The COVID-19 pandemic has made guest acquisition harder, but has also created more opportunities and more urgency for restaurants to solidify loyalty. As ChowNow Senior Restaurant Success Manager Shadeh Tabatabai notes, “Restaurants need to engage with the loyal customers that are already ordering from them. That’s a much easier order to get.”

Consumers’ budgets are far more limited, and when they do dine out or get takeout, they often choose restaurants that they know and love. They both want to support their favorite restaurants during this crisis, and feel that they’re being safe. In fact, during the pandemic, 80 percent of guests are turning to restaurants that they trust.

When trust and loyalty are paramount, guests order directly from their favorite restaurants, instead of going through a third-party marketplace. Despite the massive increase in orders from third-party apps, restaurants still see the majority of their off-premise sales come through their own direct channels.

These trends in loyalty intersect with the mobile ordering app increase in popularity. According to a Restaurant Business interview with Mobiquity VP of Strategy and Analytics Brian Levine, the pandemic presents “an opportunity for restaurants to bring self-service to a much greater number of people than they were ever going to…Restaurant chains typically use ‘massive advertising campaigns’ featuring free items to get people to use their apps. The pandemic did it for free.”

This trend means that your restaurant has a strong chance to easily strengthen guest retention, visit frequency, and order sizes by offering a mobile ordering app.

In case you decide you need a restaurant mobile app, know that you can get one from us. In the same do-it-yourself super-simple fashion, you get your own app submitted to the Google Play store for Android smartphones or tablets. The app is personalized to reflect your brand, from logo to slogan and background image.

The app’s main functionality is ordering. Of course, the checkout form is prefilled based on previous orders, while the delivery address can be selected from a list of previously saved address.

In terms of updates to the app, you’re in full control. Any change that you make in the admin panel (menu items, prices, delivery area etc.) are immediately reflected in the app as well.

Moreover, because we like to help for free as much as we can, we offer this food ordering app for restaurants. It’s based on a curated list of restaurants that use our system. This means that your restaurant will not be the only one listed in the app, but it can be the featured one. Your restaurant is marked as favourite for those food clients to whom you have recommended to use the app.

Being (also) part of a shared app with other restaurants, has its own benefits (as long as you don’t pay stiff commissions, of course). All member restaurants (including yours) may opt-in to “join forces” and attract more food clients from their town to use the shared FoodBooking app, rather than playing this game solo.

So the food clients can use this one shared app in which all approved restaurants appear inside the FoodBooking marketplace brand. In addition, your clients may expect the same ordering experience, if that’s what they are looking for.