Services · Mobile app development · Restaurant apps
Our restaurant app development UK service builds iOS and Android apps that restaurant brands own outright: direct ordering, collection, delivery by your own fleet, reservations and a menu system that handles dozens of sites with local differences. It is designed for operators who trade in more than one city, or more than one of the four nations, and want one guest account, one brand and one set of data across all of them.
Codeeo has no UK office. We work remotely with UK restaurant groups, with discovery, design reviews and release sign-off held by video call, and documentation written so your operations, finance and legal teams can review each decision. Restaurant mobile app development UK brands commission at this scale is as much about governance as screens, so we bring those teams into the work early.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
Capabilities for national operators
A single restaurant app and a national restaurant app look similar on the guest's phone. The difference sits underneath. A group with sites from Bristol to Belfast needs a menu model that handles regional dishes and prices, rules that change with the nation a site trades in, delivery zones drawn site by site, and permissions that let a regional manager change things without breaking another region.
The capabilities below are the foundation we plan for national brands. Restaurant ordering app development UK groups commission from us normally starts with these structures, because adding them after launch is far harder than building them in from the first release.
Head office maintains the core menu once. Regions or individual sites override price, availability and a small number of local dishes. Changes can be scheduled, such as a new seasonal menu going live at every site on the same morning, with exceptions for sites still running out old stock.
Menu changes reach every site on time and in the right form.
Calorie labelling regulations apply to large businesses in England but not in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Hygiene schemes differ between FHRS and Scotland's FHIS. Licensing law differs too. Each site carries its nation, and the app displays information accordingly.
Each site shows what its local rules require, nothing missing and nothing wrong.
A guest who orders in Leeds and books a table in Cardiff uses the same login, address book and payment methods. Their history follows them, so the app can suggest the nearest site and their usual order wherever they are. Head office sees the same customer across regions, which makes group reporting by site, region and daypart far more reliable than stitching marketplace exports together.
Guests treat the brand as one, wherever they eat.
Table booking for every site with local rules for table length, party size, deposits and cancellation windows. City centre sites can require deposits on Saturdays while retail park sites never do. Hosts manage bookings from tablets at each door, and large party enquiries can be routed to a central events team instead of the site.
Booking policy set by site, managed in one system.
Each site gets its own delivery areas, minimum order and fee, with a dispatch board for in-house drivers or handoff to a courier partner. Mandatory delivery charges appear on the menu early, in line with the drip pricing rules in the DMCC Act.
Direct delivery that fits each site's reach and staffing.
Apple Pay, Google Pay and saved cards with Strong Customer Authentication, plus pay by bank through Open Banking where your provider offers it. Refunds and partial refunds run from the admin panel with reasons recorded for finance.
Quick payment for guests and clean reconciliation for finance.
Since the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 took effect, qualifying tips must reach workers in full and be shared fairly. Tips taken in the app are recorded by site and shift, with exports your payroll team can use when allocating them.
Clear tip records that support your allocation policy.
Push, email and text marketing each have their own opt-in under PECR, separate from order and booking updates. Head office can target messages by region or site, and every consent change is logged against the guest record under UK GDPR.
Marketing that reaches guests who agreed to it, with proof.
Screens designed to WCAG 2.2 guidance: readable text sizes, screen reader labels, sufficient contrast and buttons large enough to tap. Under the Equality Act 2010, service providers should avoid putting disabled customers at a disadvantage, and an accessible app supports that.
More guests can order and book without help.
The 14 major allergens are recorded against every dish, sauce and modifier in the central menu, and regional dishes carry their own records. When a supplier change alters a recipe, the update reaches every affected site at once, and the change log shows who approved it. Guests filter by allergen in any branch, in any nation.
One source of allergen truth for every kitchen in the group.
Who this is for
National operators usually come to us once marketplace fees, booking platform charges and scattered guest data have become a strategic issue rather than an annoyance. The right shape for the app depends on how your estate is run, who owns each site and how quickly you are expanding. Here are the four starting points we see most often from a restaurant app development company UK groups can brief remotely.
Groups that do not fit any of these neatly, such as a hotel company with restaurants inside its properties, follow the same approach: we start from how the estate is run and design the platform around it.
Every site belongs to the group and is run by salaried managers. You want a single app with head office control, regional managers who can adjust local settings, and reporting that compares like with like. We design permissions and the menu model with your operations team before any guest screens, because those choices drive everything else. Sites in very different settings, such as a station concourse, a high street and a retail park, can still have settings suited to how each trades.
Most of the effort sits in the admin platform and its permissions.
Franchisees own their sites, and sometimes their guest data obligations too. The app must keep brand standards consistent while letting franchisees manage hours, stock and local promotions. Data sharing between franchisor and franchisee is defined up front, so each party knows its role under UK GDPR. Franchisees also get their own dashboards, so they run their site from the app rather than calling head office.
Data controller arrangements are agreed with your legal team early.
You have a strong home city and plan openings elsewhere. The app should make each opening a configuration exercise: clone the menu, set the delivery zones, adjust prices, add staff accounts and go live. We build those tools into the admin platform so expansion does not depend on developers. A launch checklist inside the admin platform makes sure no step, from allergen data to delivery fees, is skipped on opening day.
Your sites use different ordering providers, booking tools and loyalty schemes gathered over the years, and nothing joins up. We plan a staged migration: build the core app, connect it to the systems that stay, and move each site across in an order that protects trade during the busiest weeks. Guest accounts from the old tools are migrated only where consent and data quality allow, so the new database starts clean.
Old and new systems run side by side during the move.
Engagement models
Larger groups often choose a dedicated team for a multi-phase programme, with a fixed scope for the pilot and a rolling plan for national rollout. Smaller chains usually start with a fixed scope first release and move to a retainer after launch. Codeeo's 80+ people work from Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi and have delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US; we work with UK groups remotely, with every review on video.
Whichever model you pick, governance is clear: a named lead on our side, a written plan, agreed acceptance tests for each release and regular demos where your team sees working software rather than progress reports.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
We use Flutter or React Native for guest apps, React for the admin platform and cloud hosting in a UK or EU region. Every integration uses documented APIs, so your in-house team or another partner can take over later. Load testing before each peak season checks that ordering stays fast when every site is busy at once.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
We model each site's nation and rules in the platform from the start.
Every site carries settings for its nation, licensing context, hygiene scheme and calorie display requirement. That way the same app shows a numbered FHRS rating for a site in Manchester and an FHIS result for a site in Glasgow, and shows calories in England only where the regulations apply. Your compliance team confirms the rules, and we build them into configuration rather than code. When a rule changes, such as a new display requirement in one nation, the update is a settings change for the affected sites.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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