According to a recent study, 75 percent of smartphone users access restaurant info on the go – and 50 percent of those searches are performed in the car. With worldwide smartphone sales now surpassing those of feature phones, restaurant apps are becoming an important part of mobile marketing. So how are guests finding your restaurant?
There are the big apps – Yelp, FourSquare, OpenTable, TripAdvisor – that guests use frequently, but there are so many other searches going on that you might not know about.
1. UrbanSpoon
Urbanspoon is the most popular restaurant app right now according to a recent survey. Why? It’s got the biggest search range, appears on top of Google search pages when looking for restaurant reviews and has a simple mobile interface that acts like a slot machine matching up location, type of food, and price.
2. YP
These aren’t your mother’s yellow pages. AT&T Interactive has created a mobile app that, among other things, allows users to search restaurant menus directly for food items they’re craving. It’s a more reliable way to find baklava at a particular restaurant rather than searching reviews with misleading keywords.
3. Taste Savant
Taste Savant aspires to be the anti-Yelp by bringing together users’ Facebook and Twitter friends’ reviews of restaurants with those of professional chefs, food critics, blogs and restaurant industry insiders. It is only available in New York and Chicago at the moment, but plans to continue expanding to other cities.
4. City Eats
Food Network’s CityEats is OpenTable’s newest competitor. It has a smaller customer base so far but is charging less for restaurants to use its app.
5. Hoppit
Hoppit sorts restaurants based on their atmosphere by compiling review site and blog keywords to determine a restaurant’s ambiance.
6. GrubHub+Seamless
These two delivery giants have announced plans to merge, creating one massive place for guests to find your restaurant and order your food.
7. Savored
Savored finds guests places to dine based entirely on their mobile location. It combines an online reservation site, a restaurant finder and a discount locator into one app.
8. MenuPages
Menupages is now owned by Seamless but retains its own mobile app and website. The concept is simple: extensive and updated menus from restaurants that are searchable by location. For those that want to research restaurants ahead of time, it’s a great resource.
