring all of your social media pages into one place making them more easily accessible for your customers.

Another great way to connect with your customers is through Push Notifications. With our system you have complete control over your notifications. You can send out scheduled notifications, create notification groups that deal with specific topics that users can subscribe to, as well as set up automatic notifications. We also have the GeoFence feature that allows you to send out locations-based notifications. Have a new dish that you want to let people know about?  You can set up a notification to trigger whenever someone gets within a certain distance of your establishment which can notify them of the new dish.

Want to showcase specific dishes or drinks? What about seasonal food that you can only get for a limited time? With our Image Gallery and Info Slider feature you can share photos of upcoming dishes, or show off your chef’s specials.

Do you hold special events in your bar? You can use our Events Manual or Events Feed feature to inform your customers about upcoming events. You may be wondering what’s the difference between the two features. The Events Manual feature allows you to manually input events into the in-app calendar via the App Dashboard, while the Event Feed feature allows you to add events to the in-app calendar by syncing it with an iCal link. This is a great way to remind your customers of upcoming events!

You can also give customers the ability to leave great reviews for your business with our Customer Feedback feature, and our Share App feature is a great way for them to share your app and restaurant with others growing your customer base organically!

Service is one of the most important aspects of being in the food industry. You’ve worked hard to perfect the experience in your restaurant. Why not extend that to your customer’s phones too? These are just a small handful of features that you can use in your app to help expand your restaurant’s reach, but we have many more in our system. We encourage you to check out all of the amazing features that we offer in our system so that you can make the best app for your establishment.

Have additional questions? We’re here to help. Feel free to reach out to us with any questions you may have.