More app downloads
Your app, under your name, on the App Store
Not a tab inside somebody else's application: your own app, with your name and your icon, that your customer installs on their phone and finds among their other icons.
Under your name, not ours
The app is published on the App Store and Google Play under your restaurant's name. Its icon is your logo. Its store listing talks about your restaurant, with your photos. Someone searching your name on their phone finds it.
That's the fundamental difference with a delivery app: over there you're a line in a list, between two competitors, under someone else's logo.
Why an app when you already have a site
- Two-tap ordering. The app remembers the customer, their address and their last order. A site has to ask for all of it again.
- An icon on their screen. It reminds them of your restaurant every time they reach for something else on their phone. No advertising does that at this price.
- Notifications, the only channel that doesn't need to be opened to be seen.
- Loyalty, living where they order rather than on a cardboard card at the bottom of a wallet.
Points, without a card to stamp
The customer earns by ordering, sees their progress in the app, and redeems when they want. Nothing to stamp, nothing to lose, and on your side you can see who's close to a reward.
The reward stays your call. A free dessert costs little and gets noticed; a permanent discount trains customers who only ever buy on sale.
Notifications, sparingly
It's the most powerful channel and the easiest to ruin. One notification a week, sent when it can actually help (Friday around five, the day of a special) gets read. One a day gets switched off, and a notification switched off never comes back on.
The store review delay
An app doesn't ship like a website. Apple and Google review every application before accepting it, and every update after that. It's a few days each time, sometimes longer if a reviewer asks for a clarification.
You also need a developer account in your own name, with both Apple and Google: that's what makes the app genuinely yours, and what lets you keep it the day you stop working with us. We handle the paperwork, but the accounts stay yours.
What it takes to work
An app doesn't fill itself: nobody downloads a restaurant's app for no reason. It's the one piece of the platform that asks something of you, in the dining room.
- A QR code on the tables and on takeout bags.
- A word from staff at checkout: that's what works best, by a wide margin.
- A reason to install: points that start counting from the first order.
Questions about the app
Is it a real app, or a website in disguise?
A real application, published on the App Store and Google Play under your restaurant's name, that installs and lives on the phone's home screen.
Will my customers actually download it?
Your regulars will, when you give them a reason: the points, and two-tap ordering. One-time customers won't, and that's fine: they order from your site.
Can I get the app without the rest?
The app runs on online ordering: that's what gives it a menu, a payment and a history. Those two go together, unlike the other pieces.
An app under your name is worth thirty minutes.
We'll show you what it would look like for your restaurant, and what it takes to fill it.