Coffee Shop Application Development for Boosting Orders and Customer Loyalty

Running a coffee shop is a hugely rewarding business with a bright future. It’s one of those jobs where you can add something pleasant to a random person’s day by giving them a cup of delicious coffee or muffin when they have a bad day or need an energy boost for the working process ahead. However, like any business, this one also comes with some downsides. Therefore, sometimes it can be exhausting to run all vital functions, check the revenue and stay informed about the latest trends in this ecosystem. 

Also, think about numerous coffee shops you can find on your street – it could be one, two, or even three sometimes. There are many competitors here, and visitors tend to go to the most preferable, fancy, and cozy place for their regular cup of coffee in the morning. The chances of being in this special place are not so big if you choose not to update your business and how it works. The industry is full of different coffee shops that offer numerous items to buy, so any business owner must strive to stand out from the crowd by either providing something unique and distinctive in their products and services or consider developing a coffee shop app. The last idea is the main topic of our article – we want you to succeed in this fast-speed and booming industry and boost customer loyalty and overall income with a well-crafted application.  Interexy always stays updated on the latest news and offers you a great team of niche down experts to start custom coffee shop mobile app development today and become the best out of the rest tomorrow. Reach us out and get more information!

Coffee Shop Mobile App Market Overview

In today’s digital world, the majority of people are turning to mobile apps for various purposes on a daily basis. This also includes ordering food, paying for orders, and even book tables in in-demand places. So, there is absolutely no reason for you not to build a coffee shop app to help you run your coffee shop business and lead it more efficiently and effectively. 

According to Statista, app usage for ordering coffee has rocketed in popularity among coffee enthusiasts in recent years. For instance, in 2020, 24 percent of survey participants revealed that they had ordered coffee using an app within a few weeks. Also, in a report published by Deloitte Digital, 40% of consumers choose to order their food online today. Another 34% admitted that they would be happy to receive personalized messages from a coffee shop app, while another 40% confirmed they wanted to see updates from the industry at least once a month. 

This ecosystem now requires digital support to function better and increase the number of daily visitors, which is especially essential during covid-19 times. Building a coffee shop application can bring numerous benefits to the business owner, where the most bright are:

• significantly increase a customer base and their engagement;
• offer better customers retention;
• optimizes the working process and reduces time;
• enables for a refreshed working experience; 
• lets you know your customers and what they want closer.

A great example is a well-known Starbucks that seems to be a regular coffee shop with traditional servings and products. However, its founders decided to implement the latest technologies into the marketing process and brought this shop to a genuinely new level. Now, Starbucks is one of the leading coffee shops with great customer support and a well-recognized brand name.  

This is why any business owner should consider coffee shop app development right now and start the whole new experience with a wide range of opportunities for its business to grow and shine. 

Why Coffee Shops Really Need a Mobile App?

You won’t be surprised that the market size of the United States coffee shop industry only reached 47.5 billion U.S. dollars two years ago, with a growth of 3.3 percent from the last year. There are approximately 59,000 coffee and snacks shops in the USA today, and they all have unique features to survive on the market.

Today, thanks to the impact of the COVID-19, that overwhelming competition is steeper than ever before. Even though public places are slowly starting to reopen and return to “normal life,” all businesses are going the extra mile to improve their marketing techniques and attract customers once again. 

So how can your coffee shop stand out from the traditional marketing madness? One of the best ways to return your consumers and grab their attention is to make own coffee shop app. For that reason, we prepared five worth looking benefits of creating a mobile app for a coffee shop.

1. People Prefer To Browse Beforehand

According to a recent survey, 72% of people use their phones to browse the Internet, looking for something creative and dazzling. Although this is our daily routine, it also can be a great opportunity for cafe shop owners. This is because it will make your business in every neighborhood across the world more accessible on a single device that people carry with them.

Therefore, residents of your country can google information about your cafe and its services before going to you. By creating a mobile app, you will get an opportunity to control the information they might find and get a needed first impression that you want them to have.  

2. Give People Positive Reviews

Another part of today’s world is people’s tendency to check other visitor’s reviews and get their pre-coming experience. This can greatly impact their decision on whether to come or not and also boost their loyalty to your place before their first visit. 

Therefore, your mobile app can feature a spot for positive reviews and testimonies about your business, atmosphere, services, and products. In addition, people who have already been and think about leaving their opinion will likely give feedback when they see other people’s reviews.   

3. Shows Customers What You Have in Real-Time

Having a mobile cafe app could be a great opportunity for your business to grow only if you make sure to update it regularly. Sometimes Google shows what your cafe had two months ago, some positions have been sold, or you bring something new, so a mobile app will ease the whole process of being attractive for your actual and prospective customers.  

This will help them stay informed about important events, services you now have, and maybe new products you want them to enjoy. That way, they will know they just need to go straight to your app for the required information instead of wasting time searching the web.

4. Build a Loyalty Program

This is a good reason why people return to many cafes and restaurants today. The concept is simple – customers make many purchases, and you give them something for free. While such punch cards have always been offered on paper that may be lost within one day, mobile tailored solutions always offer in-hand options that will be in demand among your visitors. 

While it obviously gives customers a motivation to buy more and more, it can also increase an average retention rate that is vital during these challenging times of the coronavirus pandemic. 

5. You Will Receive Valuable Data

It may seem that mobile apps can be valuable only for customers, but that is far from the truth. Boosting your business with mobile applications can provide you with valuable data that will be very useful for understanding your target audience. For instance, you will have real-time information on the demand for coupons, discounts, and what visitors like the most about your products and services. You can use that data to hone in on various marketing techniques or decide whether you need to bring some changes to your menu or your practices. 

4 Important Features of Successful Coffee Shop Apps

Any app development should start with vital features in order to provide good service to customers and get awesome results for business owners. Below we listed four key features any successful coffee shop apps need to have.

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Digital Menu

When thinking about how to create a coffee shop app, you should start with a well-thought-out digital catalog. Providing your products, services, and respective prices in your app will be a great idea to showcase the variety of your cafe.

Also, we advise you to create a small list of ingredients for each position so that it will be much easier for your prospective visitors ordering in few clicks what they want.

Loyalty Programs

We don’t think that you want a one-time customer as the main goal. This is why loyalty programs can be a saving opportunity for your business. In order to get repeated orders from the same person, you must include loyalty programs in your app. 

Give your users reward points on each purchase and, for example, let them get a free cup of coffee on an accumulation of certain points. Many ongoing studies found out that loyalty programs can significantly help a business to increase its turnover by more than 34%.

Push Notifications

While everybody thinks about how to make a coffee shop app that will succeed, we will answer! One of the leading features for any cafe app is push notifications. They ensure customers won’t forget about you and will always be informed about the latest news and upgrades. They also allow you to stay connected with your existing customers and facilitate up-selling & repeated business.

You can develop push notifications about discount codes, offers, and fresh arrivals directly to your visitor’s device screens. However, you need to remember to create engaging notifications that will not just get lost among all other alerts from different apps.

Welcome Location 

By implementing this feature, your app’s system can identify people who have downloaded your app and appear near your coffee outlet. Therefore, your app can send invitations and welcome messages for these customers and also offer them some discounts or offers.

However, it is vital for you to hire a professional development team that would be able to integrate this feature because it is complex. 

Step-by-step guide on developing a coffee shop app

Now we are going to discover the important stages to create a successful coffee application that will meet your goals and customers’ demands.

Hiring stage

Once you decide to complement your business with a mobile app, it is time to hire a team or a company that will realize your idea. It could be a challenging process, as you need to find experts with a solid background in your sphere, so they will be able to come up with an outstanding product.

Discovering stage

Your team is with you, and you are ready? Okay, the next step is brainstorming and discovering the market. It is crucial as only knowing your target audience and their vitals you will have a clear picture of the inner world of the development.   

This stage will also help all team members understand the project the way you see it. Before starting developing, consider the following questions:

• What problem will the app solve?
• How will it solve the problem?
• What will be the app’s unique value proposition?
• What is the market situation, and who are market leaders?
• What is your target audience?
• What revenue streams do you want?

In addition, you need to study trends and conduct market research, as it will increase the chances of your app being relevant, competing with industry leaders, and achieving success.

Prototyping and Design stage

To build an app that will compete with leaders like Starbucks, you have to prepare and create prototypes to allow you to see how your app works and looks. We advise you to start with a low-fidelity prototype or navigation concept that will show you all the cause-and-effect relationships among all application screens.

The next step should be discussed with your UX team. Since user experience determines how your mobile app works and what a person feels when using it, UX design should be first presented in a high–fidelity prototype. Also, you need to ensure it should be later public tested to receive feedback from your target audience. Once you are ready with UX, the final design stage will come up with the U.I. team. 

Development stage

To build a successful coffee app like Starbucks, you’ll need to consider the following features:

• Registration through email or social networks
• Personal profiles
• Main settings
• Push/email notifications
• Menu information
• Favorites
• Special offers and discounts
• Trending items
• Customer support
• Payment options

You can also go the extra mile and implement new features that will help you create a unique value proposition for prospective visitors. They could be Augmented Reality (A.R.), Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (A.I.), and even Voice Recognition.

This stage consists of two main parts:

1. iOS & Android development
2. Backend development

You should also remember that the estimated amount of time you will spend depends on various factors like technologies used, number of features, app complexity, and amount of screens. The average time for developing iOS and Android will be approximately 250–320 hours per platform, while the backend parts of a coffee shop app take 350–400 hours on average. It should also be emphasized that the whole cost to make a mobile app for a coffee shop will also depend on the team you choose, as outsourcing companies are less expensive than hiring one by one specialist for every part.

Testing stage 

Now you have an app, and you are ready to go, but it is time for deep testing on all functions. You can launch the app on the market and ask first visitors to check it and give feedback on how it works, and then you will know what you need to change. However, it will be much better to test your application in-house by professionals and later launch a ready and successful product for your business.

Upgrading stage

Once your product is on the market and people start downloading it, you need to be in demand not only for the first day. This is why upgrading is a vital part of the whole development process. It doesn’t mean you have to think about it every day, but make sure you update your app every three-four months to attract people and bring them new exciting features.  

Creating an App For Coffee Shops With Interexy

Interexy strives to be updated on the latest trends in this digital world by creating a team of niche-down experts that can recreate how coffee shops work today. As a part of our company’s journey, we have been a trusted partner for the Brewpass founders that require a mobile app solution to increase income and boost customer’s loyalty.

The main challenge we faced during the development process was to allow the app to work within all U.S. states. Our professionals discussed this task and came up with a great decision – create personal space for the cafe administration in the app and provide a CRM system, so each administrator can easily plug in their local cafe and run the process from their mobile devices.

During the development process, Interexy’s experts chose native languages for iOS and Android, while for the payment system, we used Stripe. The result was outstanding and provided Brewpass founders with a promising future. Still not sure about app development? Contact our team for more information.

Final thoughts

As you can see from the information above, a great mobile application can help your coffee shop to become more popular and boost customer’s loyalty. This article outlines how to develop a coffee shop app for a business or a startup. Also, we gave you reasons why it will be profitable for both caffeine-addicted people and you, show examples, and a detailed process of the development. More and more coffee shops are creating mobile applications, so it is a great time to enter this market and be at the top of the list. If you are ready to achieve your goals, the Interexy team is here for all your ideas and wishes.