Dubai’s food scene has lots of tastes. From fancy spots with stars to small hidden places, there’s food for all. But these days, fast and easy services are a priority besides taste as quality. That’s where a restaurant-oriented food app for ordering food from restaurants shines. Picture someone in Dubai craving a steaming bowl of luqaimat (sweet dumplings), taking out their smartphone, looking through your app, and ordering quickly from your restaurant. In no time, they’re eating their sweet treat, and your restaurant makes a new happy customer. Sounds great, right? If you join hands and expand your food business with a food delivery app development company, thousands of such happy customers can be made. But how do you make this happen?

How Expanding Business with a Food Delivery App Can Be a Good Idea

What is a Restaurant-Oriented App?

A restaurant-orientated food delivery app is a mobile app designed for a particular restaurant, letting customers order food directly from the place. Unlike standard food delivery apps that work with multiple eateries and shipping services, a restaurant-oriented app focuses entirely on selling and facilitating orders for a particular restaurant or a small group of eateries under the same ownership.

Does that sound like a good idea? If yes, let’s broaden its goodness!

What are the Must-Have Features of This App?

Start by finding the right team. Pick a top mobile app development company in Dubai known for developing easy-to-use and rich-featured apps. They’ll help you throughout the recipe of making a perfect food delivery app, assuring your app stands out in a busy market menu of existing food apps.

Let’s delve into the key features your restaurant-oriented app should possess:

• User-Centric Design: Think intuitive navigation, clear menus, and a smooth ordering process. Your app should be as easy to use as ordering a Karak chai (spiced milk tea).
• Advanced Search & Filtering: Allow users to search by cuisine, dietary preferences, and even delivery time. Imagine a health-conscious user easily finding vegan options or someone craving late-night eats discovering restaurants delivering past midnight.

• High-Quality Profile: Show off your best dishes with eye-catching photos, clear menu details, and prices everyone can see. This is your eatery’s online shop window, engaging consumers and making you more visible online.
• Live Order Tracking: People want to know where their food is. With live updates, you build trust and reduce their hunger anxiety and calls asking where their orders are. This makes customers happy and life easier for your staff.
• Seamless Payment: It’s key to let customers pay however they like, including cards or digital wallets like Apple Pay, or even cash when the food arrives. This makes buying food easy for them.
• Loyalty Deals: Keep customers coming back by rewarding them. Use a points system where points can get them discounts or free stuff. Also, special deals just for those using your app can lead to more downloads and people using your app more.
• Push Updates: Send news on deals, new dishes, or fun promos. But keep it balanced. Too many notifications will make people stop paying attention to them.

Additional tech to make things feel personal:

• AI Suggestions: Let AI suggest food based on what they’ve had before, where they are, or the weather conditions. This way, people get to see dishes they might like adhering to the environmental suggestions.
• Chatbots for Help: Use chatbots for simple queries or to solve common problems (like finding a feature) quickly. This lets your team do other things.

Bringing Your Vision to Life

“Frank Meat & Taps,” a popular Dubai-based restaurant is renowned for its generous quality and electrifying atmosphere. Partnering with a food delivery app development company, the restaurant creates a user-friendly app that captures the restaurant’s essence. The app features mouthwatering high-resolution photos of their signature meat-based dishes and ribs.

Here’s how the app benefits Frank Meat & Taps:

• Increased online orders, allowing customers to enjoy their hearty meals from the comfort of their homes.
• Wider customer reach, attracting new demographics who might not have visited the physical restaurant.
• Efficient restaurant operations through streamlined order management and online reservation functionality.
• Gathering order records for marketing promotions, allowing tailored promotions consistent with the preferences of their consumers.

The Nuts & Bolts of Your App

Building a restaurant-oriented food ordering app involves several key technical elements, and their costs can vary depending on complexity and chosen technologies. Here’s a quick rundown:

Core Features:

• User Interface & User Experience Design: This is the base of your app. A person-friendly interface (UI) with intuitive navigation (UX) and clear menus is important.
• Backend Development: This handles data storage, order processing, and integration with payment gateways. The scale and complexity of your restaurant network and menu will influence the cost. (Cost factor: Medium-High)
• Mobile App Development: Do you wish for separate apps for iOS and Android (native) gadgets or a single codebase for both (cross-platform)? Native apps offer better performance but are more expensive to develop with. (Cost factor: High (Native), Medium (Cross-Platform))
• Maps & Geolocation: Integrating location services allows users to find nearby restaurants and optimize delivery routes. (Cost factor: Low-Medium)
• Payment Gateways: Offering secure payment options like credit cards, debit cards, and local wallets incurs integration fees. The number of gateways you include will affect the cost. (Cost factor: Low-Medium)

• AI-Powered Recommendations (optional): Personalizing the user experience with AI requires additional development and ongoing maintenance. (Cost factor: High)
• Chatbots for Customer Support (optional): Building and integrating a chatbot adds complexity and ongoing costs for training and maintenance. (Cost factor: Medium-High)
• Push Notifications: Sending targeted notifications requires a robust backend system and can incur additional charges depending on the chosen platform. (Cost factor: Medium)

Cost Factors:

• Development Partner: The experience and expertise of your chosen food delivery app development company will significantly impact the cost.
• Project Scope: The more features and functionalities you include, the higher the development cost. Prioritize core features first and add advanced elements later.
• App Maintenance: Bug fixes, updates, and security patches are ongoing costs to consider.

This is just a general overview. The actual cost will vary depending on your specific needs and chosen development partner. It’s crucial to get quotes from multiple companies and discuss your project scope in detail.

The Takeaway

Investing in a well-designed and feature-rich restaurant-oriented food ordering app leads to unlocking a door beyond discoverability inside standard food delivery apps. With your own, you can set your business in the hearts of your customers and be able to remind them that your restaurant is there to fulfill their cravings. Partnering with a food delivery app development company in Dubai makes you the king of your business while ensuring a smooth development process. So, create an app that makes ordering your delicious food as easy as saying “Yalla, let’s eat!” (Let’s go, let’s eat!)