According to the Search Giant Google, the mobile queries in South Asia are close to six million every month and the mobile internet users in the region were calculated at 450 million during the first half of 2015.  This clearly states that going mobile is more important than going on the ‘World Wide Web’ now. For local businesses like restaurants, who never thought about going to the ‘WWW’ or any of the social media networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest till date, have still not lost to their competitors, who have the most attractive websites and who have their businesses listed on all the available social networking sites. Being a local restaurant owner, you still have the opportunity to move ahead from your competitors. If you are asking ‘How’, then the article would help you to understand how online food ordering mobile app can boost sales and profits and help to improve local restaurant businesses in the best way.

Mobile table booking

A food ordering app lets your customers book a table through the app, instead of dropping into your restaurant and then getting queued in for a table. Your customers can simply book a table through the app and leave their home to drop into your restaurant when the table is ready for them to occupy. Or they may book a table while they are on the way to your restaurant so that a table will be ready for them by the time they are at your restaurant. This increases customer satisfaction, thus boosting sales for your restaurant and helping you fetch good profits.

Mobile orders

Say you are providing mobile table booking for your customers and you are happy that your customers need not wait for a table after dropping into your restaurant. This surely reaps good profits to your restaurant business due to increased customer satisfaction. However, wouldn’t this be even better if your customers can place their order as well, right from their home before coming into the restaurant, or while they are on the way to your restaurant? You can quickly take an order and get it ready for them by the time they have occupied the table and are ready to start their dinner. This will certainly boost sales as it saves time and provides room for one customer to leave the table quickly and next for another customer to occupy the same table.

Showcase menu in an enhanced way

Unlike printed menu, in apps, adding a new menu, photos and descriptions to the food are a piece of cake. Also, a study proves that customers order a larger menu through the app than what they do by reading the menu for placing the orders. This gets even worse through telephonic orders as they will have to place an order after hearing from you about the menu. Thus, a food ordering app can take your restaurant to an entirely different level, by offering the best experience to your customers and helping you earn good profits.

Target local customers

Food ordering apps are built with GPS based location tracking system that can let you easily know the location of your customers. With this feature, you can easily track your customers’ whereabouts and send push notifications and meal deals, thus luring them to drop into your restaurant during the meal time.

Mobile Reviews

A food ordering app can help you build a good online reputation that will indeed increase the sales for your restaurant. If your customers are served well in the restaurant, they can send a favorable business review about your restaurant through the app. You can configure the app for automatically reminding your customers about providing a feedback through a text message. Restaurants that receive more positive feedbacks will always be on the top of the list when people are searching for a local restaurant on the app.

Introduce local delivery services

This is one of the best ways to increase sales as it can target those customers, who might at times feel lazy to cook and also to travel and dine at your restaurant. You may have your own delivery boys for this or you can even tie up with third party delivery service, where they can pick up the food from your restaurant and deliver to your customers.  Your customers can easily place an order through their app and get the food delivered at their doorstep. This will certainly boost profits for your restaurant business.

Provide estimated time to pick up

You can also introduce a pick up option, where your customers can place an order through the app for later dropping into your restaurant to pick up the food they ordered. Neither your customers would have to come early nor wait for the food to get prepared nor drop in later when the food was ready a long time back and is now getting colder. Through the app, you can offer them an estimated time to pick up so that your customers can drop into your restaurant around the right time to take away the food that is ready.

Stay connected with your customers

Many a times, it happens that customers do visit your restaurant and then forget about you before their second visit. Thus, it is very important for you to remain in their minds forever. With food ordering app, you can stay in touch with your customers by constantly updating them, say it could be about a new dish added to the menu, or a makeover to the current ambience.

Make them feel good on their special days

You can create personalized push notifications for each of your customers to send it to them on their special days, say on their wedding anniversaries or on their birthdays. You can even offer them a special deal. Say for example, Little Italy, an Italian restaurant sends a push notification with 15% off on the order, on their customers’ birthdays, thus luring them to drop in and dine at their restaurant.

Easily get discovered among new customers

Even if you are making the tastiest and the healthiest food, even if your ambience is good enough to help you stand out from others, you would still not be in a position to reach out to the maximum people due to your poor marketing skills. A mobile app can give a good exposure to your restaurant business by making it more visible. A study says that 51% of the Google searches are exclusively for the search of restaurants in the local areas. And, mobile apps are the best means for getting discovered by the local customers.

Conclusion

Being a restaurant owner, if you haven’t yet decided on giving a mobile experience to your customers, you ought to do it now to cope up with the competition in the food industry.  Failure to do so will only result in becoming invisible even within your locality. Having an online food ordering app can surely help to improve local restaurant businesses to move ahead of others in the industry, despite not having websites and social media business pages.