Restaurant apps have taken over the food service industry and this is due to all of the competition as well as low profit margins on the food itself. I set out to give an upfront and honest review of the 3 biggest names in restaurant mobile apps. Then, I decided to examine and investigate their role on the food service industry.
1. Eat 24 Hours – Eat 24 Hours was on the forefront of online food courts. Their site and app is very high quality. You can even select what device you are using in order to access the most optimal version. You can also access the Yelp reviews to a restaurant that you are unsure of trying.
2. Seamless – Seamless arrived a little after some of the other online food courts; however, it is still a very successful site. Seamless does not offer its app for quite as many devices as Eat 24 Hours, but it does offer a $7.00 discount for first time users. Seamless does not have images for each dish unlike Eat 24 Hours; but there are still a few main images for each restaurant. One feature that Seamless does have that Eat 24 Hours does not is a rank by price from least to greatest when you enter your location to pull up all the restaurants in your area. Eat 24 Hours has this feature, but it does not automatically do this for you. Seamless allows you to quickly find low to moderate priced meals. Seamless also only takes credit card through their secured servers which can also be a hassle, but the site does have an option that I really enjoyed called “eco-friendly ordering” where you can opt out of plastic utensils or napkins.
3. GrubHub – GrubHub is a great app for the consumer because of all the discounts and rewards that the company has in place for retention. Similar to Eat 24 Hours, GrubHub connects to Yelp so that their customers can see the restaurant’s reviews. However, there is a down side to using GrubHub. There are no images of the food that is available for ordering and the restaurants are not ranked in price. The one feature that I really enjoyed on GrubHub was the coupon button on the right side of the screen where the restaurant can list special discounts for using the site or app.
In 2014, it is hard to compete with the ease of online ordering from food court type sites such as GrubHub, Seamless, & Eat 24 Hours if you are a smaller restaurant. These sites take large percentages ranging from 15-30% of orders and even if it is a return customer, they take the same percentage of profit every time. If a restaurant is selling $4.00 sandwiches, this can add up pretty quickly. Also, as a restaurant owner in order to stand tall against your competitors, it is absolutely necessary to have some type of website with online ordering capabilities.
It is important to keep up and stay relevant if you are a restaurant owner and iScripts has a solution to competing with online food courts. Our software is a solution to a struggling restaurant’s inability to compete with the shifting market. iScripts NetMenus is an online ordering software and mobile app that can be used not only to set up online food courts, but can also be used for individual restaurants to set up their own online ordering web page or branded online restaurant order app. The restaurant can customize everything with their logo and set up a full menu with descriptions to each dish along with images.
