Owning a restaurant is tough. You must design a menu that keeps your customers coming back for more, source the best ingredients, hire and maintain a diligent staff, and execute a seemingly endless number of tasks.
One effective strategy to enhance restaurant management is to leverage an app that streamlines operations and boosts your customer base. However, with numerous options available, finding the perfect fit can be challenging.
Worry not! We’re in the trade of testing, reviewing, and recommending all kinds of apps. In this article, we’ll walk you through our 15 favorite apps for restaurants.
The 15 Best Apps for Restaurants in 2024
How an App for Your Restaurant Can Help
A good restaurant app will help simplify the following restaurant operations:
- Booking: Instead of the (annoying) old-school way of penciling in a phone reservation, you’ll be able to automatically receive and manage reservations with a restaurant app.
- Ordering and Delivery: A restaurant app lets customers order, take out, or deliver food by just pressing a few buttons on their phones. After sending the order, your kitchen will receive it — no answering the old landline or ensuring it gets properly communicated.
If you have a delivery fleet, you can offer customers the option to have their meals delivered directly to their front doors.
- Management Tasks: With an app for your restaurant, you can schedule shifts, assign daily tasks, let your team clock in directly from the app, and much more. Using such an app will allow you to execute several administrative tasks in one place, helping you avoid mistakes and keep your operations humming.
#1 Adalo
What is it?
Adalo is a no-code native mobile app builder that lets you create your own restaurant app tailored to your unique needs and tastes.
Features
While you can use Adalo to breathe life into any app idea, it particularly excels at making apps for restaurants. Start by creating your very own delivery function that leverages Adalo’s geolocation feature.
You can also include a super-customized booking and ordering system where customers can select a table, order, and pay directly from their phone using Adalo’s Stripe integration. For team management, allow your staff to clock in directly from your app and give them checklists for routine tasks.
Adalo has over 5,500 integrations, including Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, so you can organize your social postings in one place.
And here’s Adalo’s added bonus: You can make it available for download in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and publish it to the web. This way, all your customers and potential customers will know where to get your app.
Pricing
Get started with Adalo for $36/month.
#2 Agorapulse
What is it?
Agorapulse is a social media management platform, giving you one place to create posts that you can plug in to all your socials, like Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook, and more.
Features
Using Agorapulse will help you market daily specials, new menu items, or that open mic night in a breeze. You’ll get a detailed analytics breakdown of how each post performed across multiple platforms, the ability to see mentions and reposts, and a consolidated inbox that lets you answer multiple DMs from all your social platforms.
Pricing
Connect up to 10 social profiles with Agorapulse’s $69/month (billed monthly) plan. If you want to let team members make posts, go for the $99/month (billed monthly) version.
#3 Chowly
What is it?
Chowly streamlines the process of managing online orders by automatically importing them into your restaurant's main point-of-sale software.
Features
Instead of working individually with several delivery apps, such as Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, DevourGo, and 25 others, Chowly integrates each one into its platform, allowing you to seamlessly handle multiple orders from several platforms all at once.
You’ll also get an in-depth revenue analytics feature, so you can adjust your pricing at different times of the week to increase your bottom line.
Pricing
You’ll need to contact Chowly directly to get their pricing options.
#4 Uber Eats
What is it?
Quite possibly the most well-known delivery app, Uber Eats lets you take as many orders as you can handle and pass them off to Uber Eats’ vetted delivery drivers.
Features
With its unique dashboard, Uber Eats allows you to streamline and process all your delivery orders. It also serves as a social media and marketing tool: You’ll be able to run promos, provide coupons, and pay for your restaurant’s position in the search results for certain keywords.
Pricing
While Uber Eats doesn’t have monthly pricing tiers, it does take a certain commission from each order. If you want precise information about how the commissions work, contact Uber Eats directly.
#5 Nextable
What is it?
Nextable is a booking management app that easily lets you handle reservations, table allocations, and customer management.
Features
NexTable makes booking tables directly from customers’ phones or mobile devices a breeze. Customers can easily add a few more people to their table, change their booking time, or cancel directly through the Nextable App, saving you loads of time.
Pricing
You can get started with Nextable for $50/month (billed monthly). If you’re a large restaurant and need more booking availability, go for the $199/month (billed monthly) version.
#6 Yelp
What is it?
Yelp is a social media app that lets you connect with customers by your restaurant’s details, customer reviews, and ratings.
Features
While Yelp is known for letting you create a page for your restaurant by adding pictures of your menu and receiving customer reviews, you might not have known that Yelp also lets you take reservations.
Yelp also serves as a marketing platform: You’ll also be able to purchase ads to boost your restaurant in the Yelp search results, so when people search for the kind of food your restaurant serves, they might find you first.
Pricing
It’s free to create a Yelp profile. For advertising and online reservations, you’ll have to pay a customized fee, which is about $6/day on average.
#7 Partender
What is it?
Partender is an app for your bar that helps record inventory and gauge your stock levels.
Features
Partender has got your inventory management and purchasing needs covered: Use the app’s camera feature to measure how many servings you have left in each liquor bottle. Its analytics features break down your profits per ounce of booze sold.
You’ll also be able to keep your inventory flowing (no pun intended). Running low on that Highland Park 21? Send a purchase order (PO) directly to your vendor using Partender’s automatic PO generator.
Pricing
Start using all of Partender’s for $299/month (billed monthly).
#8 TouchBistro
What is it?
TouchBistro is an all-in-one restaurant management app full of integrated features to streamline your operations and enhance customer service.
Features
TouchBistro has everything you need to manage your restaurant. Your servers will be able to take orders and receive payment directly from mobile devices, cutting out the time it takes to scurry from table to till.
You’ll also be able to track your inventory and supplies and make new orders when your stock is running low.
Pricing
TouchBistro starts at $69/month (billed monthly). You can also get several add-ons, like taking online reservations for $229/month (billed monthly) and digital gift cards for $25/month (billed monthly).
#9 NextMe
What is it?
NextMe is a digital management app designed to manage your waitlists, reservations, and guest communication.
Features
If you already have a booking app, you’ll be able to integrate it with NextMe–but if you don’t, NextMe offers a booking feature. Send your customers push notifications letting them know the table they’ve waited 45 minutes for is finally ready.
You’ll also get a messaging feature that lets customers speak directly with you so they can inform you about changes or special requests.
Pricing
Start using NextMe for $59.99/month (billed monthly), and send your customers up to 3,000 monthly messages. If you need up to 5,000, go for NextMe’s $99.99/month (billed monthly) version.
#10 BevSpot
What is it?
BevSpot is a restaurant management app that focuses on inventory management.
Features
Use BevSpot to track all of your restaurant’s inventory–from bottles in the bar to fresh produce in the walk-in and much, much more. When you’re running low, you’ll be able to place direct orders with suppliers by just pressing a few buttons on the app.
Pricing
Get BevSpot for your inventory management for $249/month (billed monthly). If you want to use BevSpot’s accounting features, look no further than the $299/month (billed monthly) version.
#11 Avero
What is it?
Avero provides a full suite of tools for managing your restaurant, including sales tracking, team management, and inventory control, into a single platform.
Features
While Avero provides a convenient point-of-sale system that lets your servers take orders in a jiff, you’ll also get scheduling, clock-in/clock-out, and payroll features. Its analytics dashboard allows you to track your servers’ performance by generating scorecards for each team member, making it possible to improve your restaurant’s service.
Pricing
Analyze your team’s performance starting at $300/year (billed monthly). If you want Avero’s payroll features, you’ll have to get the version that starts at $600/year (billed monthly).
#12 7shifts
What is it?
7shifts is a team management and scheduling app designed specifically for restaurants.
Features
If you’re looking for an app specifically crafted to simplify your restaurant’s human resource management, look no further than 7shifts. It creates schedules using a drag-and-drop interface and takes into account time-off requests, holidays, and sick leave.
Your team will be able to clock in and out using the app. And if you need someone to cover the 3 o’clock shift, use 7Shift’s messaging feature and get that time slot filled quickly.
Pricing
You can manage up to 30 employees for $34.99/month (billed monthly). If you have a large team, try the $76.99/month (billed monthly) version, which lets you manage an unlimited number of employees.
#13 Restaurant365
What is it?
Restaurant365 is a comprehensive restaurant management software that integrates all aspects of managing your restaurant’s internal operations.
Features
Restaurant365 is a one-stop shop for all your restaurant’s internal needs. It streamlines your inventory, payroll, and sales data into one place. You won’t have to worry about pulling up different HR, accounting, and purchasing apps–Restaurant365 can execute all of these tasks in one convenient place.
Pricing
Start using Restaurant365 for $465/month (billed quarterly). Try out the $689/month (billed quarterly) version for more in-depth financial analysis features.
#14 FoodDocs
What is it?
FoodDocs is a food safety management app to help you streamline compliance with food safety standards.
Features
Leveraging the power of AI, FoodDocs helps you create, monitor, and maintain food safety tasks and HACCP systems. For instance, you’ll be able to customize traceability tasks to help ensure you know when food has expired. It also notifies you when the FDA passes new standards so you won’t be caught off guard.
Pricing
FoodDocs doesn’t publicize its pricing — you’ll have to contact them to find out how much their services will cost.
#15 Eat App
What is it?
Eat App is an app that helps you manage your restaurant’s bookings and customer experience.
Features
Your customers can use the reservation feature to book tables in advance, while your staff can use the app to manage the waitlist and determine which tables each reservation will sit at.
The Eat App also has social media functionalities: Create a profile that you can use to advertise your menu and restaurant vibe. Your customers can write reviews about their experience, which can attract potential customers.
Pricing
Get started with the capability of booking up to 300 guests per month for $79/month (billed monthly). For unlimited bookings, go with the $179/month (billed monthly) version.
What to Consider
When picking an app for your restaurant, ensure that it solves all your current problems and doesn’t create any new bottlenecks. For instance, if you have a great booking system but think you can save money, go with an inventory management system.
Importantly, remember to keep your app updated. Running an older version of a restaurant app can cause problems, like slower load times and crashes, which can result in lost data and unsatisfied customers.
Custom-Make an App for Your Restaurant with Adalo
Do you want all the features of a pre-made restaurant app but want to customize some to your brand? Then make your very own restaurant app with Adalo.
Adalo is a no-code app-building platform that doesn’t require any coding or technical knowledge for use. Just create an account and start building your app using Adalo’s super simple drag-and-drop interface.
With Adalo, you can custom-make your own app that allows for deliveries, takes bookings, accepts payments, schedules employees, tracks inventory, and more. You’ll have the power and flexibility to breathe life into almost any restaurant app idea.
Your customers can access your app from the web, or you can publish it in the Apple App Store and Google Play so they can download it directly to their phones. Adalo is priced at the lower end of most of the restaurant apps on our list, so it’s super affordable.
Start building your very own restaurant app for free: Sign up with Adalo today.
