Full services restaurants have an annual turnover of around $300 billion in the USA. One of the major challenges for any Restaurant operator is customer experience in terms of ambience and food. As such a tool like restaurant table booking app development comes in handy. There are multiple features and benefits of undertaking restaurant table booking app development.

Taking the restaurant business online had begun with many aggregator and on demand delivery apps such as Uber Eats. F&B is a space where having dedicated apps over joining an existing aggregator app provider makes sense as you can connect with your loyal customers and expand your customer base with digital marketing.

With outdoor dining now available, people are looking to dine with their friends and family at their favorite restaurants once again. As such overbooking or long waiting times is a major challenge for restaurant owners which they can mitigate with restaurant table booking apps. Customers can prebook the table and avoid waiting for long. Restaurants also benefit as they are able to plan their demand and customer surges properly.

What Is Restaurant Table Booking App Development?

Restaurant table booking apps allow a user to select a restaurant, select the right time slot and book the table he/she prefers at the restaurant and book as per the people visiting. Restaurant booking apps can be of two types:

• Dedicated app: These types of apps are dedicated for one brand only. Users can only book a restaurant from the brand which has created the app.

• Aggregator app: Such apps are developed by third party entrepreneurs and enroll every restaurant in their areas of operation.

Benefits of Restaurant Table Booking App for Restaurant Owners

Happy Customers: Customers can book their favorite table inside the restaurant and have the dining experience they desire leading to happier customers.

Reduce Customer Complaints: As customers are able to book and select their favorite table alongwith avoiding long waiting times, customers are less likely to complain and enjoy the dining experience you offer. Leading to happier customers in an ultra competitive space.

Increase Customer Base: By digitizing your key business process, you can reach every customer who can be reached through online methods,

Better Retention: As you can offer customized dining experience to your patrons, your retention rates will go up.

Better Kitchen Management: As you will know the number of patrons visiting beforehand, you will be able to plan your kitchen for that time accordingly by augmenting staff and preparing food accordingly.

Offer Discounts & Loyalty Rewards: With an app you can offer loyalty cards and points to repeat customers to book their business for the long term.

Better Inventory Management: As all your day to day processes will shift online, you will be able to manage inventory better.

Major Features of Restaurant App Development

Social Media Login: With social media logins, users can login with just one click by connecting their existing social or email accounts.

Main Feed: An attractive main feed with all the latest news, updates and offers and discounts that will entice the end user.

Booking Table: Users can specify the table they want to book and the number of guests

Restaurant Filters: For aggregator apps, people can apply a filter by cuisine, location, bar or non bar and other filters to select the right restaurant for them.

Restaurant Menu: Menu of all the restaurants that are on the app.

Order Management: People can pre-order their food online and get their order served when they arrive

Payment Integration: Incase the customer wants to pay online and ahead of the table booking, a payment gateway can be added so that the customer can provide a payment.

Paying Tips: People can tip their waiters and servers through the app.

Push Notifications: With push notifications, users can receive notifications about latest offers, the table they are tracking and latest updates from the restaurant.

Receive Digital Bill: The customer can get a digital copy of the bill from the app for accounting and bookkeeping purposes so he doesn’t have to carry the actual physical bill. Restaurants can also save on paper and create an eco-friendly image by not providing paper bills.

Coupons & Discounts: The users can know about and avail all the latest coupons and discounts from their favorite restaurants.

Virtual Walkin: With AR/VR enabled technologies, people can walk into the restaurant virtually and check out the premises themselves before booking a table.

Major Features for Restaurant Owners

Instant Login: Much like the customer side, the owner side should also have quick login for faster and easier login.

Main Panel: The main panel will contain information on customers, orders and table booking.

Booking Management: The booking management panel will show al the current and past bookings and the option to accept and reject bookings based on availability. The booking panel will be updated in real time.

Payment Panel: In the payments panel, the owner can request and collect payments and can access payments history and customer payment details by filters such as date, time, type of payments.

Launch Offers: With the launch offers section, owners can launch offers and discounts to entice customers.

Tech Stack

A proper tech stack is needed for a well functioning and feature rich app.

Here is our proposed technology stack.

Coding Language: JavaScript/Typescript + React Native, Xamarin, + C#

FrontEnd  React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, Angular

Backend SQL server, PHP, Laravel

Payment  Stripe, Paypal

User location Finding Google Places API

Direction Finding MapKit, Google Maps

For Registrations Facebook SDK, Gmail SDK

For Storage AWS, Google, Azure, Digital Ocean

For Analytics FireBase, Google Analytics

Conclusion

Developing a restaurant table booking app is a lucrative opportunity. If you are looking to develop your own custom and feature rich app do drop us a line below and we can discuss your project idea under a strict NDA.