Bluegrass Digital helps Dineplan make restaurant bookings easier

When the team behind Dineplan, South Africa’s first instant booking platform for restaurants, was looking to create its app, it wanted to include a broad list of features and functionality. An app that allows users to instantly book a table at one of their favourite restaurants in SA, the Dineplan team wanted to make it easy to secure and manage a restaurant booking on the go.

The Dineplan team wanted to allow users to conduct location-based searches, create lists of their favourite restaurants, browse customer ratings, research different cuisines on offer, check a restaurant’s operating hours and even share reservation information, and Google Maps locations, with whoever would be joining them at this particular eatery.

A creative technology company with over 20 years of international experience, Bluegrass Digital was the perfect partner.

Employing the latest mobile development technology, React Native, the Bluegrass Digital team built a native app that uses the same code for deployment on iOS as well as on Android devices without compromising functionality and performance.

Nick Durrant, MD at Bluegrass Digital, explains the collaboration with Dineplan was the company’s fourth completed project using React Native. “This technology stack is quickly becoming our preferred approach over Swift, Java Android, Xamarin or Cordova built mobile apps.”

And this was a big draw card for the Dineplan team. According to Greg Whitfield, a director at Dineplan, Bluegrass was the standout choice for the project because of its previous experience using React Native. “We wanted to create an app that was simple for the general public to use to find and instantly book a table at any one of the 1 000 South African-based restaurants currently using Dineplan,” he explains.

Dineplan not only offers a platform for restaurant patrons, it also has a reservation solution that makes it easier for restaurant owners to manage bookings. When a restaurant combines this reservation management software with the app, guests can view a restaurant’s availability in real-time and make bookings that are confirmed immediately. Having always been a B2B company, the idea behind bringing out the mobile app for public use was to test the B2C waters by creating something specifically for consumers, Whitfield notes.

“We started with their objectives and a blank canvas. We worked closely in carrying out a UX and prototype phase of work to quickly scope the MVP to launch into the market,” says Durrant. “Design followed, then development sprints. Our teams worked well together and we used a very agile methodology to developing the app,” he continues.

“Bluegrass really helped us realise our ideas – while adding a few of their own – throughout the entire design and development phases,” notes Whitfield.

Bluegrass Digital offers custom software development, content management solutions, mobile app development and managed support services. To find out more about the company, get in touch via (021) 671 1966 or e-mail hello@bluegrassdigital.com.