How Much Does it Cost to Make a Restaurant App

Making an app for a restaurant unlocks numerous opportunities. The average person spends more than 4 hours each day on their phone. Having your app installed on their phone increases the number of times they will interact with your brand. On the app, you can send customers push notifications for offers, new items on the menus, and other important communication. The app will also enable them to place orders, even when in other cities where your brand is available. Customers can also give honest feedback about their experiences with your brand. Though daunting, investing in a restaurant app can help create a legion of loyal clients. 

If you are thinking of investing in an app, here is a breakdown of how much it is likely to cost you. 

Hiring the Right Development Team

The biggest determinant of your restaurant app development costs will be the location of the team you pick. Hiring a software developer in North America will cost upwards of $105 an hour. The project could take 3 months to complete, test, and launch. Hiring a software developer in Europe costs about $75 an hour, while one in India could cost $25 an hour. The difference is quite staggering. Taking time to find an experienced development team outside North America could slash your costs by more than 50%.

The Features

The number and complexity of the features on the restaurant app will affect the timeframe of the project, hence the costs. In an agile development approach, the development team will charge an hourly rate, then bill a certain number of hours for each feature.

A simple restaurant app will have a menu. The menu must have the proper product descriptions, quality images, and categorization. It could also allow users to customize their orders. In that case, it has to be responsive so that users see how customization affects their order total. The app should obviously allow online ordering instead of having to call in for delivery. A payment process integration is also a basic requirement. Most apps have online banking, Apple Pay, and PayPal payment options. 

If your restaurant hosts eat-in clients, the app could allow people to book tables to save on waiting time when they come in. Push notifications are also a basic requirement for marketing reasons nowadays. Such a basic app could take 3 to 4 months to build until completion. Assuming 4 months or 16 weeks of work, it could cost around $64000 when working with a developer in North America. If working with a team in Asia, the cost could reduce to around $20000.

More Complex Apps

More complex apps have more advanced features that rack up development time and costs. For instance, being able to track the status of an order is a complex feature. Having non-conventional payment methods, such as accepting cryptocurrencies is another feature on quite several new restaurant apps. Most apps will have a customer interface as well as the backend where orders are accepted, and progress updated. However, it is possible to have an interface for waiters where they can see the tables they should serve, the status of a customer’s bill and so on.

Making the Right Choice

Before beginning the development purpose, it’s important to have a rough figure of the amount of money you are willing to put into the app. You can consult with a software development project manager to help you put together a team that can deliver your app within the budget. There are a lot of talented developers out there, however, you will need the help of a project manager to identify the team and track the project to completion. 

To find out more on developing your restaurant app, check out NS804 service offerings.