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Learning from the best and the worst restaurant apps

Nearly half of the top 100 restaurant chains don't have a native app, even though consumers expect one. Gleaning wisdom from over 1 million app reviews has revealed some interesting lessons and principles, from both the well-done apps to the mobile flops.

July 27, 2016

By Ben Gray, Applause

The unfortunate reality is that most fast casual restaurant chains have not yet risen to the expectations of their mobile customers, even though one in four U.S. consumers have at least one restaurant app on their phone, according to RetailMeNot. I recently completed an exhaustive study of the top 100 restaurant chains – including fast, fast casual and casual dining – and learned that nearly half (45) of them didn’t even have a native app. Customers today expect richer, location-based and transactional engagement and aren’t satisfied with a mobile website that just displays locations and a menu. I went through more than 1 million app reviews and gleaned some lessons for fast casual restaurants looking to create a native app or boost their app’s rating.

Top restaurant apps make profits inevitable

When done right, an effective mobile app profoundly impacts the bottom line. Consider these facts:

• Starbucks’ mobile app accounted for 21 percent of its Q1 U.S. transactions. Its top feature—Mobile Order & Pay—represents 10 percent of total transactions at high-volume Starbucks stores, directly contributing to increased sales (Mobile Strategies 360).

• Domino’s supports payment across 15 platforms, including Apple Watch, Amazon Echo and Samsung TV. More than half of U.S. sales are driven through digital (Business Insider).

• Taco Bell experiences 20 percent higher average orders on mobile than in-store purchases (Mobile Commerce Daily).

These success stories prove that restaurants win when brands match and surpass consumer expectations.

The good news for fast casual restaurant owners that launched native apps is that customers are gravitating toward them. Fast casual chains even beat fast food chains as the highest-rated restaurant type with an average score of 49 out of 100. But while customers liked fast casual apps more, fast food companies are dominating revenue generation.

Lessons from failures

One surprising takeaway is that four of the top ten restaurant chains based on US sales had among the lowest-rated mobile sentiment scores.

Poorly rated apps are usually not optimized for frequent micro engagements, requiring multi-input navigation (i.e., not tailored for the most common customer journeys and frequent touch points, such as finding nearest location, displaying the menu, ordering ahead, etc.); or lack the features customers expect (i.e., order ahead, loyalty programs and discounts, etc.); or they’re unintuitive, ugly, unstable, slow or otherwise full of defects.

Short-term testing (e.g., manual and automated functional testing, usability reviews and performance audits) can bring immediate issues to light.

A surprising winner

A fun wrinkle that came out of evaluating restaurant apps by customer reviews was the surprise winner: Cracker Barrel! That’s right; the Old Country Store delivers an app that is more beloved than Domino’s, Starbucks, Taco Bell and all other restaurant apps. The casual dining chain doesn’t have a sophisticated native app by any stretch; in fact, it primarily engages customers via in-restaurant games. While that doesn’t sound like much of a reason to leave rave reviews, parents with screaming kids at a restaurant will vehemently argue the contrary.

Fast casual restaurants with aspirational plans to dominate the app store charts must understand how digital can enhance their customer experience. Top-rated apps from Jimmy John’s, Panera Bread, Five Guys and Moe’s Southwest Grill each use their own unique feature set to enhance their customer journey, so imitation is not necessarily an option. This is why it’s important to map out the customer journey early in the development lifecycle so owners can identify touchpoints where a mobile app can best solve problems or inefficiencies.

Sentiment scores aren't set in stone

I analyzed how the mobile sentiment of the most popular restaurant apps evolved over the previous year and found some huge swings, positive and negative. Eighteen brands experienced mobile sentiment increases of five points or greater, with three brands – Outback Steakhouse, Jimmy John’s and Jamba Juice – experiencing improvements of 35 points or greater. These organizations re-launched legacy apps and re-architected their current apps to better equip their customers with the features they want. The lesson here: it isn’t the end of the world if a fast casual brand’s app stumbles out of the gate if they are willing to listen to customer feedback and evolve the app to their needs.

Consumers have spoken and they want mobile-optimized fast casual dining experiences. Brands too slow to the mobile challenge risk missing out as the rest of the competition resets the level of expectations their customers have in them. The longer you wait to deliver mobile apps, the more customers you’re losing.