Features to Consider When Building a Restaurant Search App

Today, people from all walks of life love to dine out. They find it as the finest way to enjoy their favorite cuisines and have a good time with their beloved. As a result of this, the number of restaurants is increasing exponentially in addition to restaurant finder apps. 

On one side, this signifies a wide array of options, while on the other side it means complete turmoil when you are supposed to choose a restaurant to dine in. Have you ever faced this dilemma? Have you ever felt surprised that you never knew about a restaurant on the other end of your street?

The best solution to this problem is a restaurant finder app, just like Zomato. Apps like Zomato act as a platform where the users can connect with all the restaurants and cafes around. They can view their menu, choose something to beat their appetite, place an order for home delivery or book a table.

If you are thinking of entering the booming restaurant industry through restaurant finder app development, this article is for you. In this article, we are going to look into the main facet of how to make an app like Zomato and other restaurant finder apps – Restaurant finding app features. 

Must-Have Restaurant Finder App Features

Sign Up

Just like Zomato, you can also make the signup process easier and faster via social media integration. This will be profitable to you in more than one way- it will cut down the efforts of the users, enable them to connect other foodies with the same likings and taste as well as empower you to import information from different social networks and thus, deliver offers based on their behavior.

Bonus: As per our experts, you can also add a ‘Sign Up Later’ button so that the users do not leave the app at the same moment. Instead, they explore the whole app and take the decision afterward.

User Profile

Provide a unique profile to each registered user where they can review their food adventure, bookmark their favorite restaurants and dishes, check past ratings/reviews added, communicate with friends, look for new discounts, and store coupons. You can also ask your restaurant app development company to add gamification to make your application more entertaining.

Search Option

Zomato has provided an exclusively organized and categorically rich search filter with a multi-tiered hierarchy. A customer can search places on the basis of location, timings, payment mode, cuisines, facilities, rating, cost, and so on. There’s a lot for developers to get inspired from wen they build an app to find restaurants.

When talking about a restaurant finder mobile app, you have details of a vast number of restaurants in your database. In such a scenario, you can not expect the users to go through every single restaurant’s profile so as to find the right place to enjoy lavishing food. Thus, it is a must that you follow a search and sort criteria.

A key part to remember when during the search process of restaurant finder app development is to add location based suggestions and search in the app. It makes it easy for the users to look for places near their origin point. 

Restaurant Info

Just like user profiles, every restaurant should have a well-maintained profile including details – like address, working hours, rating, cuisine available, photos, average cost, menu scans, an interactive map, and an in-app call button to name a few.

Menu Options:

When we talk about the functionalities of building an app to ‘find restaurants near me’, there are three menu options that every restaurant app development company in USA suggests. 

• Scanned Menu

Here, the restaurants scan their printed menus and add them to their gallery. For a developer, it is the easiest option as no coding or additional feature is involved.

• Text List on a Different Screen

It allows the users to find a built-in text list with names, descriptions, and prices of all the dishes available. This solution is a bit costly and time-consuming when compared to a scanned menu.

• Interactive Menu Screen

This approach needs more time and money to build but is among the most popular solutions suggested by the top restaurant application developers. In this type, an interactive menu with categories and food items’ photos is designed. In addition to this, the users are allowed to select any dish to find the relevant information about it.

Table booking

When talking about table booking, a restaurant app builder team can go for two different approaches. The first one is where the customers will choose the date, time and number of persons, while the restaurant staff chooses the table. The second and more innovative solution is to allow the users to choose the table as well as per his requirements.

Special Offers and Rewards

By providing the service of special offers and discounts on the basis of the user’s activities, you can drive more users as well as keep the existing customers hooked. In addition to this, a rewarding system can also be the coolest marketing tool for you! According to our developers, this strategy can allure the users to use your app more often, take the better perks of it and assist you with a higher ROI.

In-app Call 

What separates the best restaurant finder app from other restaurant finder mobile apps are features that make users experience convenient. One of those features is giving the users an inability to make phone calls form within the app. By making it easy for people to contact restaurants and book a table, users get to have a convenient experience.

Ratings & Reviews

A key success factor of a restaurant finder mobile app is the reviews and ratings that the users give to the restaurant and the service which they received. The restaurant reviews play a huge role in not just getting new diners to the restaurants but also increasing the app engagement time. 

Besides these, don’t forget to implement push notifications systems into your mobile application and also, design the app with the most compelling  UI/UX strategies. As an entrepreneur who has made their name in the domain, the next step should be to expand. Let us talk a bit about the app categories which is most preferred for restaurant app entrepreneurs when it comes to expanding their business after they have earned back the invested restaurant finder app development cost.

Food Delivery: The Next Logical Step for Restaurant Finder Mobile Apps

Almost every restaurant aggregator app organically expands into a food delivery application. By taking your business to helping food reach diners’ doorstep, you can open new marketing avenues for yourself. 

Although the delivery market size is a lot expansive that the restaurant finder app market size, there is something that entrepreneurs need to note. The technicalities of a food delivery app requirements can be different from the restaurant finder apps. But considering the importance of keeping the brand image intact, we advise partnering with an restaurant finder app development company which also carries an expertise in food delivery app development services.

Head on to this article to know the ground-level technicalities of food delivery app development – How Much Does it Cost to Build a Food-Delivery App. 

Also read the factors and cost to develop a restaurant app for your business before starting with the process. 

Disclaimer: We don’t recommend expanding too soon. Establish your presence in restaurant finder app sector first and then move to the next stage. This way, you would have created a reputed image in the market, meaning you will have to focus less on finding users for your application.  

Coming back to the original topic, to build a successful restaurant finder mobile app like Zomato, we suggest incorporating the above-mentioned features into it. The correct integration of these features, however, would call for experts’ consultancy. If you are planning to hire a restaurant app development company in California, get in touch with us today.

THE AUTHOR

Prateek Saxena

DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER