How Much Does It Cost To Create A Mobile App For Restaurants?

So how much does it cost to build a restaurant management app? If it is roughly estimated, the average cost to create a simple restaurant management app falls between $15,000 to $20,000+. While moderate to advanced app versions can range between $20,000 to $45,000+. Wondering why there is a huge gap between these estimations?

Well, many factors can impact the overall cost of the app development. All thanks to emerging technologies that have given food delivery services a new turn. From managing employees and maintaining an entire kitchen to handling orders, a well-developed app can automate every task. 

If there is any industry that has witnessed a boom after COVID-19- that’s only the food industry skytouching. The way smartphone users are growing and expected to reach 7.4 billion by 2025, restaurants can take full advantage of a dedicated restaurant management app. 

If you are running a restaurant and looking for ways to generate revenue and manage operations without any hassle, then investing in a restaurant management app is a worthy decision.

Did you know that 91% of restaurants have already invested or plan to invest in automation services for seamlessly managing your operations? Uber Eats is one such food delivery app that has adopted this strategy at the early stage and has watched 20% high sales as 70% of customers would prefer ordering online through restaurants.

If you are an entrepreneur looking to provide the best experience to your customers, then hire a mobile app development company to digitally transform your business model. Let’s connect now!

Why Does Your Restaurant Need A Mobile App?

The restaurant industry is no longer limited to delivering dine-in experience. 70% of customers prefer to order food online and have it delivered. 

This trend is not going down in the coming future as the number of online users in the food delivery industry is expected to reach a whopping 2656 million by 2026.

And about 60% of operators say that offering online delivery has generated incremental sales as 59% of millennials prefer takeout or delivery of food. 

Moreover, with the reports saying that customers spend more on online orders than on-premise orders, digital ordering is growing at a 3x higher rate as compared to on-site ordering. 

Overall, this revolutionary trend is making the online food ordering industry bigger with the prediction to make $200 billion by 2025. 

In a nutshell, these are impressive statistics portraying aggressive growth and opportunities for digital restaurant transformation solutions. If you are still wondering how a restaurant management app can bring your businesses ahead and whether it’s worth the investment, then reason the reasons below:

• Streamlining day-to-day operations and automating repetitive tasks such as order management, table reservations, inventory control, and more. It reduces the manual error and helps you stay updated with your inventories.

• Digital order management can reduce the risk of blunders and ensure that kitchen staff receives accurate and detailed orders directly from the servers. It ultimately minimizes the risk of miscommunication and ensures order accuracy.

• Boost customer experience by offering in-app features like online ordering, pre-table reservations, and digital menus that lead to a seamless dining experience.

• A restaurant management app can improve workforce management through automatic order scheduling, task assignments, and performance tracking features in the app. 

• Increase profitability by optimizing table turnover rates, reducing order errors, improving operational efficiency, and more. 

With a restaurant management app, you can 10x your business sales, all you have to do is hire a mobile app development company that can handle the complex requirements. But, this may end up with the question of how much it will cost to build a restaurant management app in 2024.

74% of customers are more likely to order food online!

Let Alcax be your tech partner to customize a user-friendly restaurant management app that allows customers to order online and boost their satisfaction.

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How Much Does It Cost To Build a Restaurant Management App?

Calculating the cost to create a restaurant management app can be as low as $10,000 and as high as $100,000+, it all depends upon your business requirements.

Majorly, the apps developed for restaurants, are of two types:

• The simple restaurant apps will range between $12,000 to $20,000+ and will be developed with core features like menu, payment integration, push notifications, order management, real-time tracking, geolocation, in-app chat, and communication, etc.

• The second one is the advanced app version with a comprehensive set of modern features like pre-order meals, 3D view of restaurants, personalized recommendations, order tracking status, and more. The minimum cost to create this advanced app version would start from $35,000+ and can go beyond $50,000.

Apart from this, multiple factors can deeply impact the overall app development cost which includes, the app complexity, features and functionalities, UI/UX design, app development team, location, and tech stack.   

So when it comes to developing a restaurant online ordering app, it is always recommended for businesses to build an MVP first. With this approach, businesses can easily test the level of water with a working model of your app and accordingly scale it up with additional features. 

Launching a full-fledged restaurant app development service can be an expensive deal, therefore, it is worth hiring a mobile app developer that can help you get started with MVP and enable you to gather the feedback of users. 

Major Factors That Affect The Restaurant App Development Cost

While there is so much to include in restaurant app development, it becomes challenging to estimate the accurate app development cost. So if you are trying to set a budget for restaurant app development, then you need to understand what exactly contributes to its cost estimation. 

Here are the few factors that you need to keep in mind while setting a budget for custom restaurant app development:

• Determining Restaurant App Type: Understand what type of app you need for your business.
• Restaurant App Features: Determine whether you are prioritizing simple or complex features in the app.
• UI/UX Design: Are you going to use traditional or well-researched UI/UX design?
• Platform for Restaurant App: Where to launch your app- is it native or cross-platform?
• Third–party API Integration: How many APIs do you need in the app?
• Development Team: Hiring an in-house app development team or outsourcing developers and their locations. 

Overall these factors contributed to the final app development cost. If you are convinced with your product idea, but not sure what feature you should prioritize initially, then jump to the next section.

Must-Have Features For Your Restaurant Management App

As we have repeatedly mentioned, features and functionalities can greatly affect the app development cost, therefore, here we have prioritized all the must-have features contributing to the app development cost.

Here are the major features you need to include:

• Home Screen: This would be the first screen of the app that customers land, after opening the app. It carries information about your unique offering or brand story, location, details, and peak working hours. Moreover, customers would love reading the testimonials flashing on this screen before they come for a dine-in experience. 
• Order Menu: This is the major feature of your app. Instead of giving the standard information, there are such innovative things that make your app a little more engaging like offering an extensive search feature that can help customers choose specific dishes based on the taste, course, ratings, and more. Moreover, it helps to add photos of dishes along with the description to highlight the USP. 
• Login Via Social Media or Email: Gather customers’ information in two ways- one when they launch the app for the first time and the second when they place an order or book a table in your restaurant. 
• Order and Menu Management: With this feature, simplify the order-taking process by sending digital order details to the kitchen. Moreover, it allows easy updates to the menu, including availability, prices, and special offers.
• Inventory Tracking: Constantly monitoring the stock levels in real-time, minimizing the risk of over-storage and overstocking or even going out of stock. It automatically sends alerts to managers when inventory is low or reminds them of restocking. 
• Employee Scheduling: Allows managers to create and update staff schedules, track attendance, and manage staff swaps during peak time. Moreover, allowing employees to view their shifts.
• Payment Processing Integrations: Enable easy payment processing by supporting multiple methods like credit cards, mobile wallets, and more.
• Analytics and Reporting: Provide a complete overview of sales, customer preferences, and employee performance. With these detailed insights, businesses can enhance decision-making, optimize operations, and identify trends.
• Online Ordering and Delivery: Allow customers to place orders online for pickup or delivery. Integrates with third-party delivery services or offers in-house delivery options with real-time order tracking. 
• Table Reservation: Allow customers to book a table in advance and avoid waiting during peak hours.

The list of features will go on and can enhance the functionalities of your app. Generally, the cost to create a restaurant management app with these features would be between $25,000 to $30,000+ but what if you are trying to compete with UberEats? 

In that case, you need to integrate advanced features like AR/VR display of dishes in-app, personalized recommendation, pre-ordering, order customizing flexibility, and more. The average cost to create a complex version of a restaurant management app will range between $35,000 to $50,000+. 

Most Impactful Business Model For Restaurant Management App 

There are multiple business models for a restaurant management app, combining a subscription-based model with tiered pricing. The ultimate choice of business model depends upon the features that have been integrated into the app. Before you hire an app development company to customize the app, let’s check out how these business models work.

– Subscription Model

Provide access to customers to innovative features like order management, payment processing, location-tracking, and more with the annual/monthly subscription plan which can be further tiered up with basic and pro plans. This model ideally works for the restaurants that provide franchises of their brand. 

– Freemium Model

Basic functionalities can be offered for free to small or independent restaurants to help them get started easily. However, to unlock advanced features, they have to upgrade the plan. 

– Commission-Based Model

This is one of the most commonly adopted business models where a small commission can be charged on each transaction. This model works well when integrated with delivery partners or in-house delivery systems, where restaurants pay based on the volume of orders processed.

Looking to transform your restaurant operations digitally?

67% of restaurant owners believe that a restaurant management app can significantly improve our business efficiency. Collaborate with Alcax to make it a reality!

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How Can Alcax Help Your Business Grow With Custom Restaurant App Development?

Looking to build a Restaurant management app that can 10x your business sales and drive exceptional growth? Alcax can be one of the leading restaurant development companies allowing you to customize applications right from scratch or even upgrade the existing one with the latest features. Our team of domain experts guides brands throughout the entire process, from ideation to deployment.

Apart here’s how Alcax can help you build an app:

• Tailored App Development Solutions: Alcax specializes in creating custom restaurant management apps that perfectly align with your business requirements. Whether you operate a small bistro or a large restaurant chain, Alcax ensures that your app includes all the necessary features. 

• Deploying App Development Team: We have a skilled team of 500+ in-house developers who go above and beyond to customize the app and work in a collaborative environment to ensure optimum quality. Once you sign an NDA, we deploy the app development team within 48 hours. 

• End-To-End Solutions: We strive to deliver quality, therefore we stand by your side right from starting and deeply evaluate your app development requirements. As every business is unique and considering developing apps with different goals, therefore, we customize the strategy that drives growth. 

Conclusion

With increasing digitization, automating your restaurant operations with a custom restaurant mobile app will be a worthy decision. However, launching your app can be a major investment, which requires professional assistance to carefully bring the idea to life. A well-designed restaurant app can provide various benefits to the customers and the business by driving more sales and revenue.

So this is where you need to hire a mobile app developer from a renowned app development company to get a more accurate budget and guidelines on how to approach the whole process of building a restaurant management app strategically. 

If you are all set with your requirements and looking to create a restaurant management app, then drop a query or fill this form with your details for accurate cost estimation 

FAQs

If you still have doubts about developing a restaurant management app, then here we listed FAQs to help you gather more information about the concept.