More on the menu for Dineplan customers

There is now more on the menu for Dineplan customers whilst making a restaurant booking on-the-go. South Africa’s first instant restaurant booking app now enables customers to find special offers in their area, ideal for those patrons looking for an affordable night out.

Dineplan enables customers to browse and instantly make restaurant reservations according to current location, availability, name, area, specific cuisines or even by customer ratings. The new feature now enables customers to search and view special offer menus as well.

Bluegrass Digital, a digital solutions business with over 20 years of international experience, was approached to develop this app. It used the latest mobile development technology called React Native to build the app.

React Native is the same technology that is used by many popular apps including the likes of AirBnB, Facebook Messenger, Bloomberg, UberEats, Instagram and Discord.

Dineplan director Greg Whitfield says they approached Bluegrass Digital requesting a world-class, user friendly consumer facing app to complement the existing network of restaurants using their back-end reservation software.

Bluegrass Digital managing director Nick Durrant says they have vast experience and expertise in building React Native mobile applications for clients – locally and abroad. “We have developed 6 applications in React Native to date and have extensive experience with bookings platforms and workflow – creating an optimised experience for both the business as well as the end-user.”

“We help guide clients like Dineplan through the entire process – from inception, design and implementation to testing and app store deployment. We work closely with all stakeholders through regular workshops, stand-ups and our agile and iterative designs processes to involve our clients in every step of the project,” he explains.

Durrant says Bluegrass has a strong focus on the User Experience (UX). “We create user journey flows to clearly show the end-to-end user experience and identify and address current pain points but more importantly, opportunities to improve and wow. We help clients to understand the overall journey, the impact on users at each stage and how to improve that experience.”

Bluegrass engages with clients to agree the visual design direction which will be a parallel work stream to the UX design. It also reviews competitors, global trends and best practices for similar industries and have confidence in all of its designs due to the iterative nature of the process, reducing risk for clients as a business.

“Bluegrass approached the challenge methodically and professionally, and guided us efficiently along the way to deliver exactly that, and within time frames. We have been exceptionally happy with Bluegrass and continue to work with them very closely,” Whitfield concludes.