Online food ordering typically only happens through fast food restaurants. Fancy organizations aren’t usually accepting orders online to be delivered or ready for pickup.
However, the pizza place down the street might have an online ordering system. The coffee shop might be willing to make a coffee and a sandwich for you to pick up in ten minutes.
We’ve seen online ordering systems like GrubHub thrive, but what about getting your own mobile ordering module?
It’s not that hard, considering some of the iBuildApp restaurant themes already have the menu pages needed. After that, you can take advantage of features like mobile shopping carts and menus.
But what are the advantages of mobile ordering? And if you’re a reseller, how can you pitch mobile food ordering to your restaurant clients?
Restaurant Patrons are Heavily Influenced by Mobile Marketing
Studies show that nearly one-third of restaurant customers have used their mobile phones to find a deal for where they plan on eating. In short, foodies like hunting around on their phones for deals and cool places to eat.
Think about the food truck revolution. This wouldn’t be possible without customers checking their food truck apps and Twitter feeds.
All restaurants should take advantage of the mobile world, since users are known to start their restaurant search with tools like Yelp and Google and end it with coupon sites. If you can also get them to remember your app, that’s a huge advantage over competitors.
You Can Initiate Mobile Food Ordering With Geofencing
Mobile food ordering starts with marketing. You’re not going to get any mobile orders if nobody knows about the promotions or deals you’re having during the week. Therefore, you can send out notifications to people who are near your restaurant.
For instance a hot dog stand might release a geofencing notification about a lunch special. You could link to your mobile ordering page and tell customers that their orders will be ready by the time they get there.
And With Push Notifications…
Your push notifications don’t have to be geofenced. If you’re not looking to only target people in a certain area, think about sending out a general push notification to everyone who has downloaded your mobile app. After that you can send them to a promotional page or the mobile ordering page.
Mobile Ordering Has All the Same Benefits as Reservation Systems
A reservation system cuts out many tasks for a restaurant. Not only do you not have to pick up the phone as much, but the reservations are already configured and managed for you. It’s the same with your orders, seeing as how you don’t have to sit and wait for the customer to sift through the menu. They’ve already done it and specified what they want, saving time for everyone.
Mobile Ordering is a Huge Reason for People to Keep Your App Installed
Small businesses struggle with getting customers to keep their apps installed. Why? Because phone users don’t want to have cluttered interfaces. Therefore, they try to cut out the apps that don’t get much use. Since smaller businesses don’t generally have as much to offer as, say, productivity or social media apps, they don’t make the cut.
However, mobile ordering and reservation systems bring strong value to your mobile app. If you have a few dozen or hundred VIP customers who order from your restaurant all of the time, there’s no reason they shouldn’t have an app for instantly calling in or making an order online. It’s much easier than having the GrubHub app where the user has to sift through other restaurants to find yours.
Does Your Restaurant Mobile App Offer Food Ordering?
If you’re a restaurant manager, you probably already know the power of online ordering. The only thing you might be missing is online ordering through a mobile interface. As for developers, do your best to make sure all of your restaurant clients have some sort of mobile ordering system.
