Updated Date: June 7, 2023 
A decade ago, finding a restaurant serving finger-licking food was challenging. Besides, people have to wait in long frustrating queues with their family or friends because of less sitting space in the restaurant. Thus, Open-Table came into being.
OpenTable incorporates 60,000 restaurants, bars, wineries, and other venues in more than 80 countries, especially Nashville, New York, and Chicago. Using Opentable App, anyone can book and have a delicious meal at their favorite restaurant.
If you are looking for a restaurant scheduling app to create for your city and country, Open Table is the best bet for your business. You can find all the details below regarding why and how to develop an OpenTable for restaurants.
How Is OpenTable App Different From Other Restaurant Reservation Apps?
OpenTable is one of the best applications for managing reservations and booking restaurant tables. It is one of the oldest scheduling apps established in San Francisco, California, in 1998.
What makes the app unique is that it is simple to navigate and creates a better experience the more you use it. The app allows you to book, modify and cancel reservations in minutes with fewer errors.
It is the first app that lets users earn VIP status by booking a table 12 times a year. Additionally, you can browse the menu, check out the restaurant’s popular food, get direction and more.
Although the Open Table app offers a wide range of unique features, its main focus is on making it simple for customers to reserve tables and for businesses to manage their front-of-house operations. It is this feature that so many people—like you—are attempting to replicate it.
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The Best Features of Open Table Desirable To Diners
Customers Features
- Location-based search and filters
- Restaurant booking history
- User-generated reviews
- Dining rewards program
- Online payment system
Restaurants Owners Features
- Product and Cost management
- Table booking and order management
- Send Notification like Special offer
- Generate Reports
- Profile Management
- Stock Management
Now, you know what makes the OpenTable app so unique, let’s move forward and find out why you should create an app like OpenTable.
Why Should You Build An App Like OpenTable?
In the current scenario, creating a table booking app is a wise move, and it is undoubtedly the future of the hospitality industry after the epidemic.
According to research by OpenTable, 83% of diners would love to put their names on a waitlist before arrival, and 85% desire they know how long the wait would be for a table.
Online bookings (36%), free Wi-Fi (23%), and online or mobile ordering (19%) are the essential features that visitors value the most, according to another statistic provided by Toast.
These statistics illustrate how consumers’ desire for restaurant reservation apps is rising. You can consider this an opportunity and build a local app for your country and city. By doing this, you can offer a comfortable reservation experience for diners.
You will let the users book the table, and choose their favorite meals available to give their taste bud a delicious treat.
Moreover, they can create a personalized experience by entering all details like dietary plans, birthdays, preferences, and restrictions, etc. Various filter options eliminate confusion and help them find the perfect place to dine out.
All these benefits of an app boost your sales instantly and rake in high profits for your business.
You must have got your answer why you should invest in developing a restaurant app. Now let’s move and know how you can develop an app like OpenTable for your next startup.
How To Make A Restaurant Reservation App Like OpenTable?
To know how to build an app identical to an Open Table app, you must understand these six steps.
1. Conduct A Market Research
With over 2.20 million apps available to Apple users and over 3.40 million apps available to Android users, completely understand your competition’s features and customer requirements. This helps you know how to make an Open Table app that stands out.
Begin by conducting market research to identify apps created by your competitors. You can point out what your competitors did well and where they fell short. This type of research can provide you with specific insights into what your customers like and what you should include in your app.
2. Outline All The Essential Features
The second step is to discuss profit-generating features of OpenTable for business apps with developers. Remember, these app’s features must provide consumers with a highly engaging experience; if you want to succeed in the market.
Apart from the features mentioned above, other must-have features include simplicity, speed, and good image resolution.
3. Plan the Design of An App
After outlining all the essential features, comes the next most important part, app design. It plays a vital role in creating an engaging experience for users. To succeed with app design, you must keep your design as simple and clear as possible. The app design includes two prime elements UI & UX.
User Interface Design(UI): The look and feel of an app play an important role in its success. Mobile UI is something that determines how users will interact with your audience. Some are the navigation menu, icons, features, buttons, shortcuts, color, and fonts. Remember, your UI should be as simple as possible and remain consistent throughout the app.
User Experience (UX): This is the users’ point of view. It includes loading time, depth of an app structure, and content length. The UX is another important element of an app. As the basis of this, users decide to stay with your brand. So, your app UX should be fast and easy to navigate.
4. App Development
Now starts the exciting journey of developing a table booking app. Developing an app has three essential components —the back end, the front end, and the API.
The back-end features include, coding, scripting, and all the data processing. This is only for developers and owners of an app, and not visible to users.
The front end is only for users. They have the ability to use, see and interact with through buttons, images, interactive elements, navigational menus, and text. So make sure to embed these features with appealing UI & UX.
The last is API. It allows two applications to talk to each other. For example, each time you use an app like Facebook, send instant messages, or check the weather, you use an API.
These are the three elements of app development that you have focused on while OpenTable app development.
5. App Testing
After putting together all of the pieces of the app creation process (concept, design, and development), you will have a complete version of an app.
However, before releasing your new app to the public, run a series of tests to ensure everything is working as expected. You must test all versions of the app you intend to publish (native iOS, native Android, PWA, and so on), as well as different operating systems and browsers.
6. Deployment
Once your app is ready, it’s time to publish your app on the App store and Play store. Once you have done that your app users will go there and download it from there. Now, just publishing the app will not be enough to succeed in the market.
You have to keep track of what users are saying about your app and update your app according to it. Doing this will give you a competitive edge over your competitors.
7. Marketing of An App
There are over a million apps accessible in the Google Play Store and App store, making it difficult for you to succeed without good promotion. Thus, it is necessary to create an effective marketing strategy. You can run various marketing campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to reach your intended audience.
Apart from that, you can also use ASO tools to promote your restaurant finder app. It is a tool that improves the app’s visibility and user appeal in the app stores and increases app conversion rates to get more downloads.
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How Does An OpenTable App Make Money?
OpenTable makes money in two different ways:
- First, by selling restaurants a tool for managing reservations.
- Second, offering an online booking service on its app and via leveraging partner websites like Yelp, Google, and Menu page.
Customers can make such bookings for free, but restaurants must pay a charge for such reservations made via the Open Table app. Dinner reservation app like OpenTable offers restaurants two significant services:
Electronic Reservation Book: This is an essential service OpenTable offers restaurant owners. It replaces the outdated pen-and-paper booking system and helps them manage front-of-the-house operations in restaurants, check seating arrangements, and look after customers.
For these services, the owner of a restaurant must pay a monthly subscription, training cost, and one-time installation fee.
Open Table App Connect: This web-based platform enables restaurants to receive online reservations. It is lighter than the above feature. In this method, the member restaurants must pay a fraction of their profit for each booking made via the Open Table app by a customer.
Additionally, the affiliated restaurants pay an extra fee to OpenTable to get listed on their website and mobile application. So this is how restaurant table booking apps like OpenTable make money. If you are hungry for more information, you can read our blog on food delivery business models.
How Much Does It Cost To Develop An App Like OpenTable?
The cost of OpenTable app development varies depending on the factors like complexity of an app, the number of features, the design, and who will develop it. Below are the rough cost for different cases for startups:
The cost of developing an app like OpenTable with only MVP features & simple UI & UX design flow for startups to get investment is – $7000 to $8000.
Second, to start with a website or a software-only like OpenTable, then it costs you between -$15000 to $17000.
The final cost of building a complete solution which includes an iOS and Android app with front and back end starts at $29000.
Conclusion
The best restaurant app offers customers a variety of options that guarantee a superior eating experience compared to the conventional techniques of waiting in a long line for a table. In this digital era, everything has become easier with mobile applications. So, building an app like OpenTable for your city and county can prove to be a great start-up idea.
With the above-given steps, you will be able to build a successful app similar to OpenTable from this blog. If you need additional help, contact our experts for a simple and simplified approach. The developers’ exceptional skills in developing applications will make your procedure easier.
FAQs
1. How long does it take to make an app like OpenTable?
The development time of an application depends on various factors like the app’s features, design, and other requirements of an application. However, to give you a rough time, it takes around 3 to 6 months to build a restaurant schedule app like OpenTable.
2. How does a restaurant booking app work?
The working process of the restaurant booking app is simple. Users can sign up to the OpenTable app and easily select their meal slot, book a table, and even pre-order their food.
3. Why should entrepreneurs invest in OpenTable-like app development?
Here is the reason why entrepreneurs invest in the OpenTable app:
- Nearly 60,000 restaurants around the globe book the table through OpenTable.
- According to data from the fourth quarter of 2019, on average, 134 million diners are seated per month, roughly 1.6 billion diners annually.
4. How to make apps like OpenTable?
To make an app like OpenTable, hire the best mobile app development company like aPurple. We help deliver an exquisite mobile app according to the client’s requirements within the stipulated time.
