The Role Of Mobile Apps In The Restaurant Industry

By Author: Jennifer Lewis
Total Articles: 304
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The restaurant industry is one of the busiest and highest earning sectors of the economy for several decades now. The functioning of the restaurant industry has however undergone a sea change after the advent of mobile technology. Earlier, food critics penned their opinions on cuisines served at restaurants and its general ambience in newspapers; this was later replaced with restaurant review websites; today, restaurants are promoted as well as criticized on social media sites by the use of mobile applications. Therefore, consumers can share information about the restaurants they visit while they are actually sitting at the place and eating its food.

Let us take a look at how some categories of mobile applications play a prominent role in the restaurant industry:

The traditional social networking applications – Traditional social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are the chosen apps for most restaurant visitors to share their experiences. This is the reason why most restaurants have their own pages on these social networks. The reason why social networking apps highly influence the restaurant industry is ...
... because a customer tends to trust his/her friend’s recommendations on the place; thereby, a person may choose to visit or boycott a restaurant depending on updates from friends on his list.

The photo sharing applications – Sharing photos of food served at restaurants is a very common activity app users engage in. most people these days are armed with mobile devices that have a high powered camera; therefore, taking pictures while eating out has become a current trend. Sharing these pictures with the help of mobile apps acts as promotion for the restaurant and its food.

The location based social review websites – Gone are the days when food reviewers started releasing their opinions in food sites only after they left a restaurant. With the emergence of mobile devices and apps, sharing reviews on real time has become a reality. In fact, the restaurant apps are designed in such a way that they will allow the reviewer to tag their location with the food review. This information can be used as a marketing strategy. While it will inform other business owners about your whereabouts, your followers on the food site will refuse to enter the restaurant even if they are in the locality if you have provided a bad review.

The food specific applications – This category of mobile apps is still not very popular, but several users access them to take & share pictures of food, review the food quality of a restaurant, and share these reviews with people within the same locality of the restaurant. Foodspotting is one of the most successful examples of this category of restaurant applications, which have assisted foodies in searching and identifying new eateries in separate locations of a city or town.

There is still room for more discovery in a fast evolving industry like the restaurant business. Since eating out is one activity that mobile users engage in very frequently, software developers are constantly on the lookout for designing mobile applications which will assist both restaurant owners and visitors. The combination of creative ability, qualification, and talent will go a long way to inspire software designers come up with interesting ideas that will raise the level of interaction between a restaurant’s management and its customers, which will largely affect the restaurant industry.

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